Aden, he remembered, had never cried, never broken...and never lost his soul. "He used to shake his head at me when I attempted to keep him back after school" - because the boy had bruises no child should have, his arm showing signs of having been broken and reset over and over - "and tell me to keep one of the younger children."
"I'm stronger. I'll survive. They need the rest more than I do." Judd turned to face him, his expression intent. Walker rarely spoke of his time in the squad's schoolroom, and his brother had never pushed. He didn't tonight, either.
"Aden's doing the same still," he said instead. "Leading the squad, protecting the ones who are broken, watching over the children."
Walker felt a quiet burn of pride for the boy he'd known.
"He asked me to thank you," Judd continued, "and to tell you that what you taught him has helped save the life, and the mind, of more than one Arrow." The words meant everything. "I'd like to speak to Aden when it's safe for him." See the man the child had become.
"I'll tell him." Reaching into a pocket, Judd pulled out a black data crystal, handed it to Walker. "The names and addresses of the children in the squad's training program. Should anything go wrong with the Arrows' plans for the future, we have to get them out."
Walker accepted the crystal and the weight of the trust Aden had placed in him, old anger twining with new hope.
Looking out over the star-studded landscape in the quiet that followed, he spotted several wolves loping out to roughhouse in the clearing below. "Lake, Maria, Ebony, and Cadence," he said, identifying them by the subtle differences in their size, markings, and coloring.
Lake was the one who lifted his head, gave the two of them a nod.
Walker acknowledged the greeting with a raised hand as Judd said, "It's good to be home, isn't it?"
"Yes." The powers in the PsyNet no doubt considered his family even more of a threat after the revelation of Sienna's power, might yet attempt to harm them, but that was a fight that would wait. At this moment, everyone he loved was safe, and he was tied to the woman who was his heartbeat by a bond as strong and as tender as Lara herself.
He only hoped that as the days passed, Lara wouldn't begin to regret the choice she'd made to bond with a man who still carried the shadow of Silence in his every breath.
LARA woke to a kiss on her neck, slightly rough night-cool hands on her sleep-warmed skin. "You're home." Turning into Walker's embrace, she nuzzled at his throat, drawing in the intoxicating scent of dark water hiding a thousand mysteries. "...time is it?"
"Just after six." A kiss, hot and wet and carnal, his body shifting to cover her own, his hands pushing up her silky thigh-length nightgown, the color a shade of plum so dark it was almost black. "I like this."
"I know." Feeling lazy and sleepy and sexy, she lay boneless as he peeled off her panties and returned to his position above her, his body pressed intimately between her thighs. It made her moan, rise sinuously against him.
"Come inside me."
He didn't argue, simply stroked her with his fingers to check her readiness before pushing into her slow and easy.
Her gasp was swallowed up in a kiss, her nipples rubbing against the crisp hairs on his chest as he lifted himself up enough to tug off the nightgown before returning until they were skin to skin.
It was something she'd realized about her mate. Now that she'd broken through the barriers that kept him so remote, he loved skin contact, whether or not it was sexual. He'd never be comfortable with skin privileges when it came to the majority of people - but with her, he was both demanding and so giving it made her heart ache.
Playing her fingers through the hairs that brushed his nape, she locked her ankles at his back and moaned softly at the exquisite feel of him stretching her, filling her. When he dipped his head to lick at her nipples with languorous ease, her nails dug into his back. "More, darling."
The sense of a masculine murmur, though she heard nothing with her ears, and then he gave her what she wanted.
She arched under the sensations, her fingers fisting in his hair. Tugging him up when the pleasure became too much, she kissed her way up his throat and along his jaw to that spot under his ear that always made him shudder. A wet flick of her tongue, a husky request, and slow and lazy turned slow and relentless.
Pleasure rippled over her - not in a crash, but in a languid wave, her orgasm endless. She felt him stiffen, shifted her mouth to his throat, kissing and petting him through his own orgasm until he collapsed on her, a delicious weight.
"That was some wake-up call," she murmured much later, when he roused enough to shift to his back, with her sprawled half on and half off his body.
He drew circles on her back with his fingers. "I'm glad you approve. As you know, I was a virgin not long ago." She laughed at the teasing reminder of how she'd offered to be gentle with him. "You're a fast learner, Mr.
Lauren." Yawning, she dragged up the sheet to cover them. "How was the watch?"
"Trouble free," was the concise answer, but then he said, "Judd was there for a while."
Sensing he meant more than he was saying, she spread her fingers over the taut heat of his chest. "Did he want to catch up?"
Walker was quiet for a long time.
"We talked about a boy I once knew. A trainee Arrow."
And then, as the final vestiges of the night faded from the sky, her mate spoke to her about the schoolroom that had been his for so many years, told her things she understood without asking that he'd shared with no one else, not even his brother. Tears clogged her throat at all that he had witnessed, the pain of the children...and the realization that her mate was inviting her into a part of his life she'd only glimpsed till now, sharing one of his secrets with her.
THAT morning marked the day the pack shifted into high gear, all of the remaining evacuees scheduled to return within the next forty-eight hours. While not needed to heal injuries, Lara was needed nonetheless, as was Walker. The week passed in a rush of helping the pups resettle into the den, soothing their worries, and - for Lara - talking privately with packmates who'd been so badly injured that in any other situation, they'd be dead.
Tai had been dodging her in true wolf style, but near the end of the week she finally cornered him by the waterfall closest the den.
Crushed skull, catastrophic damage to internal organs, as well as a laser burn on half of his body, Tai had been so critical, she'd shut herself in her office and burst into tears for a single stolen minute during the aftermath of the battle, her heart breaking at the sense that he was slipping through her fingers.
Taking a seat beside him on the stony outcropping that overlooked the crashing thunder of water, their feet hanging over the edge, she drew in a deep breath of the crisp air. The sky was a stunning mountain blue, the fine spray from the waterfall cool against her skin, but her wolf was focused only on the young male beside her. "How are you, Tai?"
"Fine."
Pure exasperation.
"Seriously, Lara, do I look like I need counseling?"
No, he didn't. Vivid blue-green eyes uptilted at the edges and skin of golden brown, his shoulders broad, he looked strong and young and gloriously alive. But he was a dominant, and admitting weakness was a thing he'd fight with gritted teeth and clenched fists. So she kept her tone undemanding as she said, "Most changelings don't have to confront their mortality until they're good and ready." Male and female alike, they thought they were invulnerable at this age, and that was how it should be. "You were forced into it."
Tai stared at the waterfall, eyes unblinking. And she thought he'd simply refuse to speak. If he did, there was little she could do about it - yes, she outranked him, but an order would gain her nothing, not with a wolf as strong and as determined as Tai. He had to trust her.
"You know what bugged me the most when I took that blow to the head?" he said almost ten minutes later. "When I realized I probably wouldn't come out of it alive?"
Breathing out a silent sigh of relief, Lara shook her head. "What?"
"That I'd never have a stupid fight with Evie ever again." He gave her a lopsided smile, that handsome face suddenly beautiful. "Dumb, huh?" It eased her worry to hear no bitterness in his tone. "Do you enjoy the fighting or what comes after?"
His grin grew deeper.
"A gentleman never tells." His smile faded into an intensity of purpose that brought a memory into sharp focus; something Hawke had said to her over two years ago - that Tai held the potential to one day be a SnowDancer lieutenant. Now, the young male looked back out over the foaming crash of the water. "There are so many things I want to do with my life, but Evie? She's at the top of every list I've made since the first day I realized neither of us was a pup anymore." Evie, too, Lara thought, looked at Tai with the same devotion. "You took your time making a move," she said, thinking of the man who loved her in the same unwavering way, steady and sure...but with a raw depth of passion that grew ever stronger.
"I had to grow balls big enough to stand up to Indigo," Tai muttered. "First time I even looked at Evie, I got the ice stare and everything shriveled up." Laughing at his reference to the lieutenant who was Evie's older - and very protective - sister, she nudged his shoulder with her own. "Liar. I bet you were sneaking off with Evie before anyone knew you two were an item." A very satisfied grin was her answer.
"I really am okay, Lara," he said when he spoke again. "I know most guys my age don't think about death and stuff, but my generation didn't have a choice.
We were born either directly before or after the violence in the den." That violence, incited by an ugly Psy "experiment," had devastated the pack. So many of their own had died, leaving behind pups who were suddenly motherless or fatherless, or in the worst cases, orphans. Tai hadn't lost his parents, but he'd been surrounded by loss all the same - his uncle, his best friend's father, his novice-soldier cousin, the list went on. Of course he understood death.