Read Codename Winter for Free Online

truly fascinated by the technique, I’ll send Saroji to you. She is far more skilled than I am.”
    “Who is Saroji?”
    “My half sister. She works as a counselor for the Protectorate. She’s been anxious to meet you anyway.”
    Disappointment dampened her already turbulent mood. “You never told me you had a sister.” Despite his insistence that her trust be unconditional, he was still frustratingly secretive.
    “All in good time, my love.” He leaned down and kissed her, passing tenderness across their psychic link.
    * * * * *
    Cub held her breath as the tall, leggy blonde cut another thick snarl out of her hair.
    “If you don’t relax, you’ll fall off the stool,” the blonde warned. “I’m not going to hurt you. We just need to make some sense of this mess.”
    “You look much improved.” Autumn’s observation made Cub look toward the open doorway.
    “And she smells a whole hell of a lot better,” the blonde muttered.
    “That’s unkind, Celinna. Our guest was not responsible for her circumstances. Surely you understand what that’s like.”
    “Yes, Mistress.” Celinna tucked a strand of her sleek platinum bob behind her ear as she stepped in front of Cub. “I’m sorry if I’ve been less than hospitable. Many of us have done our best to capture Mr. Brant’s attention. We have all failed.”
    Cub assessed Celinna’s curvaceous figure and indulged in a sad little laugh. “He don’t think of me like that.” She looked from Celinna to Autumn and back. “He saw someone kicking a stray dog and took it to an animal shelter.”
    Autumn smiled, strolling farther into the bedroom. “I understand the comparison, though I rather resent being labeled a dog.”
    “That makes me a dog trainer.” Celinna laughed and returned her attention to Cub’s ruined hair. “Make that dog groomer.”
    “Would it upset you if Mr. Brant was attracted to you on some level?” Autumn asked.
    “Don’t matter. He ain’t.”
    “Her grammar is atrocious,” Celinna said to Autumn. “She has to have a language infusion even if she’s just going to sweep the floors. We have standards after all.”
    “I’m not sure an infusion is necessary. I don’t trust Gathosian technology.”
    “It’s harmless,” Celinna insisted. “I’ve used the infuser on half the ambassadors in residence.”
    “What’s an infuser?” Cub asked. They were talking around her, acting as if she weren’t even there.
    “It’s a Gathosian device I’d rather not use,” Autumn insisted. “Tell me about your life before the invasion.”
    Cub licked her lips and tried to sit still. Celinna was still hacking away at her hair, and Autumn obviously expected something from her she didn’t understand. “That world don’t…doesn’t exist anymore.”
    “I understand that, but the past is part of us, whether we accept the fact or not. We must choose to use every event to strengthen us rather than allowing it to destroy us.”
    Grizzly’s kind face and warm gaze immediately came to mind. Her heart clenched, and she pressed her lips together. “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”
    “Don’t think about today,” a stranger coaxed. “Tell her about yesteryear.”
    The image immediately dissolved and Cub’s emotions calmed. She turned her head toward the doorway again and found an ethereal apparition standing there. The woman couldn’t be real. Nothing that beautiful could exist in this reality.
    Pale-blonde hair flowed past her shoulders and down her back. Her delicate features seemed familiar somehow, but Cub didn’t make the connection—until she looked into the newcomer’s eyes. “You have his eyes,” she murmured.
    The woman smiled and blue overtook the other colors in her gaze. “Actually, we both have our father’s eyes.”
    “You’re General Noirte’s sister?” Celinna asked.
    Celinna had never met her before? How odd.
    “This is Saroji,” Autumn explained as the slender young woman glided across the