Caressed By Ice

Greg raised his hands palms out. "Look, she isn't part of our regular crowd, but she spent the night hanging with me, Madeline, Quentin, Tilau, and Laine. We threw together some dinner and then chilled at my place. When the others left, she stuck around."

Judd was focusing very hard in an attempt to keep himself from killing Greg. He'd figured out that Brenna was behind the closed door at Riley's back. And she was in trouble. Despite the dissonance hammering at him, he could teleport himself across the space without problem. However, his instincts - that word again - told him to wait, that he needed the facts, needed to know what damage Greg had done.

"I thought she wanted to...you know." Greg shrugged. "But she left after an hour of talk and I gave it up."

"Just like that?" Andrew growled. "You're not known for your forgiving nature."

"I'm also not a moron. You and Riley would've eaten me alive if I'd done anything." The admission fit his personality. "And I thought she might be teasing to build up to the main event, like the females sometimes like to do."

The wolves didn't interrupt so Judd gathered that to be a truthful assertion. But he did not want to think about the "main event" and what might have taken place in that room less than fifteen feet from him.

"Then," Greg continued, "I got a call today inviting me here. I wasn't keen - I mean until she said you two were going to be out for hours."

"So you hurt her." Riley moved to grip Greg's neck in a bruising hold, his tone quiet. Deadly. "What did you do?"

Greg shoved at Riley's arm but couldn't break away. "She was wearing a robe, for crissakes!" he choked out. "What else was I supposed to think when she crooked a finger and told me to close the door?"

The image did something inside of Judd, broke one of the vital chains of control. He could suddenly feel Greg's heart as if it lay in his hand, the beat rapid and panicked. One hard squeeze and -

Hawke put an arm on Riley's, breaking Judd's line of sight. "He's telling the truth about the robe at least. Let him talk."

Riley didn't budge. "Did she say no? And don't you lie to me."

The chain slipped again. "Tell us or I smash your brain." He made the words matter-of-fact because they were. "You'll be lucky if you can feed yourself afterward." Moving up from the heart, he wrapped power around Greg's skull. And began to apply pressure.

Utter terror rolled through the other male's eyes. "Hawke, stop him!"

The alpha's gaze met Judd's. "Don't kill him yet. We need to know what happened."

Greg started speaking on the heels of that pronouncement. "I swear she didn't say no! I kissed her and went to put my hand on her shoulder. That was when she freaked. Clawed me before I could move. I didn't even push her, I was so busy trying to get out before she punctured my eyeballs or something."

Riley released Greg. He dropped to the floor, coughing. At the same instant, Hawke looked at Judd, the pale silver-blue of his eyes more wolf than human. "She won't let anyone near her, including Lara. Lara's gone to try and track down Sascha." White lines bracketed his mouth. "We'd force our way in but every time we try, she screams so damn hard we're afraid of damaging her."

Any more than she's already been damaged. Judd saw the unspoken judgment on all their agonized faces. His resolve firmed into granite. "I can pull her out."

Andrew made an angry move toward him, but Hawke pushed him back before Judd could. He wasn't going to play stupid games when Brenna's sanity was at stake. But he couldn't teleport in - seeing him use telekinesis would only enrage her.

"You sure?" Hawke shoved Andrew back a second time. "She was pissed with you to begin with."

Which was why she'd gone after this useless excuse for a male sniveling at their feet. But, a still clearheaded part of him pointed out, such an act of betrayal wasn't in Brenna's nature. It simply did not fit. "I have a better chance than any of you."

"Why? Because you're one of the psychopathic race that did this to her?" Andrew again, anger and frustrated protectiveness combined.

"I've walked in her darkness." It had been an unavoidable side effect of the healing process. He'd fed power to Sascha through a telepathic link, but that link had in turn fed him the horrifying agony of Brenna's memories. He'd thought the experience had had no impact. He'd been wrong. "I know what to say to bring her back."

No one got in his way after that. Before opening Brenna's door, he halted and turned to Greg. "You say a single word about any of this, you die." No room for negotiation.

Greg's eyes bulged. "I won't tell, I swear."

Turning, Judd put his hand on the knob, pushed it open, and stepped inside. She came at him in a silent hail of teeth and claws, slamming his body against the door and causing it to shut with a violent bang. He grabbed her wrists barely in time to save his eyes.

His hold made her fury go from red to molten. Restraints, he realized at once. Santano Enrique had used restraints on her. "Retract your claws and I'll let you go." He made his tone adamantine, so hard it was pure unbreakable metal.

Still eerily silent, she tried to use her legs to trip him up, but he was too fast, shifting his stance before she could get a lever. It made her shove forward in a rush of angry energy, the razor-sharp blades of her claws coming an inch closer before he stopped her. There was nothing sane looking back at him from the wild blue-brown of her fractured eyes. The Brenna he knew had retreated to a safe haven in her mind, the same place that had allowed her to survive Enrique. The rest of her was trapped in memories of brutalization.

Sascha could've taken those memories from her, but Brenna had been resolute - she wanted her scars. And as if to prove that those scars didn't weaken her, she'd recovered with such spirit that she'd turned herself into a miracle. But the very speed of her recovery had worried both Sascha and Lara. The two healers had been concerned about a possible relapse - but no one could've predicted this.

When she bared her teeth at him and began to twist and struggle, he knew she was going to hurt herself if he didn't stop her. Taking a chance, he released her wrists at the same time as he pinned her arms in a tight hug. Her claws scraped his sides, tearing his sweater and cutting through the upper layers of skin before he got her immobilized against his body. Her teeth clamped over his carotid artery. But she didn't bite through.

"Brenna, you will come back. If you don't, Enrique wins." He could feel the blood beginning to trickle down his sides, but it was Brenna's teeth that posed the real danger. He could disable her - if he was prepared to hurt her. He wasn't.

"He's winning right now," he told her. "Making you a whimpering, clawing mess everyone thinks is insane." Cruel words, but the only ones that would provoke her enough to snap her awake. "Is that who you are? A broken wolf? What he made you?"

Snarling, she released his carotid. "Shut up." Blind rage.

"Why? Everything I've said is true." He kept pushing where others would've stopped. "You have bloody claws, your face is feral and your clothes torn. You look like a woman who's jumped the ledge into madness."

She stamped on his boot with her bare foot. "I bet you learned your bedside manner the same place you learned your charm - the Council gulag."

He released her arms, able to hear the real Brenna in that biting statement. But she remained in place, face pressed to his chest. Chancing aggression, he put one hand on the back of her head in a gesture that was as instinctive as his knowledge of what to do and say to this changeling female. Another breach of the Protocol, another ice pick of pain through his cerebral cortex, but nothing dangerous enough to set off his murderous abilities. Not yet.

Brenna put a palm over his heartbeat. "I bled you."

"Surface lacerations. They'll heal."

"Too bad. You deserve to be clawed hard enough to bear scars." Callous words, but she was still tucked against his body.

The complexities of emotional interaction often eluded him but not with Brenna. Not here. Not now. "That would be a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face - you seem to have a distinct liking for my body as it is."

Her free arm went around his waist, the satin of her robe passing over his cuts like a cool breeze. "Maybe I like my men scratched up. Maybe I like to scratch them up."

"Is that why you chose Greg? Because he likes violence?" he asked, and suddenly realized that the chain that had broken inside him was nowhere close to being repaired.

"I figured if I was going to go bad, it might as well be in style." Her fingers dug slightly into his chest. "I wanted to make you notice."

Her honesty was unexpected. "You succeeded - I did."

"But you care about as much as you did before. Zilch." Liquid anger in every breath. "You strung me out to dry at the cabin!"

Now he understood exactly how powerful a rule he'd broken. "I almost killed Greg," he said. "In fact, I still have a connection to him. One thought and pieces of his skull will implode into his brain."

Chapter 19

Brenna went very, very quiet against him. "Pull back," she whispered. "Pull back."

"Does he matter so much to you?" He could taste the structural strength of Greg's skull, knew precisely how much pressure it would take to collapse it.

She snapped up her head, eyes frightened. "No. You're the only one who matters. You kill Greg and Hawke might have to execute you!"

He considered it. "He kissed you."

"He tried. Damn it, Judd. Pull back!" Giving a frustrated cry when he didn't reply, she stood on tiptoe and pressed a row of kisses along his jaw.

Soft. So unbearably soft. He'd never felt anything like it. "Now you've had ten times what he didn't come close to getting." Another kiss on his throat. "He matters nothing. So pull back or you're going back in my bad book."