Page 73 of White Wolf

A sudden snapping of twigs and rustling of leaves startled them both. Nikita hadn’t seen the rifle before, but Katya instantly let go of her hair to reach for it where it rested against the stump. It was leveled on the shrubs beyond the stream by the time two gray wolves emerged, panting and unconcerned.

“You’re a little trigger happy,” Nikita observed.

“Sorry, I’m not used to living withwolves,” she shot back.

Nikita didn’t tell her that the sight of the animals made him want to reach for a gun, too. He’d studied them enough to know that these two belonged to Sasha – were part of his pack. As was the lanky, coltish brown-gray one that joined them. That was the omega, Sasha had told him.

Another crash, and Sasha himself appeared, holding a brace of hares in each hand, grinning ear-to-ear. “We got breakfast,” he announced happily.

Nikita said, “I can see that.” He jerked a thumb back toward camp. “Go wake up Feliks and tell him to get a fire going.”

“Right.”

The rest of the pack melted out of the underbrush and followed Sasha up the hill, their lanky, nineteen-year-old, cloak-wearing alpha.

It was never going to stop being strange.

When he – and his wolves – were gone, Katya said, “He’s very sweet. Nothing like the rest of you.”

Nikita fought the urge to smile. “Ah. We’re horrible, then.”

“You’re Cheka.”

They were. A sobering reality.

“But he’s sweet.”

“So you said. Are you sweet on him?”

She’d laid her rifle across her lap and resumed braiding her hair again. She snorted. “No. He’s just a boy.”

“Some women like that.”

“Some women have the luxury,” she said, and he didn’t think she meant to let the melancholy bleed into her voice.

Nikita’s stomach cramped with hunger and he leaned his shoulder against a narrow tree trunk to keep from swaying. The fading adrenaline from his orgasm, and the shock of the cold weren’t helping. But that note of sadness in her last words had snared his attention. (Also, he loved the way her skinny white fingers moved as she plaited her hair into two neat braids.)

“You’re young,” he said, and thought he said it gently. That was his aim, anyway. “And pretty. You could have the luxury, if you wanted it.”

Her mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “I have my orders.”

“So does everyone. It doesn’t mean you can’t want other things, too.”

She tied off each braid with a bit of twine from her pocket and then shot him a level look. “Is that what all men think about all women? That we want husbands and children and hearths?”

Nikita returned her look. “I don’t think anything.” Except that she was lovely, and hurting very, very badly. He saw his own guilty grief when he looked in her eyes.

Her eyes fell to her rifle, and she polished it absently with her sleeve. “I want to be where I’m needed. That’s all I think.” She bit her lip. “I guess I don’t understand why I’m neededhere.”

“Welcome to the military.”

She huffed a sound that was almost a laugh.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I think what we’re doing here, no matter how it looks, might turn out to be something important for Russia.”

She lifted her brows. “The Soviet Union, you mean?” But there was no censure in her tone, only curiosity.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

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