Lara had met Annie at a parent-teacher conference she’d gone to on behalf of a couple who’d been out of town at the time, and stayed in touch with her ever since.

“They just found out a week ago,” Riordan said with a grin.

“Well, I’m delighted for them both.”

She was still smiling over the news an hour later when she met Walker for lunch, the two of them choosing a spot on the slope overlooking the lake.

The sun was out and so was the first-grade class of the internal SnowDancer elementary school, the pups having the time of their lives on the pebbled shore of the lake while their teachers stood indulgent watch. Deeply content, she opened the container that held the lunch Walker had brought for her and laughed. “You’ve been in cahoots with my mother again.”

•   •   •

WALKER shook his head when Lara offered him a forkful of her mushroom and herb risotto, which he’d picked up for her from the kitchens—Aisha and he were in perfect agreement when it came to looking after Lara, though his mate didn’t always appreciate their partnership. “I prefer my boring chicken and bacon sandwich.”

She snuggled closer to him, her hip pressing against his, the warm feminine scent of her in his every breath. “Are you ever going to let me forget I said that?”

He finished half a sandwich, picked up the second half after taking a swig of the coffee Lara had taken responsibility for bringing. “No.” It felt strange and yet perfect to tease her, to know that he had the ability to play in this way.

Wrinkling her nose at him, she ate another forkful before saying, “Can you look into the web for me?”

“Anything you ask.”

Pausing in her meal, she pinned him with eyes gone wolf. “I adore you.”

Her love stunned him, as it always did…but he thought he might be becoming used to it deep within. Never would he take it for granted, but he might just come to expect it, and that was an agonizingly beautiful gift she’d given him, that expectation of love, of tenderness. “What do you want to know?”

“I did a fairly complex healing earlier,” she said, sipping from the coffee when he lifted the cup to her lips, “but I don’t feel drained at all.”

Interest spiked. “You think the neosentience in the web is feeding you Sienna’s excess power.” Every psychic network had a “mind.” The one in the SnowDancer Web, which now included his entire family, was but a speck, nothing like the vast NetMind that was the guardian and librarian of the PsyNet. But it did exist, and as they’d seen in the aftermath of the battle, it could influence the web.

Lara chewed and swallowed before answering. “It crossed my mind.”