by Nalini Singh
His grandparents drove in before dawn. “My Devraj.” Walking to Katya’s side of the bed, his nani took off the ring she’d worn on her wedding finger since the day his grandfather proposed. Her withheld tears glittered diamond bright as she handed it to him. “Here.”
Accepting the gift, he slid it gently onto Katya’s ring finger. “She told me she wanted to be you when she grew up,” he found the voice to say, forcing himself to rise from the bed. “Are there messages for me?” It was a hollow question.
“Aubry and Maggie have everything in hand. Your nana and Marty will take care of what they can’t.” A tender hand passing over his hair. “This time is yours.”
Ashaya and Dorian arrived not long afterward, bringing both Keenan and his “girlfriend” Noor. “They’re inseparable,” Ashaya said to him, as if afraid he’d mind.
“It’s good to have them here,” he said, glad for the sound of laughter, of life around Katya.
Sascha Duncan had flown in, too, Lucas by her side. Dev knew the empath had come for him, to help him, but he didn’t want any help, didn’t want to hurt any less. “Cruz?” he asked Sascha.
“He’s starting to hold his shields,” the empath told him. “I think he’ll be fine.”
“Good.” Leaving Sascha, he returned to Katya, wanting to tell her about the boy who’d helped her escape.
Ashaya found him there forty minutes later. “There’s only one choice.” The M-Psy’s eyes were shimmering wet as she placed a tentative hand on his shoulder.
“I know.” And his heart broke impossibly more with every hour that passed. “I just need a little more time to say good-bye.”
Keenan and Noor ran into the room at that moment, skidding to a stop at the end of the bed. “She’s sick?” Keenan asked, his face solemn.
Ashaya put her hand on her son’s head. “Yes, sweetheart. She’s very sick.”
Little Noor went around Ashaya to pat Katya’s hair, smoothing it out on the pillow. “She’s Jon’s friend.”
“Yeah.” Dev tried to smile for the girl, but couldn’t quite make his lips move.
Ashaya picked Noor up and settled her in the curve of one arm, taking Keenan’s hand with her free one. “Come on, babies. Let’s leave Katya and Dev alone for a while.”
Barely aware of the door closing, Dev lay down on the bed alongside the woman who held his soul, his heart, his everything. Her heart still beat, her breath still came, but her mind, that beautiful, sharp, courageous mind, was damaged beyond repair. She’d never wake now, but he could keep her alive for years on machines.
A sob shook his body.
How could he do that to her? To his laughing, spirited Katya? The truth was, he couldn’t. He’d have to let her go, press a final kiss to her lips, and hope that heaven was real, that one day, he might look up, and there she’d be.
CHAPTER 54
Ming LeBon lay severely injured in a sealed chamber accessible only to telekinetics with the ability to teleport—and the M-Psy they brought with them. It was meant to be the safest possible of all locations, since the Tks on the Arrow Squad would quickly take care of any intrusions.
“We could kill him now,” Vasic said without inflection.
Aden nodded. “It wouldn’t even take much effort.”
Yet neither of them made the move.
“He dies,” Vasic finally said, watching two M-Psy move carefully around the fallen Councilor, “it creates a vacuum.”
“It’ll destabilize the Net. No knowing who or what would fill that vacuum.”
“You could.” Aden was far more stable than Vasic, than any of the other Arrows. “We’d stand behind you.” And no one—no one—had ever been able to withstand the combined might of the Arrow Squad.
“It’s not time.” Aden’s almond-shaped eyes swept over Ming’s body, and Vasic knew his fellow Arrow was noting every minor injury, every weakness. “We can’t show our hand. We’ve lost enough men that there are a couple of Councilors who might be able to gather the resources to get in our way.”
“Kaleb Krychek,” Vasic said, “would’ve made an excellent Arrow.”
“I checked his files.” Aden was nothing if not thorough. “The public ones and the private ones I was able to hack into. He was considered for Arrow training—until Santano Enrique decided to make him his protégé.”
Santano Enrique, as Vasic knew, had turned out to be a sociopathic killer. It was meant to be a well-kept secret, but Arrows were shadows, impossible to trace or see. It was their job to know the Net’s darkest truths. “Is he showing any signs of sociopathy?”
“None that I’ve been able to see—but he’s on the far end of the Silence continuum.”
“So are we.” He stared at Ming. “We might be able to work with Kaleb.”
“What makes him any different from Ming?” Aden asked. “He was an Arrow, and still he betrayed us.”
“Kaleb has blood on his hands,” Vasic replied, knowing too much about death himself, “but I haven’t been able to find one instance of him eliminating an individual who’d remained loyal to him.”
Aden was quiet for a long time. “How many Arrows do you think Ming had killed?”
“Too many.” In doing what he’d done, Ming had broken the cardinal rule of Arrows—it was the integrity of the Net, of Silence, that was of prime importance. Everything else, every other concern, was secondary. If getting rid of other Arrows had furthered that aim, the Arrows would’ve followed Ming to their graves. But Ming had done it for power. And lost his hold on the entire Squad.
CHAPTER 55
Lucas knew Dev had made his decision when the other man came out of Katya’s room that night. The Shine director’s face was haggard, his eyes blank with loss. “One more night,” he said, almost to himself. “Tomorrow morning . . .”
Knowing no words would ever be enough, Lucas watched silently as Sascha walked across the room to touch her hand to Dev’s heart.
The man stood there like stone, and eventually, Sascha turned away, tears streaking down her face. “He won’t let me help him,” she said, tumbling into Lucas’s arms.
“Some pain a man needs to feel.” He dropped a kiss on top of her hair, understanding Dev in a way not many men could. He’d almost lost Sascha once, would carry the terror of those moments in his heart forever.
Dev was still standing in place when Keenan and Noor ran past, laughing. Lucas saw them go into Katya’s room and was about to call them back when Dev shook his head. “Let them be. Katya would’ve loved seeing Noor this way.” Seeming to shake himself out of his shocked state, the other man looked around the room. “Is Connor here?”
“Outside with Dorian. Ashaya and your grandmother are making sandwiches in the kitchen. Your grandfather’s in the office.”
Nodding, Dev turned left, undoubtedly heading to talk to the doctor who would tomorrow note Katya’s official time of death. “Is this better, kitten?” he asked the woman in his arms. “That Dev has the chance to say good-bye?”
Sascha shook her head. “His heart is shattered, Lucas—I have a feeling Dev will never truly recover.” Her voice broke.
“Shh.” But Lucas, too, had to swallow a knot in his throat.
Dev came in from talking to Connor, wanting only to crawl into bed beside Katya and feel her heart beat for one last night. But when he entered the bedroom, what he saw made him come to a standstill in the doorway.
Noor lay curled up beside Katya, one tiny hand on Katya’s chest. Keenan lay on the other side, his hand over Noor’s.
“Dev, have you seen—” Ashaya came to a stop beside him. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll get Dorian to help carry them out.”
“No,” Dev found himself saying. “They’re just doing what the cats do—trying to heal her with touch because she’s hurting.”
Ashaya put her fingers on his arm. “They’re too little to understand that she can’t be fixed.”
“I think,” he said, “she’d have liked to know she spent her last night surr
ounded by hope.“
“I know you want to lie with her,” Ashaya began.
“I won’t sleep.” He needed to watch her as long as possible.
And he did. Taking a seat on the bottom of the bed, one foot on the sheets, the other flat on the floor, he watched her as twilight turned to midnight, then slowly to the darkest hour of night, when everything seemed to go silent. Sometime after three a.m., he was distracted by a kind of ache in his head. . . no, that wasn’t right, it didn’t hurt—it was more like a shift inside his skull, not uncomfortable, just different. Frowning, he checked his psychic shields. Holding.
Keeping his eye on Katya on the physical plane, he stepped out into the ShadowNet to check for outside interference—he’d allow nothing and no one to cause her any more pain. He didn’t see it at first. But the longer he stared at the flicker of Katya’s mind, the more he became convinced that he wasn’t imagining it. Her flame was getting stronger.
Heart in his throat, he dropped back down to the physical plane and tried to find any indication that he wasn’t simply creating phantom images, wasn’t simply going mad with grief. But she still slept as peaceful and motionless as always, two little hands on her body. On her skin. Why hadn’t he noticed that before? Both Keenan and Noor had moved their hands . . . to either side of Katya’s head.
Half certain he was losing his sanity, Dev forced himself to remain on the physical plane for an entire two hours. Only then did he allow himself to open his psychic eye. “Dear God.” It was a whisper full of wonder.
Terrified any disturbance would destroy the miracle, he stayed in place for the next four hours, making sure no one came into the bedroom. When Noor and Keenan finally woke, within seconds of each other, he looked into their groggy little faces and barely kept himself from crushing them close. “Good morning.”
“Morning,” Noor mumbled, rubbing at her eyes. “Want Tally.”
Keenan reached over to pat her arm, moving as if his limbs were too heavy to lift. “Tally’s at home, but I’m here.”
A little smile. Yawning, Noor got up and crawled around the bed to Dev’s side, exhaustion in every line of her body. “Pancakes?” she said hopefully as he cuddled her as hard as he dared.
“Pancakes,” he whispered in a voice that threatened to shake, raising his hand to muss Keenan’s hair when the boy came over to lean against his knee.
While his grandparents and Sascha distracted the kids with pancakes, Connor and Ashaya began to check Katya over using the equipment Connor had in his mobile kit. Dev could tell both doctor and M-Psy were leery of his hope, that they were doing it only to humor him, but he didn’t give a damn. And when Ashaya’s mouth dropped open and Connor began to swear under his breath, he didn’t allow himself to collapse in relief.
That would have to wait until she woke.
“Her brain,” Connor finally said, “is healed, according to this scanner.” He stared at the equipment, thumping it with his palm as if to recalibrate it. “I need better gear.”
“Get it,” Ashaya muttered, staring at Katya. “I don’t have the ability to see the damage, but all her responses are within the normal range.”
Connor got out a cell phone. “Glen,” he said a moment later, “I need you to fly out with one of the . . .”
Dev tuned out the rest of the conversation, knowing what he knew. “I can see her on the ShadowNet,” he told Ashaya. “Her flame is bright enough to burn.” Her mind, it was different; her psychic self cut with crystal clarity. She was already drawing curious looks from the Forgotten in the ShadowNet, none of whom had ever glimpsed the razor-sharp psychic presence of a Psy born in silence.
“You don’t need the scans,” Ashaya said with a nod. “But the rest of us do. Because if she’s healed . . .”
He spread out his senses, found two innocent and deeply vulnerable minds in the kitchen. “Yes.”
Three hours later, there was no question about it—not only was Katya healed, but she was likely to wake from her unconscious state at any time. Forcing himself to go out onto the porch with the others so they could discuss what had happened, he found himself watching protectively as Noor and Keenan—bundled up like little penguins in jackets, boots, mittens, scarves, and hats—tried to climb a tree at least ten times their combined size. Both had just woken from a two hour nap and weren’t moving with anywhere near their usual level of energy.
“Which one of them did it?” Dev asked, still shell-shocked.
Every single person on the porch shook his or her head. Ashaya was the first to speak. “When I asked Keenan if he had helped Katya, he told me ‘they’ fixed her.”
“They?” Sascha leaned forward, watching the kids as they chased each other in circles.
“Yes.”
Noor ran to the porch at that moment, scrambling into Dorian’s arms. “Ha-ha!” She teased from her high perch. “You can’t get me.”
Keenan grinned and jumped up to grab her booted foot. “Can too.”
“Uncle Dorian!” It was a laughing scream.
Lucas grabbed Keenan and turned him upside down, to the boy’s delight. “So,” the alpha said easily, “you two helped Katya.”
“Yeah,” Keenan said, walking on his mittened hands across the porch as Lucas held him up. “Noor can’t go in by herself.”
Dev held his breath, waiting to see if the children would add anything else.
“Yeah, I had to do a lot of weaving,” Noor said. “Kee is my truck.”
Both of them found that hilarious. Keenan was still giggling when Lucas turned him right side up again. “Does it make you tired?” Lucas asked.
“Yeah.” Noor nodded. “My head is full now.”
“Keenan, how about you?”
But it was Noor who answered. “Kee’s head is quiet.”
Seeing something dart across the snow, Keenan jumped across the porch in excitement. “Come on, Noor!”
“Okay, okay.” Kissing Dorian on the cheek, the little girl asked to be put down and then she was off after Keenan as he ran back toward their climbing tree.
“There were rumors,” Nani murmured, “that in the past some Psy were born with gifts that only worked in tandem with another.”
“Noor didn’t show any active abilities when we tested her at Shine,” Dev said, knowing he owed a debt to those two babes that could never, ever be repaid. “But she does carry a high percentage of Psy genes.”
“My son,” Ashaya murmured, “is a telepath. He’s midrange, but in that range, he’s crystal clear. A truck . . . a conduit.”
Sascha nodded. “For whatever it is that Noor does, her ‘weaving.’ ”
Dorian blinked. “Huh. She told the Arrow who helped William that they were the same. But I’m pretty sure even he can’t do this. She’s—they’re both—unique.”
“Yes,” Ashaya agreed. “I’ve never heard of an M-Psy—of anyone—who can heal that kind of an injury.”
“It doesn’t matter whether or not we can define her gift—we have to protect her, protect them both,” Dev said, meeting Lucas’s eyes. “Tell Talin and Clay that they have every Shine resource at their disposal. If others find out what she and Keenan can do . . .”
“We’ll all protect them,” Lucas said, and it was a vow. “No one will take advantage of those two.”
“Yes.” Sascha’s voice held awe. “Keenan’s clearly exhausted, and what Noor said—about her head being full—I think she’s flamed out, her gift has gone numb from overuse. Ashaya, can you tell about Keenan?”
Ashaya nodded after a moment’s pause. “He’s flamed out, too.” Worry laced her tone. “It might take days for them to recover.”
“But they will recover,” Sascha reassured her. “They’ve just overstretched their psychic muscles.”
“We’ll have to be careful who and what we expose them to,” Lucas said. “Keenan adores her so much, he’ll follow her lead, and she won’t be able to help trying to heal the injured even if it means hurting herself.” A glance at his
mate.
As Sascha made a face at the DarkRiver alpha, Ashaya whispered, “A tandem gift . . . It’s extraordinary.”
“Not really,” Dorian murmured, surprising them all. “Keenan has a twin for a mother, after all.”
A frozen silence.
“Oh.” Ashaya blinked. “Yes, of course. Amara and I have always been able to merge.”
“So maybe,” Sascha theorized, “Keenan was born with an innate ability to merge with another mind. Perhaps it was only that he needed the right mind.” A pause. “And the right environment—tandem abilities are unlikely to flourish in a network that punishes any kind of an emotional connection.”
“Yes.” Ashaya nodded. “It’s a very intimate link.”
Sascha turned to her packmate. “And it’s probably not one you could forge with simple practice. That’s why they ceased to exist. But the potential was always there.”
“We have to monitor them,” Ashaya said, eyes worried. “I don’t want either of them unduly influencing the other. Keenan’s my baby, but young telepaths don’t always understand right from wrong when it comes to their psychic abilities.”
Dev shook his head, watching Keenan help Noor onto the first branch. “That, I don’t think we have to worry about. They enjoy each other too much to try to change the other person.”
“It would be considered bad form to mind-control your future mate,” Dorian said dryly.
Ashaya laughed at Dev’s surprised look. “Those two are quite determined that they belong to each other. I have a feeling we’ll have a hard time keeping them from jumping the gun when teenage hormones hit.”
The thought made everyone grin. The kids played on, unaware of just how extraordinary they’d proven themselves to be.
CHAPTER 56
Dev wanted so badly to talk to Katya, but she remained unconscious. He kept going into the ShadowNet, checking to see that the fine silver thread that connected them was still there. He got a surprise the fifth time he checked.
