“Thank the tattoo gods you were with me that day, little bro,” Brodie had said to him when they were older and having a couple of beers one lazy summer evening. “Fuck, but that skull was ugly. Etta would’ve probably taken one look at me and walked in the other direction.”

Brodie’s wolf had been a darker gray than Alexei’s, with a dot of white between his ears. His friends had begun calling him Skunk at some point in their teenage years, and the nickname had stuck with his peer group. Brodie had never minded, laughing and pretending to lift his tail as if to release a skunk’s trademark stink.

Alexei wanted to laugh at the visual, wanted to remember how much fun he’d had with his brother and, later, with his brother’s lovely, gentle mate. Etta had fit into their relationship as if she’d always been there, a slender reed of a woman who’d baked Alexei his favorite muffins and never made him feel an intruder in the couple’s lives when he visited.

If he stayed away too long, she’d call him up and order him to dinner with her and Brodie. The three of them had had such good times. He should remember those, focus on those. But without Memory’s spirit and warmth beside him, the wound felt too raw. Alexei didn’t know if it would ever heal.

Etta was dead. And Brodie had broken his promise.

Throwing back his head, he howled out his rage at the sky, howled out his anger. In the aftermath, his wolf stood on a promontory staring out at the sprawl of dark green below him, the empathic compound a small, rain-clouded glow in the far distance. In one of those cabins slept a woman who made him crazy.

She’d called him a chicken!

His wolf bared its teeth, wanting to run down and nip at her for her insolence until she apologized and petted him with words about his bravery and strength. God, the idea of it was a pounding compulsion in his gut.

Snarling, the wolf took a step back. The force of his need to go to her had managed to get through to even the wildest part of his nature, harshly reminding the wolf of what was at stake: his sanity . . . and Memory’s life.

Distance was critical.

Yet even as he turned away from the view and began to lope across the landscape again, he knew that keeping his distance would be a serious problem. He’d found her, and he would let no one hurt her. Until Memory could defend herself, Alexei would be her protector.

A howl sang across the mountains.

Halting, Alexei listened, then opened his mouth in a growl. He wasn’t the least surprised when a big, shaggy wolf with black tips to the gray of his fur loped out of the trees only minutes later despite the fact that Matthias was based out of the den near the Cascade Range.

The other lieutenant was the last packmate Alexei wanted to see; along with Judd, Matthias was one of his closest friends. Alexei had gotten blind drunk with the other lieutenant the day of Brodie’s and Etta’s funerals. Judd couldn’t drink without his Tk abilities going haywire, but he’d been there the entire time, and when Alexei wanted to fight someone, anyone, the former Arrow had put his body on the line.

Matthias and Judd had all but carried Alexei into bed and Matthias had slept in wolf form beside his bed the entire night. He knew far too much about the scars on Alexei’s heart.

Ignoring Alexei’s snarl, Matthias bumped the side of his body against Alexei’s. He was bigger than Alexei in both forms, but Alexei was more than capable of holding his own against the other man. He didn’t budge an inch at the bump. When he threatened to bite Matthias’s muzzle, the surprisingly agile wolf jumped back and dropped its jaw in a lupine laugh. Stubborn asshole wasn’t leaving.

Putting his head down, Alexei began to run. Matthias ran beside him. The rain faded a quarter of an hour into it, the clouds parting to reveal the silvery light of the moon. They were both panting under the moonlight when he finally brought them to a stop. Coincidentally—yeah, right—it was at another outlook that gave him a view over the empathic compound. Tiny cabins glowed with light below.

He shifted, then shoved a hand against Matthias’s side, the other man’s coat thick and healthy. “I told you to stay in your den.” Matthias had called him a few days earlier, mentioned he was thinking of swinging by the main den. Well aware of the reason for his friend’s sudden urge to visit, Alexei had growled at him to focus on his own den.

Judd and Hawke were already on his case; he didn’t need his closest childhood friend to come poke his big snout into Alexei’s current frame of mind. Now, said snout nudged at his ribs before Matthias folded himself down into a seated position on the outlook, his eyes on the compound below.

Sighing in defeat, Alexei leaned back against a nearby tree, and allowed the chill night air to cool down his body. He only groaned when Judd appeared out of the trees with a box of beer. “Seriously? How the fuck did you even find us?” The former Arrow was teleport-capable but couldn’t lock on to faces.

“I will take that secret to the grave.” He threw across two pairs of pants.

Alexei pulled on a pair because he knew Judd hadn’t quite got to the point where he could shoot the breeze with two naked changelings. Alexei’s wolf didn’t understand the other man’s reluctance—skin was just another kind of fur to a changeling—but what the hell, it was a small enough favor for a friend. The quick task completed, he sat down with his back against the tree.

Judd took a seat beside him, the warm body of Matthias’s wolf pressing against Alexei’s other side. “Fuck you, assholes,” Alexei said, his chest tight.

Judd handed him a beer.

Shifting at the same time, Matthias pulled on the other pair of pants. When he was done, the six-foot-six male built like a tank took a beer, reclaimed his seat, and said, “It’s almost tomorrow.”

“Yeah.” The first anniversary over and done with . . . and it hadn’t been an awful day. His eyes returned to the glow of the compound. “Did you hear about my E?”

“Uh-huh.” Matthias stretched out his arms. “Eli went up with Hawke to check out that bunker. Said she attacked you.”

“Sienna mentioned that your E put her in mind of a small tornado,” Judd added, his voice cool—but that meant nothing, a leftover habit from his time in the squad. “All fury and untamed strength.”

“I like her already.” Matthias grinned. “You think she’d be into a large wolf who resembles a bear?”

“She’d kick your beary ass.” Alexei felt his lips tug up at the thought of Memory poking at him, ignoring his threats to bite her.

“From what I’ve heard, she’s tough,” Judd said quietly. “A lot of will in a small body.”

Matthias yawned. “I like little things.”

Well aware the big male was messing with him, Alexei narrowed his eyes. “Want me to tell Nell you’re on the prowl?”

“I can wring your scrawny neck without breaking a sweat,” Matthias muttered while Judd fought and failed to hide a grin.

“Try it and lose your fur,” Alexei said, conscious that slender and steel-willed Nell was Matthias’s weak spot.

The other man had been trying to court her for over a year, but she was having none of his rough charm. Possibly because she’d seen Matthias charm many a woman out of her panties. Between his mom and his dad, he had ancestry from the Far East, Spain, and Tanzania; it had left Alexei’s friend with smooth dark skin and one hell of a face. A lot of women took one look at that face and were ready to follow him into a bedroom. Matthias hadn’t ever been shy about accepting the offers, either.

“You’re still celibate?” Judd asked before Alexei could broach the topic of Matthias’s itchiness under the skin.

“Damn woman is going to drive me to insanity.” He glared into his beer after shoving a hand through the shaggy brown-black of his hair. “I brought her a bunch of flowers today. Actual wildflowers I picked myself like some romantic schmuck. You know what she did? Put them in a glass of water.”

Judd raised an eyebrow. “Shocking.”

“Yeah, real hardcore stuff.” Alexei was trying not to laugh at his poor friend’s morose expression, but it was hard.

“Then she gave the glass of flowers I picked for her to Lara, who was passing by.” Matthias’s voice was all grumble now. “Why is she like that?”

Alexei’s grin cracked his face. “Maybe because you two were in the same classes in school and she saw you work your way through the girls like a multicourse buffet?”

“Even I’ve heard of your teenage exploits,” Judd put in. “Weren’t you once discovered in bed with an entire team of cheerleaders?”

Matthias groaned. “I was sleeping. It just happened to be the only open spot.”

“Right.”

“Screw you, Sexy Lexie.” Matthias punched him on the shoulder. “One time, at a high school party, Nell saw me chatting up a girl, being all smooth and charming. She raised her eyebrow and told me my zipper was undone, then left.”

Alexei snorted beer out his nose he was laughing so hard, and even Judd gave it up. Matthias threatened to pulverize them both. But Alexei’s shoulders didn’t stop shaking for a long time. His wolf was wildly amused by the thought of a teenaged Matthias’s ego being so swiftly deflated by razor-sharp Nell.

It felt strange to laugh on this day, but afterward, he raised his beer to the night sky and said, “Fuck you, Brodie. I hope Etta is kicking your ass every damn hour of every damn day.” Shifting his gaze to the compound below, he thought of the woman who’d made this day far better than it should’ve been.

Sleep well, lioness. Dream of wolves. He scowled. Scratch that. Dream of this wolf.

Chapter 24

Progress is being stalled by the heavily encrypted protections on a large percentage of historical data. Considerable data also appears to have been scrubbed from the system, creating holes that are impossible to fill with any accuracy.

—Report to Ruling Coalition from Research Group Gamma-X, Silence & Outcomes

AS MEMORY FELL into sleep surrounded by the primal scent of a golden wolf, another Psy mind shrugged off the last of its decades-long sleep and came fully awake. The waking had been happening in fits and starts ever since the fall of Silence and the creation of the Honeycomb. It had worried him at first, his intense discipline integral to his sense of self—he’d believed the sudden influx of emotion into the PsyNet was subverting his mind.