by Nalini Singh
Barely even thinking about it, Sascha gathered in Tamsyn’s sharp sadness and took it inside her. As always, the emotions of others settled like rocks against her heart but she knew she could deal with it. Somehow, she had the power to neutralize those negative feelings.
She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there when she was startled out of her trancelike state by a kiss on the back of her neck. Only one male had the power to shatter her so completely. She blinked and turned to find Lucas behind her. He pulled her to her feet, his face set in harsh lines.
“What were you doing?” The simmering edge of his temper was visible in his eyes.
“Looking at some information I stole when I hacked the Net.” Why was he angry?
His Hunter marks became vividly delineated. “I told you to stay put.”
“I’m right here.” Her own temper spiked. “What’s the matter with you?”
His answer was a low growl that made every tiny hair on her body stand up.
Suddenly, she became aware of the others in the room. Vaughn, Mercy, and Tamsyn had now been joined by Dorian and Clay. Silent as the predators they were, the sentinels and the healer continued about their business, but she knew they were listening.
“Lucas,” she said, intending on asking him to take this somewhere private.
“I specifically told you to stay out of the PsyNet.” Fury coated every quiet word.
“I didn’t go into it! I’m not completely brainless.” She’d had enough. “Did you expect me to sit here… baking cookies while you were gone?” A twinge of amusement from somewhere in the room made her turn and say, “No offense intended, Tamsyn.”
“I know, honey. You’re not the cookie-baking type.” The healer put some chocolate chips into a bowl.
“You were supposed to rest your mind. And don’t tell me that whatever it was you were doing wasn’t using up mental energy you don’t have.” Lucas gripped the back of her neck, pulling her toward him.
He was very careful with his strength but the dominance of the gesture wasn’t lost on her. “Stop it.” He might be alpha but she was a cardinal.
He didn’t bother to answer, speaking to his sentinels instead. “Why the hell did you let her disobey my orders?”
She kicked out with her boot, catching Lucas on the shin. He didn’t wince. “You’ll pay for that.” It was a silky warning.
And it made her explode. She might have been a failure as a cardinal, but she had a little specialty not many people knew about. Reaching out with her mind, she pushed Lucas Hunter so hard, he was two feet from her before he could blink.
Everyone froze.
Sascha realized she’d just attacked the alpha of DarkRiver. Too bad. He’d been acting like a complete Neanderthal. Meeting those eyes, which had gone more panther than human, she put her hands on her hips and tried to pretend the telekinetic effort hadn’t worn her out.
“Still want to play?” It was a taunt she’d never have made before she’d started to spend so much time with changelings.
“Oh, yeah, kitten, I want to play.” Lucas moved toward her in that lightning-fast way of his, his emotions a mix of exhilaration and challenge.
She was ready. Using her remaining strength, she jumped backward onto the table, the action almost catlike. Her Psy mind had watched the way the leopards moved and now it mimicked the beautifully smooth motion. Lucas’s eyes widened as he found her halfway across the table. “You’ve been keeping secrets.”
“Poor baby,” she taunted.
He started to smile. “Come here.”
“Are you going to behave?”
“No.”
Her lips twitched. Feeling silly crouching on the table now that he was no longer chasing her, she jumped off to stand in front of him. His hand went to her neck again, holding her in a possessive grasp. Except this time, there was sensuality instead of anger in his touch. His kiss burned her through to her toes.
When he lifted his head, she took a few moments to catch her breath. “Have you heard of privacy?” she asked, aware of her skin turning scarlet. She could no longer curb the physical reactions of her body. That shield had burned out last night.
Tamsyn laughed. “Sorry, couldn’t help overhearing.”
Sascha batted at Lucas’s hold until he let her go, content to prowl behind her as she walked to stand on the other side of the counter from Tamsyn. “What?”
The woman rolled her eyes. “DarkRiver males are damn possessive and complete exhibitionists during the mating dance.”
Sascha ran through her dictionary of changeling terminology and could find no fit. “Mating dance?”
Mercy whistled. Dorian winced. Tamsyn suddenly got interested in her dough. Clay and Vaughn mysteriously disappeared. Behind her, Lucas’s body was a hard wall of heat. “I think we need to discuss this upstairs.”
“Oh, now you want to be alone?” she muttered.
He picked her up in his arms, shocking her into immobility. Before she could find the breath to complain, he was running up the stairs. A minute later, he dumped her on the bed and lay down beside her.
“Nuh-uh.” She shook her head and tried to move away.
He threw a leg over hers. “Don’t try any more tricks, kitten.”
Just for that, she found another spurt of power and pushed his leg off her. A second later it was back.
“We’re going to have to talk about this trick of yours,” he said, sounding more amused than worried.
She narrowed her eyes. “I could turn your mind into mush if I wanted.”
“But then who’d lick you to orgasm?”
Her entire body turned into a flame. “You can’t say things like that!”
“Why not?” His hand parted the sides of her white shirt and it was only then that she realized he’d unbuttoned it.
Long fingers found her breast through her bra and plucked at her nipple.
“Lucas.” It was more moan than word.
“The mating dance is what two leopards go through on their way to mating for life.” He closed his hand over her breast and squeezed.
Her eyes flicked open, cold fear dousing the fire he’d stoked. “What happens if one half of a mated pair dies?”
“The survivor will never mate again.” That possessive hand was pulling down the cup of her bra to rub lazily at her aroused flesh.
“No, Lucas.” She tried to wiggle out from under him but he wouldn’t let her. “You can’t. I might not survive the week.”
“You aren’t going anywhere.” He sounded more dominant than she’d ever before heard him sound, his eyes completely panther. “You belong to me.”
They were words she’d waited for her whole life but she couldn’t accept them. “Don’t I get a choice?”
“You made it when you brought me into your dreams, into your mind.” He nipped gently at her lower lip. “And you made it again when you let me into your body.”
There was no way Sascha was going to leave Lucas without a mate for the rest of his life. “I won’t cooperate.”
“Sure you will.” Moving his head, he sucked her nipple into his mouth.
Her fingers tunneled into the silky lushness of his hair. “Stop.”
He murmured in pleasure and his other hand slipped down to cup her between her legs. Even through the material of her slacks, she felt the rough heat of his hold.
She tugged at his head and he lifted it only enough to give him room to move to her other breast. Instead of pushing down the cup, he licked her through it, one hand molding her stomach. It was impossible to think with this much sensation overloading her. But she had to speak, she had to make him understand. “You don’t know me,” she whispered.
He raised his head. “I know you inside out.”
“No, Lucas. I’m not changeling—I’m Psy. My mind is who I am.”
“Liar.” He pinched one wet nipple.
Her entire body shuddered and for an instant she was nothing but a creature of the flesh.
&nb
sp; “You’re as much animal as me.” It was a husky whisper against her ear. “As sexual, as hungry, as needy.”
She shook her head, shaken by the power of his words, the addiction of his touch. “I could kill you with one thought.”
He rubbed his jaw across the skin of her upper breasts. “Could you, kitten?”
That easily, he won their personal war. Lucas was more important to her than her own life. “Don’t,” she said. “Stop this before it’s too late.”
“No one can stop it. I’ll kill anyone who tries.”
Looking into those cat eyes, she was certain he meant every word. She was as certain that she had to stop him before he tied himself to a woman who was so deeply broken, she wasn’t even sure she was Psy anymore.
A day later, Sascha sat in the living area of the safe house trying to think up arguments to convince Lucas of the soundness of her plan. The problem was, she hadn’t figured out how to create the diversion that would give the killer a head start to scenting her. She’d spent the whole day trying to think of something and all she’d come up with was a crude “bomb.”
If she couldn’t work out anything else by tomorrow, she’d have to use that—Brenna had suffered enough. At least neither Enrique nor Nikita had tried to contact her so far. She assumed that they were distracted by their own plan to catch the serial killer.
Lucas had been in and out throughout the day and she guessed that he’d been putting plans in place in case they weren’t able to save the lost SnowDancer. Right now, he was standing by the window, staring out into the night. His skin glowed a burnished gold in the soft light of the lamps around the room.
“What information did you steal?” he asked, turning to look over his shoulder. He’d barely spoken to her that day but had touched her at every opportunity.
She remained curled up in the corner of the sofa, watching him as warily as a gazelle might watch a lion. Lucas wasn’t human, wasn’t Psy. He was a predator and he’d decided she was his. It was going to take everything she had to get away from him before she destroyed them both.
Even if Lucas didn’t allow her to execute her plan, the Council’s mercenaries would hunt her down on the PsyNet the second her failing shields revealed her flaw. Her firewalls were already starting to show the finest of hairline fractures. She might not be able to save herself but she would save Lucas. She would not sentence him to a life without a mate, no matter how much she ached for him to belong to her. “My family’s history.”
Someone walked into the room from the kitchen. Tamsyn’s slender frame was followed by Nate’s larger body. “Hope we’re not interrupting.”
“There’s nothing to interrupt,” Sascha said quickly, thankful for their presence. She needed a buffer between Lucas’s demands and her own clawing desire to give in to them. “I was just telling Lucas I stole information about my family from the PsyNet.”
Lucas shifted from his position by the window and headed over to the sofa. His eyes tracked Nate’s every move and Sascha felt a huge wave of almost dangerous possessiveness hit her. In a quiet moment while Lucas had been out, Tamsyn had shared that leopards were highly unstable at this stage of the mating dance and liable to attack anyone they saw as a threat.
She’d asked Sascha not to dispute Lucas’s claim, warned her that fighting an alpha male during mating was simply not done. Sascha understood why Tamsyn had cautioned her but knew she couldn’t follow the healer’s advice, not if it meant a lifetime of loneliness for this male she adored. But she let him sit beside her on the sofa, let him put her feet on his thighs, let him massage her calves.
“Why would you need to steal information?” Nate frowned and took a seat as far from Sascha as possible. Tamsyn perched on his lap with her arm around his neck.
“Our family’s physical records were destroyed during a fire at some stage in the past.” Sascha had always been frustrated by that, had always felt like there was so much she didn’t know. “The files on the PsyNet should’ve been our backup but we were told the Net information had been inexplicably corrupted.”
Lucas’s hand tightened on her calf, a silent signal to pay attention to him. “Was it?”
“No.” She met his gaze. “It’s all there, centuries of history.” A rich archive that had been hidden from the very people who should’ve had access to it. What else did the Council keep from her people? What else was labeled restricted?
“What did you find out?” Tamsyn asked, curling up on Nate’s lap. The movement was so catlike, so sensual, that Sascha was momentarily startled. The other woman’s practical nature had almost blinded her to the fact that she, too, was a leopard.
“There was nothing really unusual until I went back to my great-grandmother, Ai.” Without conscious intent, she found she’d moved closer to Lucas until she was almost in his lap. One of his arms was stretched along the back of the sofa, while his other hand continued to stroke up and down her bent leg. “Her record was tagged with a red flag.”
“Is that some kind of indexing system?” Nate was rubbing the back of Tamsyn’s neck and his mate was almost limp in relaxation against him.
Sascha was struck by the trust evident between the two. No Psy would ever leave herself that vulnerable to a bigger male. Yet Tamsyn had without hesitation. And so had Sascha when she’d let Lucas love her as he pleased. These men might have the potential for the negative emotions that had driven her race to cripple their own children, but they also had the ability to care on a level the Psy would never experience.
“Not that I know of.” She glanced away from the other couple to find Lucas’s eyes looking at her so intently, she had the feeling he knew precisely what she’d been thinking. “My suspicion is that it’s something Henry and Shoshanna Scott are doing on their own. I can’t see my mother allowing them to go through our familial history.”
A tree limb waved across the uncurtained window, casting shadows against the wall. And she became aware she was sitting in Lucas’s lap, held to him by one arm while the other moved rhythmically over her outer thigh. She should’ve have been frightened at her need for him, a need so deep it was overriding the powerful mental blocks she’d created to force herself to keep her distance. Instead, she wanted to rub up against his masculinity until heat and sensation were all she was.
“Kitten.” The raw edges of possessiveness were gone from the husky murmur against her ear. It was as if her slow capitulation had calmed him. “Why the red flag?”
“I’m not sure but I think it had something to do with her talents as a Psy.” Laying her head against him, she shared the most terrifying thing. “After I saw that red flag, I went back through the more recent histories. There was a second flag.” No one spoke.
“It was on my record.” Her mind snapped back to the way Enrique had been shadowing her. Someone knew or had guessed her flaw. That someone was watching her for any mistake. It was entirely likely that Enrique was playing both sides of the field, using Nikita and Henry to his own advantage.
“Do you have any idea why they might’ve singled you and Ai out?” The rough edge was back in his tone.
Sascha undid the top buttons of his shirt and slipped her hand inside to lie against the fury of his heartbeat. Almost immediately, she felt him pull his aggression back under control. It no longer startled her how she knew what to do to soothe her mate—it was part of the magic. “The terminology used back then was different. Ai was labeled an E-Psy. We no longer have that term in our lexicon.”
Tamsyn frowned. “Was there any other information?”
“Ai was born in 1973. Silence went into effect in 1979, when she would’ve been six years old. Everyone under seven years of age was automatically enrolled into the Protocol.” She couldn’t imagine how that young girl must’ve felt at being taught to obliterate everything she’d learned to value.
“How many did they lose?” Tamsyn asked gently, her healer’s mind seeing the problem.
“I don’t know. The numbers are buried deep but ev
eryone knows it was devastating. The transitional children had a very low survival rate.”
Lucas’s fingers stroked through her hair, which he’d undone while she’d been speaking. “But Ai survived.”
“Yes. It was noted in her file that her mother, Mika, was one of the strongest opponents of Silence. I thought at first that that was why Ai’s file had been tagged but there were other odd things in there. Her designation was as an 8.3 E-Psy at birth but after she completed Silence, she was relegated to a 6.2 non-specialized Psy.” More had been destroyed than simply Ai’s soul.
Sascha wept deep inside for the two women she’d never had the chance to know. What must it have done to Mika to watch the child she’d named Ai—which meant “love” in her language—be taught to devalue that very emotion?
“You’ve lost me.” Tamsyn sat up within Nate’s arms.
Sascha dragged her mind back from the horrors of the past. “Psy are classified according to our psychic strength and specialization. For example, my mother is a Gradient 9.1 Tp-Psy, which means her major talent lies in the area of telepathy. Like most Psy, she has several other skills, but in terms of strength, they all fall below 2 on the Gradient—our measuring system.” She paused to ensure they understood.
“Go on,” Tamsyn said.
“Then there are the Tk-Psy.”
“Telekinetic,” Nate guessed.
“Yes. We also have the M designation—Medical. The M-Psy can look inside a body and find the physical causes of illness. They’re the specialty other races most commonly come into contact with. There are several other fields of talent. Telepaths are relatively common and tend to have other specialties within their telepathy.”
