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 Psy-Changeling Trinity Series SILVER SILENCE OCEAN LIGHT WOLF RAIN 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 ARCHANGEL’S HEART ARCHANGEL’S VIPER ARCHANGEL’S PROPHECY 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 SECRETS AT MIDNIGHT BERKLEY An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019 Copyright © 2019 by Nalini Singh Penguin Random House 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 Random House to continue to publish books for every reader. BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Singh, Nalini, 1977– author. Title: Wolf rain / Nalini Singh. Description: First edition. | New York: Berkley, 2019. | Series: Psy-changeling trinity; 3 Identifiers: LCCN 2019001014| ISBN 9781984803597 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984803603 (ebook) Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Romance / Paranormal. | FICTION / Fantasy / Paranormal. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction. Classification: LCC PR9639.4.S566 W65 2019 | DDC 823/.92—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019001014 First Edition: June 2019 Cover art by Tony Mauro Cover design by Rita Frangie 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. Version_1 Contents Berkley titles by Nalini Singh Title Page Copyright Awakenings Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Epilogue About the Author Awakenings THE SILENCE PROTOCOL fell with a crash heard around the world. For the first time in over a hundred years, the Psy were free to feel. Free to love, free to hate, free to laugh, free to hurt. Free. Telepaths and telekinetics, foreseers and psychometrics, the weak and the strong, all were free to step out of their emotionless cages and into the sunshine of a life lived without boundaries. The empaths, their abilities linked inextricably to emotion, gained far more than freedom. No longer considered defective. No longer hidden away, their abilities deliberately and cruelly suppressed. No longer failures. Now, in the heart of winter’s cold kiss in the year 2083, empaths are the glue that hold their shocked and shaken people together, millions of lives balanced on their fragile shoulders. But empaths weren’t the only ones who woke with the fall of Silence. So did a power that should’ve lain dormant forever. And that dark power . . . it screams. Extract from The Mysterious E Designation: Empathic Gifts & Shadows by Alice Eldridge (circa 1972) The E designation has no official subdesignations. That, however, does not mean those subdesignations do not exist. Unofficially, a large percentage of Es tend to put themselves in various subgroups. E-med Psy, for example, work well with the ill and the physically wounded, while E-com Psy are more geared toward commerce. Regardless, argument continues to rage in the empathic community about whether such inclinations are powerful enough to be considered subdesignations. A small but vocal percentage of empaths believe it is all a matter of differing personalities leading to differing paths, that E is a designation devoid of subdesignations. I do not have enough data to formulate an answer to this question.* Chapter 1 The Psy hid their evil in the snow. Watch. Be vigilant. Do not allow such heartbreak to happen again. —Letter from Aren Snow, opened in the aftermath of her death in 2059 GRIEF HIT HIM with the force of a backhanded punch. Alexei stumbled, came to a halt under the driving rain—and immediately realized the soul- shredding pain wasn’t his. His eyes burned and his throat threatened to clog, but both the man who ran under the rain and the wolf inside him understood that this grief came from the outside. Alexei’s own grief remained locked up tight in an airless box where it stayed except for bleak midnight hours about once a month when he could no longer hold it inside. Those nights, he ran in wolf form, howling up at the cold moon in pure fury and ignoring the wolf song that responded to his. His grief was primal, angry and aggressive and stubbornly determined to be a private thing. His packmates didn’t know the meaning of private most of the time, but in this, everyone except the toughest, most stubborn wolves held back. Likely because Alexei would growl them right back inside the den. His grief had claws. The grief he could sense today . . . it was raw, without shields, naked and defenseless. It was a wounded animal with its paw caught in a cruel trap. A broken creature in a place without light, alone and afraid. A sentient being who had lost all hope. Both parts of him strained at the leash to find the grieving one, attempt to assuage their grief. He was a dominant predatory changeling, a deep protectiveness toward weaker packmates built into his blood. This person wasn’t pack, wasn’t wolf, but his instincts didn’t make the distinction when so close to such terrible anguish. Alexei had to force himself to pause, think. Such an overwhelming emotional storm, the roar of it thunder in his blood, it could come from only one type of being. An empath. And not just any empath. A powerful empath who was broadcasting on all bands with no thought to who their pain might hit. Alexei had only ever met two empaths. The one he knew best had laughed during their meeting and he’d felt the ripple of her happiness in the air, but it had been akin to catching a distant scent on the wind. This was a deluge, but there was no attempt to confuse his own senses. The E was broadcasting so loudly that he couldn’t help but feel their crushing grief, his already battered and bruised heart aching, but he knew the grief wasn’t his own. The E wasn’t targeting him or making any attempt to hack his mind. The waves of emotion were too uncontrolled and chaotic for