ETHAN DIDN’T KNOW what was happening, didn’t understand the alien heat in his veins. It hurt but the pain was one in which he gloried. As he did in the primal being that was a shadow in his mind, its teeth and claws bared. Should anyone try to get between him and Selenka, he’d use his power without compunction.

She was his now. That was how mating worked.

“Maintain.” It was a growled order from his mate. “Or you’ll push my wolf to violence.”

Ethan didn’t want to stifle the heat that scalded him, but even in the fog, he’d learned things. He’d watched Aden with Zaira, Vasic with Ivy Jane, Abbot with Jaya. He understood that mates backed one another—they didn’t smash foundations but built them. Ethan’s mate was an alpha wolf and right now, she was in the middle of an operation.

He leaned into the brutal training he’d undergone as a child and used it to assist his mate by slowly, methodically rebuilding the control mechanisms in his mind. The deep red flame that was his compulsion toward Selenka continued to burn in his gut, potent and visceral and unlike anything he’d ever before felt, but he could think again.

“I’m stabilizing,” he told her, though—at the deepest level—it was a lie. His core hadn’t been stable for a long time. But for today, for this time, he was functional again.

Selenka’s eyes were half-gold, half-brown as she examined him. “I can feel it, the ice crawling over the fire.” An edge of a growl in her tone. “Can most Arrows do that? Just shut down emotion after such a vicious shock?”

He hadn’t shut anything down; he had it barely caged behind a construction of chill control. “I’m not normal,” he told her, because he would not lie to his mate. “I don’t know how another Arrow would respond.”

Selenka’s jaw tightened, the words that emerged from her lips harsh. “Is that what your family taught you? That you’re not normal?”

Ethan knew he wasn’t normal; he’d always known, but now the truth was unavoidable. There was something deeply wrong with his brain. “I was a disappointment as the eldest son of the Night family.” He felt nothing as he spoke of his dead family, the memories a permanent numbness that even the searing flame that was Selenka couldn’t eradicate.

He wondered if that fire would burn him to cinders.

Ethan didn’t flinch; he would rather die scalded by her heat than alone in the cold dark. “I think if they could have put me down like an unwanted animal, they would have. But by the time my problems became obvious, I was too old to conveniently disappear. So they tried to break my mind and make me into another Ethan.”

The words that came from Selenka’s lips were profane. Then she pressed her lips to his in a contact that short-circuited his brain and threatened to erase what control he’d managed. Stepping back in the aftermath, her chest heaving, she said, “I shouldn’t have done that—but I’m not sorry.” Anger coated each word, but it wasn’t directed at him. “Do your work and I’ll do mine and when that’s done, we’ll talk about your family’s chances of survival.”

Skin electric and light rimming his fingertips, he nodded. And didn’t speak again for ten more minutes, till after they’d helped clear the hall.

Then he told Selenka the rest of it. “My family isn’t alive.” A flash of light behind his eyelids, the memory of a scream cut off almost before it began. “I murdered my father, mother, grandfather, and uncle when I was six years old. All the adults involved in my upbringing. I also killed the telepath who was digging inside my brain.”

Ethan tried to think of who he’d been before that moment when his power struck out in a desperate attempt to protect his mind, couldn’t remember. The numbness had begun then, erasing all that had once existed. “That was when I was damaged.” Part of his psyche destroyed.

Selenka shrugged. “Good. They should’ve known better than to harm a pup.” The light caught on her cheekbone as she shifted to look at someone.

Ethan’s fingers curled into his palms, his skin tight. The lips she’d claimed burned. He killed with light but she lived in it, and until he went slowly, inexorably insane, he’d chance the brilliance with her.

“I have to disappear for a while.” An edge of gold in her eyes once more, her next words a promise—or a threat. “I’ll find you afterward.”

“I’ll be waiting.” Ethan had made his choice, picked his loyalty.

* * *

—

SELENKA strode in the direction Valentin had indicated.

It didn’t matter if her mind was a place of howling wolves, her body clawing with craving; the safety of her pack came first. The symposium attacks had happened in her city—that made the situation her problem to handle.

Being alpha is more than a position. It is more than a responsibility. It is a joy and a weight and it is who you are.

Her grandfather’s words were still ringing in her brain when she ran into Margo in the otherwise empty external corridor—her best friend bounced off her, Selenka was moving so fast. Realizing she was far more shaken than she’d consciously accepted, she gave herself half a minute to bend over, put her hands on her knees, and exhale hard.

Her head rang, her veins kissed by cold night.

Margo, of medium height, with large breasts Selenka had envied as a teen, sleek muscle, and the thickest, silkiest blonde hair in the universe, said, “Whoa.”

“Yes,” Selenka agreed. “Whoa.”

“Have you met Mr. Tall, Dangerous, and Smoldering before?” Margo put a hand on Selenka’s shoulder, the contact instinctive between packmates. “It’s a serious breach of the girlfriend code to hide snacks like that.”

Listening to her, you’d never know Margo was Selenka’s security specialist and so lethal even the bears didn’t pick fights with her. The pushy, often aggressive creatures gave her a wide berth—and constantly sent drinks and hopeful looks her way when she went out for a night. The last time it had happened, Margo had deigned to dance with the six-foot-tall bear soldier who’d sent her a cocktail.

The other woman had looked scared but delighted.

Ethan wasn’t scared of Selenka. Not even for a second.

Rising to her full height on a wave of primal satisfaction, the wolf smug in its choice of a mate, Selenka shook her head. “I’d barely spoken to him before it happened.” Though physical attraction had never been in question. The embers glowed, hot and dark, deep in her belly, ready to engulf her at the slightest encouragement.

Getting naked with her mate was not going to be an issue.

Margo’s eyes widened, her hands flying to her mouth. “O Bozhe! You’re just like Chantelle and Ridge from Hourglass Lives!”

Selenka groaned. “Stop it.”

But her tough-as-granite security specialist was all but dancing on her work-booted feet, her blue eyes bright. “I can’t! A real-life mating at first sight?! All my fan-forum buddies will just die!”

Narrowing her eyes, Selenka pointed a finger at her best friend and only then remembered little Zhanna had decorated her nails with tiny stickers of big-eyed cartoon cats. “This goes nowhere near the forum.”

“Fine, spoilsport.” Margo’s smile didn’t dim in wattage. “Do you feel different?”

“Yes. He lives in me now.” What she couldn’t explain to Margo was the sense of wrongness tied to the mating, the static she couldn’t hear but could feel—as if the bond was skewed slightly out of time. “We’ll talk more later. I have to go deal with the assailants.”

Margo transformed from soap opera addict to ruthless security specialist in the blink of an eye. “I made sure that area is secure. We’ve also checked everyone for weapons and verified that the only ones with them are part of the security team. Hall and surrounds are secure.”

“You have enough people to escort the Es to their hotels?”

“With the bears”—a roll of her eyes—“the Arrows, and that team of Krychek’s, we’ll be fine. I’ll handle all peripherals while you deal with the major issue.”

“Thanks, Margo.” Selenka deliberately brushed against her friend as they passed; she needed the touch of pack.

Margo waited till she was halfway down the corridor before whispering at a volume only Selenka’s wolf ears would pick up, “I’m going to speak to your Ridge.”

Since sending Margo a glare would only increase her friend’s determination, Selenka just wished Ethan good luck. Margo could pry tears out of a stone. It’d be interesting to see what she’d get out of Selenka’s Arrow. Because however their mating had come into being, and regardless of the fog or static or whatever it was that was messing it up, he was hers now.

Damaged. Not normal.

Her hand locked into a hard fist, and she had to force it open. She had no sympathy for anyone who would treat a child with such brutality that the child had to kill in self-defense. And now that child was a dangerous, beautiful man who spoke of himself as if he were a cracked object, broken and of questionable—if any—value.

Selenka bit back a growl as she turned the corner.

Valentin, who’d apparently paused when he heard her coming, lifted both eyebrows. “I pity your mate, if that’s your mood,” he said. “What did he do?”

Blin! Of course another alpha would’ve picked up what had happened. “Do not say a word to anyone until I have a chance to tell my pack,” she growled.

“What do you think I am?” Valentin grumbled back. “I can keep secrets. Except from Silver.” He grinned, utterly delighted with himself for having the director of EmNet as his mate.

Selenka would find it insufferable if her wolf wasn’t posturing back as hard. “My mate is an Arrow.”

“Silver could take him.”

“In your dreams.”

They reached the right area of the sprawling symposium center together. The two assailants had been put into different meeting rooms. Both rooms were internal, with no windows to the outside, and only a single door. Each door was guarded by a pair: an Arrow and a changeling.