Free Wild Night by Nalini Singh

Exclusive Extra: Free Psy-Changeling Short Story
    Wild Night
    Nalini
Singh
     
     
    Author's note: This
short story stands alone, so you should be able to read it without problems even
if you’ve never read the Psy-Changeling series. It features the SnowDancer wolf
changelings. For series readers, “Wild Night” slots in during Chapter 9 of Kiss
of Snow.
    Setup: The SnowDancer
alpha, Hawke, has just driven down to the dance club, Wild, and ordered the
young SnowDancers there to get themselves home, after they almost started a
massive bar fight with other predatory changelings.
    Hawke and Sienna leave
in one vehicle. Tai, a young SnowDancer soldier, volunteers to drive one of the
other trucks. And this is where the story begins.
    * * *
     
     
    Tai helped a silent Evie into the passenger seat of the truck he’d volunteered
to drive up to the den, made sure her seat belt was properly on. “You guys
belted up?” he asked the two passengers in back.
    “Yes.” The response was muted, Cadence and Amos conscious their pissed-off alpha
was still getting into his own vehicle.
    Jogging around to the driver’s side after shutting Evie’s door, he got in and,
putting on his own seat belt, started up the engine. Hawke pulled out just ahead
of them, his rugged all-wheel drive passing on Evie’s side.
    Tai saw Sienna mouth “Traitor” at Evie. Evie giggled and mouthed something back,
and then the alpha and Sienna were gone.
    Cadence groaned at the same time, sounding like she was thumping the back of her
head against the headrest. “We are so in trouble.”
    “What do you think Riley will do?” Amos asked in his deep rumble of a voice, his
dark brown eyes catching Tai’s in the rearview mirror. “Put us on patrol in the
middle of nowhere?”
    Cadie snorted. “Dream on. We’ll be lucky if we’re not scrubbing toilets for the
next month.”
    Wincing, Tai blew out a breath. “We deserve it.” They’d fucked up. The wolf and
leopard changelings would’ve held their own in the fight that had been brewing
in the bar, but there’d been humans inside. They'd have been shredded in the
ensuing carnage.
    “I’m not a soldier,” Evie said, reaching over to stroke Tai’s denim-clad thigh
with slender fingers. “Riley can’t do anything to me!” A gleeful tone.
    Squeezing her hand when it began to wander up into dangerous territory, Tai put
it firmly back in her lap. He had zero self-control when Evie decided to seduce
him and right now, he needed all of it to drive them home through the dark of
night. “Baby,” he said gently, “that means you have to deal with Hawke.”
    Evie pouted, her deep gray eyes morose. “Boo.”
    “Tai, how much did Evie have to drink?” Amos asked from the back.
    “Only one drink!” Evie protested. “Or”–a deep frown—“was it two?” Lifting her
fingers in front of her face, she started trying to count, except she kept
forgetting the number two and had to start over.
    Lips twitching despite himself, Tai said, “She’s a lightweight.” Two drinks and
his beautiful, smart Evie became giggly. A third put her over into adorably
drunk, where she was now. Normally, she cut herself off at one and a half, but
she’d been having so much fun today watching Sienna dance up a storm on the bar
that she’d lost track.
    Tai hadn’t.
    The reason he was sober wasn’t only because he had a patrol shift in the
morning; it was because he wanted to be sure he could look after Evie. No one
would ever hurt her on his watch.
    “
Tai
.” Her hand
landed back on his thigh, her skin delicate cream against the blue of the denim.
“I wanna snuggle in your lap.”
    Groaning inwardly as his muscles bunched under her touch, Tai ignored the choked
laughter from the backseat. “When we get home,” he told the woman who owned him
body and soul.
    When her face fell, he lifted her hand and playfully nipped at her fingers. A
smile lit up her eyes and he couldn’t