Having just sent through an update to the other lieutenants on the situation in the city and in den territory, Indigo was heading to her office to read the report Riaz had filed after his shift when Brace came crashing into the den. He was scratched and b.l.o.o.d.y, his T-shirt ripped. Seeing Indigo, he began talking. It was obvious he was one step away from total panic. "Silvia fell down a cliff. I tried to catch her but I couldn't grab her in time. I couldn't-"

Indigo put her hands on those lanky shoulders, made him meet her eyes. "Where?" It was a question imbued with her innate dominance.

Giving her the location in a fast gallop, he heaved out another breath. "She wouldn't respond when I called down. Indigo, she wouldn't-"

"Focus, Brace." She squeezed his shoulders, anchoring him with the touch of Pack. "How far down is she and how accessible is the area?"

"Um"-she could see him attempting to clear the cobwebs from his mind-"you'll need ropes, climbing gear. I tried to go down but it's almost a sheer rock face. She's trapped on a ledge so far down you can hardly see her."

"I'll organize the rescue," she said and, knowing he'd function far better if he had a concrete task, added, "Your job is to track down Lara and bring her to the site. Understood?"

A sharp nod, his wolf appreciating the direct order. "I'll find her."

Making calls on her cell phone as Brace left, Indigo gathered the soldiers that she knew were in the den and available, updating Hawke on the situation as well.

He was driving away from the den but turned back at her call. "I'll meet you at the site," he said in a terse voice.

Drew, Sing-Liu, and Tai took only minutes to answer her summons. They met at one of the pack's supply lockers and, working at rapid speed, picked up the ropes, climbing gear, and other equipment they'd need to winch up Silvia's injured form.

No one even discussed the possibility of her being dead. She was Pack. She'd be brought back, no matter what. "Let's go," Indigo said, and it was the first words any of them had spoken since she'd shared the details of the accident. Now they ran together, the location being impossible to reach by even the most rugged of vehicles.

Every second that pa.s.sed brought Silvia closer to death, so they pushed and made it in under half the usual time. Dropping the gear she'd carried in a pile a little ways back from the cliff edge, Indigo belly-crawled to the part that had crumbled until she could peer over it. Her eyesight was changeling keen, but Brace had been right. She could only just see the pale blue of Silvia's jeans, the red of her cardigan as she lay crumpled on a ledge at least a hundred meters down, one hand outflung. Her legs appeared to be twisted under her body in a way that they simply shouldn't have been.

Aware of Drew crawling up beside her, she turned her head. "What do you think?" She'd done more than one climb with him, knew he was highly skilled.

"One of us will have to rappel down," he said and glanced over his shoulder, pointing to a st.u.r.dy pine. "We can use that tree to rig up the main anchor, set up a belay line for backup."

Indigo agreed. Waiting until they'd both drawn back from the edge, she nodded at Sing-Liu to bring her the harness. "I'll-"

Drew put a hand on her arm. "That's one h.e.l.l of a dangerous cliff face. I'll go-I've got more experience."

That first sentence irritated her, but she shrugged it off to focus on the practical reason why she was the better choice for the descent. "If something goes wrong, it'll be easier for the people up here to handle someone of my weight than yours."

"Not with Tai's strength added to yours and Sing-Liu's-and if Silvia needs to be stabilized, I've had more medical training than you."

Indigo had forgotten about the modules he'd done with Lara. Added to the fact that he was the more experienced climber, it tipped the scales in favor of his descent. She was about to say so when he shook his head and said, "We can't waste time arguing, Indy. Sing-Liu, give me the harness."

It was a slap that made her head ring. "I'm the lieutenant," she reminded him with ice in her tone. "I give the commands." h.e.l.l, she thought even as the words spilled out, she'd deal with his actions later. Right now, Silvia needed them. "Here's what-"

Drew got in her face before she could finish. "You might be the lieutenant," he bit out, "but I'm a senior member of the pack, and you've got no cause to f.u.c.king ignore my opinion just because you insist on seeing me as a less dominant young male to the exclusion of all else."

Indigo was d.a.m.ned if she was going to have this fight in public. Grabbing the harness, she slammed it onto his chest. "Gear up."

He began to do so, moving at high speed, but his temper continued to flash. "If we weren't sleeping together," he muttered, "you would've listened to me from the word go, instead of trying to go in half-a.s.sed because you think you have something to prove."

Indigo's hold on her own temper snapped, a snarl burning its way out of her throat even as her claws sliced out. That was when Hawke appeared out of the trees. "Enough." It was a snapped order. "Drew, check your harness. Indigo, do you need to take a walk?"

Only a lifetime of control allowed her to rein back the wolf, to say, "I'm fine. I'll organize things on this end." As she spoke, she realized Lara and Brace had also arrived. The fact that they'd witnessed Hawke slapping her down further increased her icy rage, but she kept it in ruthless check.

Drew didn't say a word as he double-checked everything and slipped a listening device in his ear while Sing-Liu clipped a mike to the collar of his tee. "I'm ready."

"So are we." Indigo had set up the anchor using the tree as a base, but she and the others would manually control the backup; they couldn't be too careful with two lives at stake. "Go."

Hooking himself up, Drew disappeared over the edge of the cliff, and Indigo's heart slammed bruisingly hard against her ribs for a long, still instant. Then the rope went taut and she knew he'd started to rappel down.

Having made the descent faster than would've been safe for most, Andrew crouched down beside his fallen packmate, doing a visual check for injuries after he'd ensured her airway was clear and felt for a pulse. "Broken leg, broken ribs, it looks like," he said into the mike, "severe bruising, a bad gash on the back of her head." He could feel her blood, wet and sticky. "She's unconscious, but breathing."

Lara asked him to a.s.sess the breaks more closely. "Do you think you can move her onto a stretcher for us to haul up?"

Andrew shifted his body carefully on the narrow ledge so he could get a better angle at Silvia's back. "I'm worried about her spine, Lara. The way she's twisted . . . there could be damage if I move her." In spite of the huge technological advances of the late twenty-first century, spinal injuries continued to be problematic. Most could be healed, but the recovery process was brutal.

Lara's voice faded a fraction, as if she was speaking to someone else. "I need to go down."

"I'll come back up, guide you down," Andrew said, because even a controlled rappel down this cliff face could prove dangerous for the inexperienced. "I see some footholds. I should be able to climb up una.s.sisted."

"We've got you if you slip." Indigo's voice in his ear, calm and steady.

"Thanks." It took him considerably longer to clear the cliff face than it had to come down. His muscles were screaming by the time he reached the top, but it was a burn he could live with.

Lara was ready to go when he arrived. As the healer took a deep breath and prepared to descend with him all but glued to her, Andrew fought the urge to search for Indigo's gaze-that particular fight could come later-and stepped back over the edge of the cliff.

It took an hour for Lara to heal Silvia enough for the girl to be safely winched up, another quarter of an hour for Lara to ascend, with Andrew climbing behind her. In the chaos of stripping Lara of her harness and coiling the ropes, he didn't see Indigo leave, though he a.s.sumed she was helping carry the injured girl to the infirmary.

Just as well, he thought, teeth gritted. Putting his rope on the ground, he was coiling Lara's when Hawke returned. "Jesus Christ, Drew," his alpha muttered, gathering up the other abandoned gear. "I thought you were good with women."

Andrew dumped the rope and turned on the other wolf. "I was right. She wasn't using resources properly."

Hawke didn't growl back, simply raised an eyebrow. "That's not what I said."

Blowing out a breath, Andrew turned to stare out over the jagged mountainous vista. So f.u.c.king beautiful-and so incredibly lethal when the mood took it. The description, he thought, fit his lieutenant to a T. "Then what?"

"You're telling me you're still p.i.s.sed at Indigo?"

Swiveling on his heel, he scowled at his alpha. "Of course I am."

Hawke shook his head, sleek strands of silver-gold whipping across his face in a sudden wind. Pushing them back, he said, "Then maybe you need to go cool off so your brain can function."

Andrew bent down and restarted coiling the second rope, his arms scratched and dirty. But he had no patience for the task. Throwing the whole lot onto the ground, he stood up again. "She was taking too long to come to a decision."

"From what I can tell, it took her maybe fifteen seconds, and it's her job to weigh up the risks and consider all options in any given situation," Hawke said, continuing to stack the gear. "If she didn't think with that kind of calm, you wouldn't have headed out here with every piece of equipment you needed."

Andrew stared at his alpha's back, knowing he was missing something. "What aren't you saying?"

Hawke shrugged. "You could've gotten exactly what you wanted with no problems if you'd gone about it the right way."

"I'm not going to dance with her on things like this." Everything else, but not this. "I've told her she needs to learn to treat me as what I am."

"Yeah, because you're doing such a good job of doing the same with her." The sarcasm was a razor across his face.

"I-" He paused, felt a chill creep up his spine. "s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t!"

Hawke didn't say a word until Andrew had gotten himself back under control.

"I overrode her in front of the others." The reality of what he'd done slammed into him like a body blow. "I forced you to pull rank on her in front of subordinates." And her pride, Jesus, her pride.

Hawke nodded, lines carved around his mouth. "You should've taken her aside, discussed your climbing skill and medical training. h.e.l.l, she acted reasonably even after you let your c.o.c.k control your brain."

"But I kept pushing until she almost lost control." Control was everything to Indigo, an essential part of how she saw herself. "f.u.c.k." Shoving his hands through his hair, he picked up one of the ropes Hawke had coiled, and put it over his arm as Hawke took the other.

"I'll send Tai back for the rest of the stuff," his alpha said as they began to walk. "She's not going to forgive you easily for this. To be quite blunt, I don't blame her. Anyone tried that with me, we'd be wiping up blood now."

Andrew remembered how much it had hurt Indigo to witness her aunt's poisonous relationship, knew exactly the courage it had taken for her to trust in this relationship with him. And still he'd f.u.c.ked up. "I blew it." Maybe she'd been having trouble lowering her final barriers, but she'd taken a thousand small steps toward it. This mess was all on him.

Hawke snorted. "Forget about blowing it. You nuked it."

Silvia safely in Lara's hands-and thankfully stable-Indigo sat on the edge of her bed. Her hair was damp from her shower, her palms bearing the slightest of rope burns. But she didn't feel any of that. All she felt was a crushing sense of humiliation . . . and hurt. Drew had pushed her, challenging her in front of less dominant members of the pack, until her wolf lashed out, going against every rule she lived by.

G.o.d, Hawke had rebuked her in public.

Red fire flamed across her cheeks, but while the embarra.s.sment burned, it wasn't as important in the scheme of things. Everyone lost their temper sometimes. Sing-Liu, Tai, Lara, h.e.l.l, even Hawke, none of them would think less of her.

It was Drew who'd stabbed a knife right into her heart. It was one thing for them to tangle with each other in private, but . . . "Enough." Picking up a comb, she began to run it through her hair. What was done was done. She'd apologize to Hawke for letting her temper get the better of her, pick up her duties, and carry on.

As for Drew . . . Her heart twisted. Professional, she told herself, she'd be professional. That was the only way to deal with this. Anything else and it would hurt too- Her head snapped toward her door as she caught the whisper of a very familiar scent. The knock came several seconds later. For a moment, she debated answering it, but then her wolf raised its head in steely pride and nudged her on. Glancing down, she checked that the belt of her knee-length terry-cloth robe was secure and padded to the door.

"Yes?" she said to the man on the other side, having pasted an expression of professional disinterest on her face, though the hand hidden behind the folds of her robe was fisted so tight she was cutting half-moon circles in her palm.

Drew took one look at her and muttered something harsh under his breath. "What do I do?"

He looked so lost, so vulnerable that she blinked, taken aback, but only for an instant. "There's nothing to do. Hawke sorted us out on-site-and for what it's worth, I apologize for bringing my temper into the situation." The words were sincere, though her heart was a cold rock in her chest. "That was neither the time nor the place."

Drew's eyes shifted to that brilliant, wild copper. "Don't do this to us, Indy. Don't shut me out."

Her hand clenched on the door, but she kept her composure, aware of packmates walking by in the corridor outside. "Was there anything in particular you wanted?"

"I messed up." Blunt words, unexpected and raw. "I'm sorry."

Her resolve wavered, the strength of the bond between them pushing at her to open the door, to invite him in. But-"What you did, it was a dominance challenge." She held up a hand when he would've interrupted. "You can't help it." He was a dominant, one h.e.l.l of a strong one. "It'll keep happening, and I can't afford to let it."

"Indigo, you-"

"No, Drew. For the health of the pack, the hierarchy must be explicit." They were too strong, too wild at heart to accept anything else. "If we continue being lovers . . . you won't be able to stop yourself from challenging me again." As a predatory changeling male, Drew could no more have stopped himself from doing what he had than she could've stopped her instinctive antagonistic response.

Drew didn't immediately respond, but there was a set to his jaw that she recognized all too well. Then he said, "So that's it? You won't even try?"

Her wolf peeled back its lips, all hope of a rational discussion going down the proverbial drain. "What the h.e.l.l do you think I've been doing all this time?"

CHAPTER 34.

Drew pressed his palms against the edges of the door frame, blocking out the outside world. "But when push comes to shove, you're choosing the easy out."

Gritting her teeth, Indigo stared straight into those eyes of wolf copper. "I'm choosing the good of the pack. It's what a lieutenant does."

Drew bent until his breath whispered over her lips, a sweet, hot, angry caress. "Yeah? Well, since you know predatory changeling men so well, you know exactly what I'm going to do next."

She shoved a hand against his chest. "Touch me and I'll slice you to shreds."

Instead of continuing on his set path as any other male she knew would've done, he gave her a faint smile she didn't trust an inch . . . and pushed off the door. "Until next we meet, Lieutenant."

He was gone a second later.

Indigo stood there stupefied until a pa.s.sing packmate called out a h.e.l.lo. Muttering back a response, she closed her door. Her wolf shook its head, attempting to figure out what had just happened. It had no idea, but it did know Drew was up to something.

She fisted her hands. Whatever it was, she'd handle it. Because no matter how much he pulled at her, no matter how deeply interwoven he was in her heart, she'd taken an oath to protect the pack when she became a lieutenant, and it was time to uphold it. That was what drove her.

Liar.

Steeling her spine, she tried to ignore that voice, but it wouldn't shut up. Because it wasn't only about the pack. It was about her. Her pride . . . and her heart. He'd hurt her. She'd made herself vulnerable, opened up her heart . . . and he'd hurt her.

Andrew managed to keep himself under control only by sheer force of will as he walked away.

"Dominance challenge, my a.s.s," he muttered under his breath as he stalked to his room. He had no desire to fight for a higher rank in the hierarchy. He was exactly where he needed to be. So he'd lost his temper-everybody lost their temper now and then. The situation had been highly stressful. Was it any wonder he'd spoken before he'd thought?

He was so involved in his internal monologue that it took a packmate three tries to get his attention. When Andrew finally looked up, the woman said, "Er, Drew? You can't go to the nursery looking like you want to shred someone with your claws and then eat the b.l.o.o.d.y, dismembered pieces."

"Nursery?" Shaking his head, he looked around. "s.h.i.t." He turned on his heel, throwing a "thanks" over his shoulder.

But the interruption had reset his mind. Getting angry, he realized, would achieve nothing. Yes, Indigo was being stubborn in refusing to talk this through with him, but what he'd done . . . yeah, okay, she was right to be p.i.s.sed.

And hurt, his conscience whispered, remembering the pain he'd glimpsed in the shadowed violet of her gaze. He'd hurt her, and it made him feel like s.h.i.t. He wanted to stalk to her apartment, bully his way in, and argue with her until the ice cracked enough that he could hold her close and convince her to listen. But of course, he thought with another flare of temper, she wouldn't fight with him like every other dominant female he knew did with her man when she was mad or hurting. No, Indigo had to go all dignified and silent, her emotions rigidly contained.

"Fine," he muttered, pushing through his door, "then I'll just make it so f.u.c.king difficult for her to ignore me that she'll have to fight with me."

Indigo found the first rose the next morning-in the locker she used to store her gear when training indoors. It was a deep, deep red. Scarlet, she thought, that was the right word. And it smelled like heaven. But beneath the lush floral bouquet lay the scent of male-wild and playful.

Heat uncurled in her abdomen, but she doused it with cold reason. This wasn't some lover's tiff that could be smoothed over with a rose and an apology. This went to the heart of who they were, the choices they had to make.

Dropping the rose back inside the locker, she closed the door and went out to whip her current group of eighteen-year-olds into some kind of fighting shape. "All right, boys and girls, I want two reps of the set we practiced last time. Go!"

By the time the session was over, more than one student was close to crawling, yet Indigo's own energy level remained high, her senses on alert for any hint of Drew's presence. But he didn't come to her. Which, she thought, ignoring the growling of her wolf, was exactly right. Maybe the rose had been nothing but a good-bye.

A chill slithered through her veins, and when she wrenched open her locker again, she was well on the way to hating roses. Stupid, she thought, she was being stupid, acting like one of those ninnies who didn't know her own mind. The decision was made. End of stor- Blooms tumbled out all over her. Soft and fragrant and exquisite.