As she sat with the young of her pack, aware her wolf would reassure them with no specific words being spoken, Selenka felt an enormous pride stretch her alpha’s heart. Angry and sad they might be right now, but beneath that was a core of courage and love.

“They’re clueless,” one girl muttered when the conversation drifted to Zivko and the other wolves in the group of intruders. “Zero discipline over their wolves. One actually tried to hit on me and put his hand on my arm.” She curled her lip. “I dumped him on his ass and shredded his face for good measure.” A quick glance at Selenka. “Sorry—I know we’re not supposed to physically hurt them.”

Selenka raised an eyebrow. “You’re not sorry.” She chuckled when the girl ducked her head. “And he assumed skin privileges with a wolf female. If he’s so clueless he doesn’t know that’s an invitation for being shredded, he deserved it.” No one put hands on anyone else in this pack without permission. Often, that permission was implied by nonverbal wolfish communication, but it always existed.

“Still,” she said, “I’ll have Margo chat with them, make those rules clear.” Youthful arrogance could be forgiven if the intruders were willing to learn—and she’d do this for Emanuel, who’d wanted so much to help those lost changelings.

“They can’t have had very good alphas if they don’t know basic stuff.” Ilarion frowned. “I kind of almost feel sorry for them. I mean, we have you.” A blush. “Total advantage.”

Selenka patted his cheek with an affectionate smile—the boy had a sweet crush on her, but he’d grow out of it, as she’d grown out of her crush on one of her grandfather’s lieutenants. “Let’s see if we can whip them into shape.”

“Even though they tried to hurt us?”

“Depends on the choices they make now,” Selenka said bluntly. “We see what they do with the chance they’ve been given.”

The conversation continued, drifting to other matters.

“Your mate is handsome.” A cheeky comment from dimpled Katina.

Grins spread around the circle. “Even better,” Ilarion murmured, “he’s lethal.”

Chest tight, Selenka kept up an unbroken front till the conversation ended. She then went to see Emanuel’s beloved Dia. The gentle submissive was at her parents’ quarters, curled up in bed with her best friends on either side of her, all of them in wolf form.

Whimpering when her alpha entered the room, she waited only until Selenka was on the bed to put her head in Selenka’s lap. Selenka petted her as Dia’s best friends shifted to have contact with their alpha, too. The one mercy in all of this was that Dia’s relationship with Emanuel had just begun.

The heartbroken wolf would recover, though it would take a lot of time.

Selenka would recover, too, but she’d forever carry a hole in her heart. That was what it meant to be alpha. To carry your whole pack in your heart . . . even the lost ones.

It was late by the time she left Dia, but she touched base with Margo before she headed out. Her security specialist had no news for her—the Arrows were sharing all data on the person who’d admitted to murdering Emanuel, but so far, that individual remained a ghost.

“Something Cray said about his conversation with the assassin has me looking at the Disciples,” Margo told her, blue eyes hard. “But Ivo’s dug deep into their finances and history, and we don’t have a smoking gun. I don’t want to blind myself by focusing only on them, but they’re in my crosshairs.”

Selenka didn’t rage at the lack of progress; her wolves were relentless hunters and so were the Arrows. The murderer would be found—and punishment would be harsh. “I need to talk to Blaise regardless,” she said. “I’ll see if I can shake anything loose there.”

“Be careful—he has that kind, polite front, but no one forms what might as well be a cult without having delusions of godhood.”

“If Blaise had anything to do with harming Emanuel,” Selenka said on a growl, “he’ll beg for death before it comes.” Cold determination in her heart, she slipped away from the den at last.

Loyal padded alongside her.

The stars were brilliant overhead as she hit the night air, and she knew the closest sentries would clock her exit, but no one would begrudge her a run. And run she did, through the cool dark and in the shadow of trees that had stood for generations before her and would stand for generations to come.

Despite her need to get to Ethan, she took care to keep her pace at one his rescued pet could maintain.

Oleg was sitting just outside the tent when she arrived. He rose with a theatrical groan, as Loyal yipped joyfully and ran over to nose his way into the tent, his tail wagging rapidly. “Oh, these bones aren’t meant for ground sitting.”

As she’d seen Oleg racing over rocks the other day, Selenka didn’t take that seriously. She embraced him, was embraced in turn. “I’ll stay for the next five hours, head back in at dawn.”

The healer left without further words, well aware of the wrenching pull of the mating bond. Crawling inside the tent the instant she was alone with Ethan but for Loyal, who sat attentively at his master’s feet, Selenka rolled up all the sides. The night was clear and not too cold, and this way she could be with Ethan and still react quickly to a threat.

Stripping off her socks and boots, she also tugged off her second-favorite jacket. She was a wolf, could sleep in the forest naked with no ill effects, but she’d save the naked sleeping for when her mate was awake. It was a jolt of pleasure to see Ethan’s eyes drink her up, feel his hands stroke over her body in that way of his, as if she were a great work of art that he’d been given permission to touch and he couldn’t believe it.

“Sleep,” she told Loyal, petting his head to reassure him.

Then, lying down beside her mate as she’d hungered to do for so many hours, she put her hand on his chest, closed her eyes, and listened to him breathe. She fell asleep to that sound and to the beat of his heart under her palm, at peace even in her worry and pain because she was with him.

* * *

—

SELENKA took Gregori with her to the meeting with Blaise the next morning. It was a deliberate choice on her part to invite him—the church leader had reacted aggressively to Gregori from the first. Oh, Blaise had hidden it behind a slick smile and pretty manners, but Selenka wasn’t alpha because she was stupid.

“How are our prisoners doing?” she asked as she drove them out of den territory.

“Toeing the line.” Her senior lieutenant settled into the passenger seat. “Probably because they’re under constant watch from growling wolves.”

“Good.” Things would get worse for those perpetrators before they would get better. “We pick up any other details of their plans?”

“Just confirmation we don’t have the mastermind—the humans and Psy in the group have no real appreciation of the strength of our hearing and keep whispering to each other, asking who came up with the idea of fire—the stupidity of that’s gotten through and they’re pissed, but no one has any idea.” He grunted as she took a corner too fast. “Tell me again how you got your license to drive?”

“Scaredy-cat.”

“Safety conscious.” He tugged together the sides of his nonexistent jacket. “As for Zivko, the boy’s realized he was manipulated—I can see a colder, harder anger growing inside him.”

That could be either good or bad for the young wolf’s development; it all depended on what he did with the anger. “You keeping an eye on him?”

“Yes, and when I’m not there, one of the other senior dominants. It’d be a shame to lose him, lose any of them, changeling or not.” He clenched his hands on his knees. “Emanuel was so invested in them.”

Heat burned Selenka’s eyes.

Swallowing back the emotion, she said, “We’ll try our damnedest to open their eyes.” She was too pragmatic not to accept that some wouldn’t want to see any truth but the one they’d already bought into—Blaise had a certain charisma and an ability to speak to a person as if they truly mattered. What Selenka considered a well-practiced act inspired incredible devotion in his flock.

A number of that flock were out front when Selenka arrived at the church gate. More than one shot her a hostile look, but every single individual dropped their gaze the instant she made eye contact—and the gate slid open without problem.

“Did you notice that?” she murmured to Gregori after they’d driven through.

“The upgraded security?” Her lieutenant tapped his finger on the open ledge of his window, his tattoos brilliant in the sunshine and eyes intent on their surroundings. “Pricey. But Blaise does have a nice fat bank account.”

Ivo had managed to track the money trail to inheritances and other wealth brought in by the congregation—including a massive chunk left to the church by a parishioner who’d died without warning two years earlier, long before Haven’s Disciples came to Moscow. It had been ruled a natural death, but Selenka had wondered at the efficacy of the investigation. Because the parishioner’s death had left Blaise in total control of her millions.

“There he is,” she said, spotting Blaise coming out of not the church, but a small home to the left. A slender—and young—woman stood in the doorway, her long blonde hair like silk and her dewy, pink-lipped face awash in awe.

Gregori whistled. “She’s legal—I recognize her from Margo’s spy files, but kid’s only nineteen.”

While Blaise was forty-three. A well-maintained and handsome forty-three . . . and a man who didn’t believe in moral lines. Because Selenka only had to take a single breath after exiting the vehicle to confirm the two had just engaged in sexual intercourse. Not skin privileges—she wouldn’t give that name to this act. And it had nothing to do with the age difference, or even the simple fact that Blaise was the leader of this group.