Wild Embrace Read online

  PRAISE FOR “MASTER STORYTELLER”* NALINI SINGH AND HER PSY-CHANGELING NOVELS

  “The alpha author of paranormal romance.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “A must-read for all of my fans.”

  —Christine Feehan, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Nalini is brilliant.”

  —USA Today

  “Complex psychological changes are balanced by deep love . . . Outstanding.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Remains among the best . . . Sweepingly romantic and sizzlingly sensual . . . [The] tapestries she weaves are sophisticated, elaborate, and compelling.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Deft and ingenious . . . The payoff was nothing short of epic . . . I had no choice but to surrender.”

  —Smexy Books

  “Scorching hot.”

  —Dear Author

  “I don’t think there is a single paranormal series as well-planned, well-written, and downright fantabulous as Ms. Singh’s Psy-Changeling series.”

  —All About Romance

  “A fast-moving, heart-pounding, sexy-as-hell thrill ride.”

  —Joyfully Reviewed

  “Sheer genius.”

  —The Romance Reviews

  *Maya Banks, #1 New York Times & USA Today bestselling author

  Berkley titles by Nalini Singh

  Psy-Changeling Series

  SLAVE TO SENSATION

  VISIONS OF HEAT

  CARESSED BY ICE

  MINE TO POSSESS

  HOSTAGE TO PLEASURE

  BRANDED BY FIRE

  BLAZE OF MEMORY

  BONDS OF JUSTICE

  PLAY OF PASSION

  KISS OF SNOW

  TANGLE OF NEED

  HEART OF OBSIDIAN

  SHIELD OF WINTER

  SHARDS OF HOPE

  ALLEGIANCE OF HONOR

  Guild Hunter Series

  ANGELS’ BLOOD

  ARCHANGEL’S KISS

  ARCHANGEL’S CONSORT

  ARCHANGEL’S BLADE

  ARCHANGEL’S STORM

  ARCHANGEL’S LEGION

  ARCHANGEL’S SHADOWS

  ARCHANGEL’S ENIGMA

  Anthologies

  AN ENCHANTED SEASON

  (with Maggie Shayne, Erin McCarthy, and Jean Johnson)

  THE MAGICAL CHRISTMAS CAT

  (with Lora Leigh, Erin McCarthy, and Linda Winstead Jones)

  MUST LOVE HELLHOUNDS

  (with Charlaine Harris, Ilona Andrews, and Meljean Brook)

  BURNING UP

  (with Angela Knight, Virginia Kantra, and Meljean Brook)

  ANGELS OF DARKNESS

  (with Ilona Andrews, Meljean Brook, and Sharon Shinn)

  ANGELS’ FLIGHT

  WILD INVITATION

  NIGHT SHIFT

  (with Ilona Andrews, Lisa Shearin, and Milla Vane)

  WILD EMBRACE

  Specials

  ANGELS’ PAWN

  ANGELS’ DANCE

  TEXTURE OF INTIMACY

  DECLARATION OF COURTSHIP

  WHISPER OF SIN

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Copyright © 2016 by Nalini Singh.

  Excerpt from Allegiance of Honor copyright © 2016 by Nalini Singh.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY® and the “B” design are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information, visit penguin.com.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Singh, Nalini, (date– ) author.

  Title: Wild embrace : a Psy-Changeling collection / Nalini Singh.

  Description: Berkley trade paperback edition. | New York : Berkley Books, 2016. | Series: Psy/Changeling

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016001374 (print) | LCCN 2016005066 (ebook) |

  ISBN 9781101989715 (softcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781101989722 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Psychic ability—Fiction. | Shapeshifting—Fiction. | Paranormal romance stories. | BISAC: FICTION / Romance / Paranormal. | FICTION / Romance / Short Stories. | FICTION / Fantasy / Paranormal. |

  GSAFD: Romantic suspense fiction. | Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR9639.4.S566 A6 2016 (print) | LCC PR9639.4.S566 (ebook)

  | DDC 823/.92—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016001374

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / August 2016

  Cover art by Tony Mauro.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  CONTENTS

  Praise for Nalini Singh

  Berkley Titles by Nalini Singh

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Echo of Silence

  Dorian

  Partners in Persuasion

  Flirtation of Fate

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Allegiance of Honor

  About the Author

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Welcome to Wild Embrace, a collection of Psy-Changeling stories. If this is your introduction to the Psy-Changeling world, I hope you enjoy the journey! You don’t need to have read the prior books in the series to dive into the stories within.

  If, however, you’re a long-term reader of the series, the stories in Wild Embrace provide more depth and nuance to facets of the Psy-Changeling world. I wrote each one because I felt that even though these stories take place away from the main story line, they’re important to the world—the characters all contribute to the richness of the Psy-Changeling tapestry, even if we only glimpse them in passing in the full-length books.

  It’s the same reason I write the free “slice of life” vignettes for my newsletter. I want to know about every tiny corner of this world, want to see what the characters are up to even when they’re not in the spotlight. (If you aren’t yet a subscriber to my newsletter, you can subscribe quickly and easily at nalinisingh.com.)

  In terms of the series timeline, each story in this collection falls at a different point. “Echo of Silence” occurs after Visions of Heat, while “Dorian” spans a number of years, with the final part of the story set in the months after Hostage to Pleasure. The novella “Partners in Persuasion” begins toward the end of Tangle of Need. Last but not least is the mystery in “Flirtation of Fate,” which takes place near the end of Heart of Obsidian.

  Whichever order you choose to read the stories, I hope you love traveling through different areas of the Psy-Changeling world and into the smaller, more intimate worlds inhabited by each of these characters.

  Take care and happy reading,

  Nalini

  ECHO OF SILENCE

  Disruption

  The year 2079 has b
een a year of change, of disruption. The Psy, long considered the most powerful race on the planet, their telepaths and telekinetics, foreseers and psychometrics gifted and feared, are starting to fracture.

  The Silence Protocol has begun to be questioned—one hundred years after that protocol was put into place in an effort to fight the madness and insanity that is the flip side to the Psy race’s powerful gifts. Now the Psy, conditioned to be as cold and emotionless as the changelings are untamed and passionate, have begun to question . . . to feel.

  Two cardinal Psy have defected, shaking the status quo. But despite the changes, the fractures, the two are outliers. Millions of Psy remain locked in Silence, for to break Silence is to sentence yourself to a horror worse than death, the total psychic brainwipe of rehabilitation leaving behind only a shambling shell that is little more than a walking vegetable.

  For these millions, life continues as it has done for the past hundred years.

  A life without love, without laughter, without pain, without sadness, without misery, without heartbreak, without . . . just without.

  Chapter 1

  Thousands of meters below the surface of the ocean, in the depths of the Pacific and not too distant from the Mariana Trench, Tazia Nerif looked out the window in the control room of the deep-sea station Alaris, and wondered if there really were changeling sharks.

  Andres, the junior geological oceanographer, had just spent ten minutes trying to convince her of that fact. “The next time you’re prancing around naked in your quarters, have a look outside the windows and see what’s looking back.”

  Since Tazia was an engineer who lived in grease-stained blue coveralls and had never pranced in her life, that wasn’t going to be a problem. But still, the idea of changeling sharks intrigued her. If Andres wasn’t trying to pull one over on her. Fiddling with her electronic wrench to calibrate it for her next task, she decided to do some research on the subject so she could beat him at his own game.

  “Ms. Nerif, is the life-support system back to full strength?”

  Her heart slammed into her throat.

  As usual, she hadn’t heard Stefan approach. Tall, with dark hair, and highly intelligent, he walked with the tread not of a sailor, but of a Psy. He was a Tk, a telekinetic, and fully enmeshed in the emotionless existence that was the Psy way.

  From the fleeting but telling references in the dusty old history book Tazia had found in an antique shop on her last trip upside, she’d worked out that the Psy race had once felt the same emotions as humans and changelings. But something had changed long enough ago that in the present, it seemed as if they had always been formed of ice.

  Brilliant at business and at science, the Psy race knew nothing of sorrow or love, joy or hate; they created no art, wrote no music, felt no passion.

  Not that Tazia knew much about that last, either.

  “I’m finished.” Sliding the wrench into her tool belt, she picked up and slotted in the cover of the panel she’d been working on, safely concealing the complex computronic systems beyond. “You can boot it up and switch off the backup system.” It had been a routine inspection, something she was fanatical about. Her type-A, check-every-nut-and-bolt-twice personality was why she’d won the coveted position on Alaris. This far below the surface, no one wanted an engineer who wasn’t obsessively precise.

  Stefan, of course, took precise to the next level. If Alaris had been peopled solely by Psy, nothing technical would have ever gone wrong. But of course, most Psy didn’t see the point in exploring the deep when there was only a slim chance of discovering anything that could lead to financial gain. Which was why Alaris had humans like Tazia holding it together, along with the odd changeling who could stand being shut up inside the station—or who had the capacity to survive in the mysterious dark water beyond the windows.

  There were several sea-based changelings on station courtesy of the fact that Alaris was funded in large part by a worldwide water changeling organization named BlackSea. Tazia didn’t know too much about BlackSea, but she knew a number of the sea changeling station personnel very well.

  Andres was a sea snake in his animal form. He’d shifted for her once in a sparkling shower of color and light. Beautiful. His snake form was big, shiny, and capable of sneaking around parts of the station she’d never be able to access without using the miniature maintenance bots she’d built after realizing the need. When he was in a good mood, he sometimes checked the ducts for her.

  “Everything looks operational.” Stefan entered the final command on the razor-thin computer screen mounted on the wall, then put his eye to the biometric reader to confirm the authorization.

  The systems switched over with no appreciable delay.

  Stepping back from the computer, Stefan scanned her face. Sometimes, she wanted to tell him nothing had changed since the last time he’d subjected her to an inspection. She still had black hair, worn in a rough ponytail to keep it out of the way, and streaky brown eyes set in a face covered in light brown skin. The end.

  “You have grease on your cheek.”

  She fought her blush and the urge to wipe at her face with the sleeve of her coveralls. “What else is new?”

  “The mail.”

  “The mail?”

  “It just arrived.”

  Her smile was instant. “Oh!” Grabbing her tool kit, she went to walk past him.

  He stopped her, his hand on her arm.

  Startled at the strange behavior—Stefan didn’t touch anyone unless absolutely necessary—she froze. “What?” she asked, tilting back her head to look up at him, his scent in her every inhale.

  Stefan always smelled crisp, clean, distant. No grease on his cheek and certainly no dirty work coveralls. On duty or off, he always wore the uniform of the station commander, the collar of his military-style fitted jacket rising partway up his neck and fastened to the side by a simple silver stud that denoted his rank. Everything else was stark black, from his boots to his pants to, she assumed, the shirt he wore under his jacket. She didn’t know, had never seen him with the jacket open.

  Now his dark gray eyes focused on her. “It is not there.”

  Disappointment uncurled in a leaden wave in her stomach, wiping away her surprise at his touch. “Are you sure?”

  “I checked all the return addresses on the letters and packages.”

  She swallowed, nodded. “Why?”

  “Because every time the mail comes and your package doesn’t arrive, you give in to the human failing of disappointment, which leads to at least two days of depression during which you don’t function at optimum levels.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Ah, so it was concern for my well-being, then?” She snorted and tried to shrug off his hand. “I function perfectly fine—everything gets done, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t release her. “But you have a tendency to snap at anyone who comes near you.”

  “What do you care?” she asked, feeling cornered and sad and angry at him for being the bearer of news she didn’t want to hear. “Emotion makes no difference to you.”

  “The humans and changelings care.”

  That made her face heat up. Stefan ran the show, contracted to manage Alaris at what had to be an exorbitant fee. If he said people were complaining because she got a little down a couple of days a month, then people were complaining. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Of course it will. Unless you stop waiting for a package that will never arrive.”

  It was a stab to her soul, a blade made of ice that broke inside her as she bled. “Let me go.” Wrenching herself out of his hold, she walked quietly out of the control room and headed down into the true guts of Alaris, where no one else ever ventured. Only when she was sure he hadn’t followed her did she curl up in a corner and put her head on her knees.

  No tears.

  Tazia had stopped crying
a long time ago. But the sadness was a crushing weight, a brick on her heart. She’d truly believed that the passage of time would soften her parents’ anger, bring forgiveness. But it had been five years since she’d walked out on her arranged marriage, and still her family shunned her.

  A year ago, when she’d won a place on Alaris’s first mission team, she’d written to them. It was an honor to be on the deep-sea station. Surely they would forgive her now that she’d brought such acclaim to the Nerif name, now that she’d become more than the daughter who had not followed the wishes of her elders.

  The first month on board, she hadn’t been too disappointed at the lack of a response. Her parents lived in a remote region of desert and wind, a region their people had chosen to keep deliberately untouched by technology except that which was needed to assure the safety of the settlement. They also didn’t believe in wasting money on costly transportation when other, more economical methods were readily available. Their reply would come slowly, via camelback until it reached the nearest major city.

  The second month, she’d told herself there must’ve been a storm to delay things. That happened at times, the wind howling across the desert to create sand devils that could strip the skin right off anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the center of one.

  The third month, she’d blamed it on her name. People were always getting her mixed up with Nazia, who worked on Alaris’s surface base. No doubt Nazia would forward the letter with the next mail drop.

  The fourth month, a knot grew in her stomach.

  And kept growing.

  A year and still no reply, no message. She would’ve worried about their well-being, but she knew they were safe. She still had one friend in the village. Busy with two young children, a demanding husband, and elderly in-laws—and utterly delighted to be in the center of that cheerful chaos—Mina wrote to Tazia when she could, gave her the news.

  Tazia’s brother had found a “pretty and shy” bride, his marriage celebrations followed nine months later by a healthy son.

  Tazia’s mother was no longer coughing; Tazia’s father had taken her to be seen by the city doctor who’d settled permanently in the village and who was happy to barter his services for a good, home-cooked meal and a little company, his wife having passed on.