Page 90 of Storm Echo

The alpha’s office featured a desk, a large window that could be opened, and shelving that held various items—including framed handprints made in colorful paint. The size of those handprints told her they were from a child. His daughter, the Naya that Mercy had just mentioned.

Lucas himself had moved around to stand in front of his desk. Folding his arms over his T-shirt-clad chest, he leaned back against his desk. Look at him in his black T-shirt and faded blue jeans, and you’d never know that he was the effective CEO of a major construction powerhouse.

“So,” he murmured, panther green eyes going from one to the other, “you two have completed the mating … Or something like it. It’s still off in a way I can’t work out, but the scent bonds are embedded so deep now that no shower will ever wash them off.”

The dark heart of Ivan roared in a silent and feral triumph. She washis. Fighting that triumph, he forced himself to lay it out. “I have a defective brain structure,” he said, earning himself a low growl from Soleil. “It may be affecting how such a bond would normally function.”

Lucas’s eyes didn’t go cold, his expression difficult to read. “You know,” he murmured, “another Psy once told me that they were flawed, imperfect. Turned out they were wrong.”

“I’m not wrong.” Ivan could wish he was until he was blue in the face, but he had the brain scans to prove it. “Damage from my mother’s use of Jax while she was carrying me.”

Lucas’s pupils flared. “Understood,” he said before shifting his attention to Soleil. “You’re the healer. What do you feel?”

“He’s mine.” Blunt, argumentative, not at all in any way submissive. “He’s just being stubborn and self-sacrificing.”

“Lei.”Knowing she’d never bend on this point, he turned to her alpha. “It’s not safe for her to be linked to me. I’d release her”—the words were torn out of him—“but the bond isn’t one I can see.”

Lucas rubbed his jaw. “My mate tells me that changeling healers have psychic abilities, but it’s a kind of psychic ability that can’t be measured on the Psy Gradient, and isn’t visible to the usual Psy senses.”

That fit with everything Ivan had learned during his time with Soleil.

“Our bond is real.” Soleil held her alpha’s gaze, her courage unflinching. “I need to be with Nattie and Razi, but I also need to be with Ivan. I want him to have permission to come into pack territory.”

Straightening to his full height, Lucas unfolded his arms to place his hands on his hips. “Mates don’t betray one another,” he said.

It wasn’t a question, but Ivan responded regardless. “I would cut my own throat before I’d betray Soleil—and she’s loyal to DarkRiver. You have my word I’ll do nothing to put the pack in harm’s way.”

“I know. Soleil’s a healer. Their mates are inevitably protectors.”

Soleil bristled beside Ivan. “Ahem.”

Her alpha shook his head. “Doesn’t mean you can’t protect yourself—but that you won’t if in a situation where people are wounded. Your first instinct will be to assist. Ivan’s will be to blow off the heads of anyone who tries to hurt you.”

Ivan decided he liked Lucas Hunter; the man understood him.

Inside his mind, Soleil’s cat sat grumpily because she knew damn well that the alpha wasn’t wrong.

“You’ve been assigned an aerie close to Yariela, as well as Salvador and the two cubs,” Lucas told Soleil, “and they have to be my priority.” A glance at Ivan. “Are you safe around children?”

Ivan thought of the spider that sat in hunched readiness inside his head. “At present, I have full control over my actions and I’ve never harmed a child. But I may destabilize without warning.”

“Bullshit,” Soleil said, so angry at him for how he saw himself that she forgot herself in front of her alpha.

Lucas didn’t react except to raise an eyebrow. He might be far more dangerous than Monroe, but his presence was a thousand times more stable. Soleil had the feeling this man never just flew off the handle—he was the calm heart of the pack, the one who steadied everyone else.

His scent alone was enough to comfort her cat, and she’d never before had that experience. For the first time in her life, she understood what it meant when changelings said they had a good alpha. Despite what she’d just thought, she realized then that it wasn’t about personality, about whether an alpha was gregarious or quiet, full of laughter or more inclined to just smile now and then. It was about their ability to be the center that held, no matter what.

And it was about heart.

Monroe’s heart had been a small, jealous thing.

Lucas’s was wide enough to embrace each and every member of his pack—and that included strays like her who’d been enfolded into the pack. She was one of his now, was a cat of DarkRiver.

“For the safety of the vulnerable,” he said right then, “I’m going to have you shifted to an aerie on the very edge of our forest territory. It’ll mean a thirty-minute run to visit the cubs.”

Soleil wanted to hug him. So she did. “Thank you.”

Warm arms around her, affection given freely by this man who had no need to be cruel to hold on to power.

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