Caressed by Ice

He unfolded his arms. “We have nothing.” Because he could give her nothing, not even the comfort she so obviously needed. The comfort she’d waited all night to find with him. Rather than being there for her, he’d been out doing violence. “You’re clinging to me because I helped you during the healing process. It’s a normal psychological reaction.”

“You are not like everyone says.” She refused to drop her eyes. “I see you.”

“You see what I choose to show you.” He moved away from the door. “It’ll be better for both of us if you speak to Faith or Sascha the next time you have a question. You appear to be getting too emotionally attached to me.”

She actually growled at him, a low throaty sound that seemed incongruous coming from her slender throat. “If I was a violent woman, I’d claw you for that.”

He held her gaze. “No matter how hard you push, I’ll remain Psy. Silence is who I am.” The Protocol had saved him from becoming a serial murderer by turning him into a sanctioned killer. Sometimes there were no good choices. “Go find a changeling to give you what you need. I can do without the disruptions.”

CHAPTER 10

Striding across the room, she pulled open the door. “You know what, I think I will.” With that, she was gone, striding down the corridor in tight jeans and a red sweater that drew male eyes to her body. It was only when one of those admiring males tripped over thin air that Judd realized he was using his Tk. He slammed the door shut before he could do any more damage.

A finely tuned spike of pain speared through his skull, signaling a detectable breach in his conditioning. He didn’t want to fix it, didn’t want to stop his descent into chaos. What he wanted was to hurt the men who’d dared look at her.

The thin line that snaked down the wall in front of him appeared as insubstantial as a pencil drawing, but it was a hairline fracture that could turn into a full break with a little more pressure. Just like his mind. He managed to control the unrestrained flow of telekinetic power before he caused the wall to collapse, but the rupture was enough to demonstrate exactly how close he was to a catastrophic loss of control. If he didn’t fix the fault in his conditioning, it could mean death for hundreds in the den—adults, children…Brenna.

Sweat dripped down his spine as he backed up and sat on the edge of the bed to begin repairing the major flaws. The finer fractures that riddled the previously hard casing of Silence would have to wait until he was calmer. Right then, his concentration was shot. He could still smell Brenna’s psychic scent in the air.

She was heat and woman, fear and courage, sensuality and laughter.

And she was not his.

If he tried to change that, he’d end up killing her. Because he wasn’t anything as simple as a Tk. He was a Tk-Cell, a subdesignation so rare, it wasn’t listed on any public record. After Silence, Tk-Cells had become the Council’s dirty little secret, their most lethal assassins. Before Silence, before the imposition of control, those of his subdesignation had always ended up murderers, killing their wives and daughters first. It was as if their ability snapped out to strike at the only ones who might have pulled them back from the abyss.

Judd made his decision then and there. He had to leave the den before Brenna unknowingly set off his abilities. She had no idea of the horror she could unleash.

He wasn’t an assassin by choice. He was one because he couldn’t be anything else.

Judd found Hawke before dawn the next morning, having spent the previous afternoon and night sealing up the cracks in his conditioning—it was all that protected those around him from the killing rage of his ability. “I want out,” he told the alpha. He wasn’t used to asking for permission, would have just walked out had he been alone, but he wasn’t. His unexplained disappearance would impact Walker, Sienna, and the kids’ position in the den.

Hawke raised an eyebrow. “What does your family think about that decision?”

“They have nothing to do with it.” A complete truth. “Walker’s settled and able to steer them through any turbulence. I’m a disruptive influence.” As the recent murder had shown, anytime things went badly wrong, eyes looked toward the Psy, toward him. “All of them have integrated into the pack to some extent.” While he’d made every effort not to.

The SnowDancer alpha didn’t look convinced. “Why now?”

Judd had already decided to tell a truth. It was simply not the one that mattered. “In the Net, I held a rank equal to those of your lieutenants. I knew that should we survive our defection, I’d lose that. It was a price I chose to pay.” To save the children from the living death that was rehabilitation.

“So what’s changed?”

“I didn’t count on the fact that the enforced idleness, the effectual caging of my abilities, would have a consequence.” Also true. Despite the covert work he’d been doing—both for the Ghost and to earn income for the family—the pressure was building. It was, he told himself, the reason why Brenna had been able to crack his shields with relatively little effort. He’d already been compromised. “Those idle psychic muscles need to be stretched or they’ll begin to act without my conscious control.”

“Like our beasts.”

“Yes.” He’d seen wolves go rogue, seen the damage they could do. “But worse.”

“I’m not buying.” Hawke leaned back against the dark wood of his desk, pale eyes more wolf than human. “I recognize control when I see it. And yours is precision-tuned.”

No other option was feasible for his subdesignation. However, that wasn’t something Hawke needed to know. “You’ve guessed at my position in the Net,” he said instead. “I was who I was because my abilities lie in combat. Such aggressive abilities have to be utilized on a regular basis to ward off loss of control.”

“How are you planning to do that?” No overt suspicion, but the implication was there.

For a fleeting second, Judd considered calling attention to the insult, but then stifled the reaction as irrelevant. To the wolves, he was an enemy, not a fellow soldier. “I have no intention of rejoining the PsyNet—it would mean death for my family should the Council realize we weren’t executed when we walked into your territory. I can, however, blend in with the general populace and go freelance.”

“As what?”

He met those cold wolf eyes. “As a man who cleans up certain kinds of messes, what else?” A brutal choice but one that would serve to keep his abilities in check.

“I can’t let an assassin loose on the fucking public.” Hawke shoved a hand through hair almost identical to the silver-gold color of his pelt in wolf form.

Judd didn’t see the need to point out that he’d already been working for months without setting off alarms. The clients never saw him. He never met them. And he didn’t kill for them. Not yet. “No wet work,” he said. “I’d work in surveillance and protection in this state for the next three or four years.”

Until Sienna became capable of taking over some of what he did to keep the LaurenNet functional, he couldn’t go far. The familial Net linked him to his family and generated enough biofeedback to keep them all alive. No Psy could survive without that feedback. If he put distance between himself and the others, it would strain the already thin fabric of a network made up of only five minds, leaving more room for mistakes. “I won’t practice my profession in your territory.”

“What happens when Sienna grows up?” Hawke asked astutely.

“I’m considering mercenary work in the African states.” In the deepest, darkest jungles where changelings held sway and where there were no Psy, no one who might possibly recognize him. And no woman with sunshine in her smile. He crushed that thought with merciless reality—the day Brenna truly saw him, the day she discovered the things he had done, he would lose her smile anyway.

“There is another option.” Hawke’s eyes were predator-still, watchful. “You could work as a SnowDancer soldier. That would allow you to use your abilities, correct?”

“Enough to blow off the most dangerous steam.” The instant the words left his lips, Judd knew he should’ve lied. So why hadn’t he? He looked inward and found his shields solid. Yet something was making him behave in