her and Riaz on this bench, a hundred years from now.
The dream was one she wanted with her every breath … and one, she understood in a moment of crystal clarity, that she had the power to make come true. As she had the power to destroy it, burying it under the cold darkness of fear until nothing remained.
The realization wiped everything else aside to leave her with a single blinding truth: their future had never been, and was never going to be, Riaz’s choice alone. He’d fought so hard for her, her lone wolf, and she would fight for him, too, to the last beat of her heart. Never again would she step gracefully aside. Forget about setting something free if you loved it—she would goddamn hold on to her man. Her wolf growled in agreement, its bruised spirit infused with steel, a door crashing open inside her that she hadn’t even been aware was locked shut.
“They’re not changeling, Adria.”
Her determination a hot pulse in her skin, she turned to look at him, his profile strong. “I know.” It was a frustrated statement, because all she wanted to do was touch her black wolf, hold him, make it up to him for having been such an idiot for so long.
“What does that mean?”
He slipped his hand to her nape, squeezed. “Look.”
Still scowling, she glanced up to see the man lean over to kiss his wife before he turned on the tiny music player he’d put on the bench. He held out his hand and she flowed into his arms. The song was an old one, from the time of their youth, and while their feet moved a little slower than they might have on that long-ago first date, the love between them was so luminous, it made every single person around them halt, stop breathing.
Adria, too, didn’t take her eyes off the couple until they finished dancing and packed up their things to walk away, hand in hand. “That’s…” She had no words for the sheer beauty of what she’d seen.
“They’re not changeling,” Riaz said again. “They don’t have the mating bond. Whatever they feel for one another can’t be what one mate-bonded changeling feels for another.”
“How can you say that?” She swiveled to face him, incensed that he’d try to lessen the wonder of what they’d just witnessed. “I dare anyone pry them apart.”
Riaz said nothing, his eyes a brilliant dark gold that glowed.
And she heard what she’d said, what he’d said. “We’re not human,” she whispered, hope an incandescent burst of sunshine in her blood.
This time, he did take her into his arms, into his lap, uncaring of who might be watching. “Does that mean we love any less?” Rough words from the heart of the wolf.
Shaking her head, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him tight. “I love you to madness.” She pulled back, his face cupped in her hands, giving him the words, the courtship, he’d given her. “Until I wake up early some days just to watch you sleep, until it hurts to be separated from you for even a day, until I steal your sweatshirts so I can rub my face against your scent.”
His arms squeezed her till she knew she’d carry bruises, but she didn’t care. When he would’ve spoken, she stopped him with a kiss, fisting her hand in his hair. “No more chances, Golden Eyes. You’re mine and I’ll draw blood to enforce my claim.” She didn’t care if a hundred women claimed rights—Riaz belonged to Adria and she was keeping him. “I’m through with being reasonable and accommodating and stupid enough to ever let you go. So get ready to tangle with a very possessive dominant female who considers you hers.”
A slow smile, the eyes of the wolf looking out at her. “I thought you’d never say that.” He nipped at her jaw, his wolf rubbing up against her own with an affection that made her want to shift and play with him through the flower beds. “You’re my one and only, too, but you already know that.”
Yes, she thought with a joyful laugh, she did. It was in his every touch, every glance, every caress, the pulse of it arcing through her bloodstream. They might never have the mating bond, but they’d created their own bond, and she dared anyone to break the wild beauty of it.
Then he spoke again and the joy splintered into a near-unbearable tenderness. “Heart of my heart, that’s who you are, Adria Morgan. Chosen and forever.” Picking her hand off his cheek, he pressed a lingering kiss to the palm before placing it over the strong, steady rhythm of that very organ. “Wolf and man, you own every part of me.”
Turning her hand to curl her fingers around his own, this lone wolf who wore his love with such pride, unafraid to show his vulnerability, she whispered, “Heart of my heart … my Riaz. Chosen and forever.” Smile tremulous, she traced his lips with her fingertips and surrendered the final vestiges of her own defenses. “And we’re even … because you own every part of me, too.”
His mouth moved under her touch, his smile creasing his cheeks. “I guess we’ll have to take good care of our gifts.”
“The best.” Laughter bubbled inside her, the sheer depth of her happiness seeking an outlet. “We need to dance.”
A raised eyebrow.
Passion melding with tenderness, she kissed him until his heart thundered, until he grinned in wolfish delight and asked her to do it again. “So,” she said after granting his wish, “we can do it on our hundredth anniversary.”
Her black wolf smiled, rose … and spun her out in an outrageous curve before spinning her into his arms again, her back to his chest. “Where you belong,” he said, pressing a kiss to her pulse.
Retrieval
KALEB HAD FOUND the first clue eight months ago, a psychic tracker he’d constructed and released into the Net. Of the thousands he’d sent out, only one had returned to him. It had been old and crumbling, but it had carried a viable information payload.
A name.
A direction.
It had taken him months of painstaking tracking through the Net to pick up the trail. The last weeks had required hours of intense concentration every single day, the blind alleys and shields formed to confuse a pursuer having had years to mature and morph until they created a twisted psychic jungle. Enough to halt even the most highly trained operative. But … no one had expected Kaleb to come hunting.
No one knew they had taken what belonged to him.
No one alive anyway.
Because he’d made it through, and now stood silent and motionless, certain he was so close to his target that he was in danger of setting off multiple psychic trip wires.
Touching the NetMind and the DarkMind, the latter identity still stronger than the former, he asked them to tell him what they saw. His mind filled with an overlay of fine lines across the star-studded skies of the Net. Those were the “blood vessels” of the network, conduits for the rapid transfer of information. He disregarded them to focus on the finer red lines below—psychic alerts someone had rigged in a section of the Net that appeared uninhabited.
Skirting the trip wires with the flawless mental grace of a cardinal with lethal combat training, he continued toward his target. There were more trip wires, more traps, until he glimpsed the minds of the guards at last. But they didn’t see him. Cloaked in psychic invisibility, his shields impenetrable, he passed right by them. To find himself in front of the doors of a locked psychic vault disguised as dead space. It had been constructed by a telepath of considerable skill, its effect to create a prison around a particular mind, ensuring no trace of that mind leaked out into the Net.
Kaleb had waited too long to make a mistake now. He circled around the vault to check for hidden alarms that would alert the ones who monitored it. He found five. Dismantling them took four hours of unremitting concentration. Only when he was certain no other alarms remained, did he “break” the psychic seal of the vault and step inside. He stayed two seconds, just long enough to take a telepathic imprint of the mind within.
