Up ahead, she saw Tag shift his gaze to follow his gorgeous companion’s progress as she walked down the corridor to get some water. He snapped his head back around the instant the woman began to return. Katya’s lips twitched.
“Something funny?”
She was so surprised by the question that she turned to stare at Dev. He was still looking at his datapad. “How did you know?”
“I know.”
In the apartment, she’d made a vow to be civil to him but nothing more. He wasn’t her friend—how could he be when he didn’t believe a word she said? But at this moment, sitting next to him, she realized that distance wasn’t the way to get to Dev. The man obviously knew too much about it—he could outfreeze her any day of the week. But laughter ... Dev didn’t seem to know much about laughter. And while she might be Psy, she’d found a vein of humor in her new phoenix heart.
“Tag,” she said, dropping her voice. “He keeps looking at that woman when he thinks no one is paying attention.”
“Her name’s Tiara.” Dev input something else on his datapad. “There’s an open betting book at Shine on those two.”
Curious, she waited for him to continue. “What about?” she prodded when he didn’t.
“When Tag’ll get up the guts to ask her out.”
Blinking, she stared at the big, solid man with a face like stone. “Your friend doesn’t seem like he’s scared of anything. I can see him taking on the Psy Council without blinking.”
“That’s why it’s so funny.”
“Oh.” Now she understood. For some reason, this Tiara rattled Tag on the deepest levels. “When I was in the PsyNet,” she said, catching another wisp of memory, “I never understood how human and changeling females could trust their males without the ropes of Silence.”
Dev finally looked at her, those exotic eyes intent.
“Especially,” she continued, “when the males were bigger and stronger. Like when Sascha Duncan defected to mate with the DarkRiver alpha. I simply couldn’t understand how she could feel safe around him.”
“There’s no male-on-female violence in the Net?”
“No, not in the sense that you mean. Domestic violence is unheard of—I suppose there’s no chance for it,” she said, staring into the face of a man who was the effective alpha of his own people, as lethal, as dangerous. “Men under Silence are cold, controlled. But the men outside? You get so angry—there’s nothing to stop you from harming a weaker person.”
All at once, the temperature dropped, until she could almost see her breath frost the air. “Your research must’ve been very thorough.”
“What’re you talking about?”
Dev stared at her, his face holding no emotion whatsoever. After a long, frozen moment, he returned his attention to his datapad. “There’s an entertainment module in the datapad in the seatback in front of you.”
She didn’t know where she got the courage. Reaching over, she grabbed his own datapad and pushed the Off button. He simply held out a hand. “You’re lucky that model has automatic memory.”
Instead of giving it to him, she put it down the side of her seat. “I’ll drop my shields.”
An absolute silence, unbroken even by the murmurs of the others on the plane.
“You can’t,” he said at last. “Unless the whole being-locked-away-from-the-Net panic was another lie?”
It was a surgical strike, precise and deadly, but she refused to let him rattle her. “I’m blocked from the Net, but he did nothing to stop me from using my abilities—”
“Why?” Dev interrupted.
“Probably because that kind of a blackout requires constant policing.” Dust in her throat, gravel in her mouth. “Or maybe it’s because he wants me to use my abilities, but whatever his reason, it means I have control over my personal shields. I can drop them.”
“Is that an offer or a threat?” Cool words, an expressionless face.
“An offer.” She was sick and tired of being mistrusted. “You said you had some telepathy. Is it enough to scan an open mind?”
He didn’t answer her.
So she went with instinct, assumed he could do what she was asking. “Come in, see what I know, see what I am.” Trust me, she wanted to say. Because anger would only take her so far. She felt so alone. In the days since he’d locked her in that room, she hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours a night, too aware of the endless emptiness of her existence.
The skin tightened over Dev’s cheekbones. “You trust me that much?”
“You’ve been up-front—if I prove a threat, I die. Otherwise, I don’t think you’ll brutalize me.”
He flinched, as if she’d hit him. “That kind of invasion, it’s nothing a telepath would choose.”
“I am. I need you to stop treating me like a fraud. I’m not.”
“No.” His jaw set.
“Why?” She twisted to face him. “Because you’d feel guilty about invading my mind? I’m giving you permission, Dev.”
“That makes it no less invasive.”
“And this?” She waved her hand. “This—where I’m treated like a consummate liar—is better?”
He glanced up. Following, she saw Tiara looking at the two of them with unconcealed interest. Dev’s tone was clipped when he turned back to her. “We’re not discussing this here.”
Heat rolled up her body, threatening to color her face. “Fine. But we will be discussing it.”
The unloading of the airjet went like clockwork. Cruz and his minders were in a vehicle by the time Dev descended with Katya. DarkRiver had sent a welcoming party of four, with two all-wheel drives.
A tall male with distinctive blond hair tied back in a queue stepped forward. “Vaughn,” he said, extending a hand.
“Dev.” As they shook, Dev saw Vaughn’s eyes flick to Katya, then back. Aware the man was a sentinel, one of the highest-ranking men in Lucas’s pack, Dev figured Vaughn knew exactly who she was, but he made the introduction anyway. “This is Katya.”
Vaughn didn’t offer her his hand—a courtesy, since most Psy in the Net preferred not to be touched. “Ashaya’s looking forward to talking with you.”
“I’m not sure how safe that’ll be,” Katya said, face drawn.
Vaughn didn’t seem worried. “We’ve got reinforcements. Come on—you two can ride with me and Cory. You met Mercy?”
Dev shook his head. “I heard you mated with a wolf,” he said to the beautiful redhead who lifted her hand in a small wave.
“The trauma’s just starting to wear off.” A deadpan voice, but her eyes sparkled. “I’ll be driving the others. This is Jamie.” She jerked her thumb at the male beside her, his hair dyed a bright butterscotch yellow streaked with cobalt. “He’s riding shotgun.”
Vaughn waited until the first vehicle had pulled out before following. He offered Dev the front passenger seat, but Dev chose to sit in back with Katya. The drive passed in easy silence—for the front-seat passengers in any case. Dev was supremely aware of the rigid line of Katya’s spine, the knife-edged question that still hung between them.
He wanted to grab her nape, make her turn to face him instead of staring out the window. Battling the urge gave him one hell of a headache. As a result, he was in a shit of a mood by the time they arrived at the location DarkRiver had chosen for the meeting with Sascha.
“Nice place,” Dev said. Set on a large plot of land that gave it privacy from neighbors, the single-level house was big enough for all of them. The others had already settled in according to the text message he’d received from Tiara. “How far are we from the city?”
“Fifteen minutes,” Vaughn answered. “We’ll leave you one of the vehicles—and we can get you another if you think it’s necessary.”
Dev took a moment to think about it, very aware of Katya standing silently on the other side of the engine. “One more would be good in case we have to split up for some reason. I want both coded to recognize me, Tag, and Tiara.”
Katya�
��s hand curled into a fist on the hood.
“Only take half an hour or so,” Vaughn said. “Cory’ll code you into this one—then you can do your other people.”
As the young male leopard worked with the car’s computronic system, Dev saw Katya step around to stand near Vaughn. “Is Ashaya well?”
“Yes.” The sentinel raised an eyebrow. “Thought she came to see you.”
“I wasn’t in the best frame of mind then. We didn’t talk much.”
“She’s happy,” Vaughn said simply. “Dorian, her, and the cub, they make a good family.”
Cory asked Dev to input his thumbprint then so he missed the next few comments. When he turned back around, Vaughn was showing Katya something on his phone, the two of them so close, they were almost touching. If it had been Tag . . . but it wasn’t. Dev didn’t know Vaughn, didn’t trust him. His entire body went taut, ready to strike.
The front door of the house opened in the middle of his fight with a burst of jealousy unlike anything he’d ever before experienced. Mercy and Jamie walked out onto the porch, catching Vaughn’s attention. The sentinel put away his phone. “All set?”
Mercy nodded before turning to Dev. “Sascha’ll be by this afternoon.”
“Thanks.” It came out sounding civilized, though he felt anything but.
“Hope she can help the—” The redhead snapped her mouth shut at the swift shake of Dev’s head.
Even as Mercy followed Dev’s cue, Katya stiffened. An instant later, that stiffness was gone, leached out of her like so much air, her shoulders slumping. He couldn’t bear to see her that way. Leaving Cory to complete the verification process, he walked to stand at her side, then thought to hell with it and put his arm around her waist, tugging her into the heat of his body.
She didn’t soften for him . . . but neither did she pull away.
“Cory,” Vaughn called out, making no comment on Dev’s actions, “you done?”
Mercy, however, gave Dev a hard glance. The truth hit him like a lightning bolt—if Katya refused to return to New York with him, the leopards would find some way for her to stay. After all, not only was Ashaya a phenomenally gifted M-Psy, the leopards also had two cardinals in their pack.
He met Mercy’s gaze, held it. After a while, she gave the slightest of smiles. “Guess we’ll be heading off. See you later, Dev. Katya, here’s my number.” She handed over a card. “Call if you need me.”
Dev waited until the cats had left to say, “You going to call her?”
“No.” Rubbing one edge with her fingertips, she slid the card into a pocket. “Ashaya’s a good person, but she doesn’t understand how badly he changed me. I see him now, you know—Ming—that birthmark on his face is unmistakable. His expression never changed,” she murmured, “no matter what he did or how much I begged.”
Rage, sudden and uncontrollable, wrapped around his throat as he shifted their stance so that he could look down into her face. But she didn’t give him the chance to speak, putting her hands on his chest and pushing. “Why are you holding me?”
“Because you looked like you needed it.”
The blunt answer seemed to set her off balance. But only for an instant. “You can’t do this, Dev.”
“Do what?” He played with a strand of her hair that was flirting with the breeze.
She reached up to push away his hand. “Tell me you’ve given orders to allow the use of deadly force against me one minute and stroke me the next!”
“I was supremely pissed when I told you that,” he said, breaking every one of his rules about engaging with the enemy.
“Because you thought I’d played you.” A furious mix of hurt and anger. “And you still think that.”
“What else am I supposed to think?” He lost his own temper. “You’re a fucking powerful telepath and yet you forgot? It’s like not remembering you have a limb!”
“It’s not the same!” she yelled back, then clutched her head.
He immediately cupped her cheek. “What is it?”
“Shh.” Lines formed between her eyes.
He waited for almost two minutes as she stood there, her head cocked in a way that implied listening, as if she was beginning to divine the secrets of her past. But when she looked up, there was only a haunted kind of pain in her eyes. “I’m starting to see even the parts that were hidden deep.”
At that instant, he couldn’t not believe her. “Good.”
“I’m not sure.” Her throat worked as she swallowed. “I did things in those labs, Dev, things I don’t want to remember.”
The fear in her voice rocked him. He’d become used to seeing her as the survivor who’d woken in that hospital bed, the steel-willed woman who’d asked him for a promise of death. But that woman had once been a Psy scientist, might well have done unforgivable things. “Whoever that woman was,” he said, voice harsh, “she died in the months you spent with that monster.”
“That’s too easy.” An implacable decision. “No, I have to see, I have to know.”
“Then you will.” He closed his hand over her nape, soothing his hunger to touch her, claim her. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s that your will is unbreakable.”
“Then you know I’m not going to back down,” she said, looking up at him with those changeable eyes. At this instant, in the sunlight, they were so clear as to be translucent. But that made them no less determined. “I want you to scan my mind.”
CHAPTER 26
Having read the report his aide had prepared for him on the situation in Sri Lanka, Kaleb walked outside—to the very edge of the patio that stuck out over a jagged gorge—and opened the psychic pathways of his mind. But instead of entering the Net as Kaleb Krychek, Councilor and cardinal Tk, he wrapped himself in a mobile firewall that shifted endlessly, hiding his identity.
Nikita Duncan would’ve been very surprised to hear who he’d learned that little trick from. He’d monitored Sascha Duncan for some time before she defected—the NetMind had shown a decided preference for the Councilor’s daughter and he’d wanted to know why. But he hadn’t been able to get through her shields—Sascha Duncan, he thought impartially, might be the best shield technician he’d ever seen. What he’d learned from the glimpses he’d caught of her before she lost herself in the pathways of the Net had been more useful than all the things he’d learned to that point.
Now, using those shields that made him effectively invisible, he shot out through the midnight skies of the Net and toward the spreading stain he’d shown Nikita. Instead of taking the usual route, he found one of the slipstreams that fed into the pool and let it sweep him to the exact spot, much like riding a river into the sea.
He had no fear of contamination—he recognized the dead area for what it was. It held echoes of the DarkMind—the mute, hidden twin of the NetMind, created from all the rage and pain the Psy refused to feel. Part of that echo existed within Kaleb, too. It wasn’t that he was a cardinal Tk, it was that he was a very special cardinal Tk, one who’d been molded by time and circumstance into the perfect conduit. So he rode the dark rapids with impunity, even as he “spoke” to the NetMind.
The neosentience could tell him nothing about the uprising in Colombo, but sent him a cascade of images from which Kaleb filtered out a single dark thread that snaked almost directly to the anchor in that region. He hadn’t lied to Nikita—he didn’t think the recent surge in violence by Psy was responsible for this lifeless patch of the Net, but it was a factor... and it was starting to undermine the very foundations of the Net. That disintegration wasn’t yet an avalanche, and the increase in voluntary rehabilitations might slow it further, but sooner or later something would have to give.
When it did, this stain would spread. And wherever it went, death would follow.
CHAPTER 27
Katya stayed behind the closed door to her room when she heard the others arrive. Dev hadn’t ordered her to do so, hadn’t even set a guard on her door, but she wasn’t going to put people in da
nger because she felt hurt at being excluded. Maybe she was right and Ming wasn’t monitoring her every thought—all the signs pointed to a lack of mind control—but how could she justify playing with lives on the strength of a belief built on such shaky ground?
But if she was right and Ming had effectively created a fence around her mind in the PsyNet, how was that fence staying in place? As far as she could see, she had no psychic link to anyone or anything aside from her life-giving connection to the PsyNet.
No link...
“Oh,” she said aloud, realizing the depths of Ming’s skill at mental combat. The fence, the shield, the prison—she was feeding it. He’d locked her inside herself, and then, as a final insult, programmed her own mind to reinforce the walls he’d put in place.
Her hand clawed into the sheets, into the mattress. She wasn’t just inside a prison, she was part of the prison itself.
Dev watched Sascha Duncan sit down on the other side of Cruz’s bed, her mate’s hand on her shoulder. Cruz’s eyes went from Dev to Lucas and back again. Sascha sighed. “Would you two stop looking at each other as if you’re about to get into a shoot-out?”
“No guns,” Dev said without taking his eyes off the DarkRiver alpha.
Sascha scowled. “Lucas.” A command to behave.
The leopard alpha’s eyes lit with feline amusement. “I will if he will.”
On the bed, Cruz’s lips curved slightly as he waited for Dev’s answer.
“Since you’re a guest,” Dev said, leaning back against the wall by the door, “I suppose I’ll have to let you win this round.”
“Generous of you.” Lucas moved to echo Dev’s position closer to his mate. “See, Sascha, we’re all friends now.”
Instead of answering, Sascha focused on Cruz. “How old do you think they are?”
Cruz’s cheeks actually dimpled as he smiled. “Ten?”
Sascha’s laugh filled the room, and for the first time, Dev truly understood what she was. A number of empaths had dropped out with the Forgotten, but so many had stayed behind, hoping against hope that their mere presence would help their people. His great-grandmother Maya had been a child when her parents chose to defect, her empathic abilities in the moderate range. Because of her, he’d thought he knew empaths ... but never had he been in the presence of a cardinal E-Psy.
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