Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
“The problem will be at the other end,” Dr. Bashir had said. “When the patient wakes. Their psychic senses will be tangled, take time to unravel. However, with the ones I’ve listed, there’s no chance of a permanent injury.”
Dr. Bashir hadn’t been overselling how rapidly this stuff worked.
Hayward Scott slumped forward, unconscious almost before Remi had pulled the injector away from his neck. Remi was confident it had all happened too fast for him to scream for help on the telepathic plane. Throwing the older man over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, he walked down the stairs, sticking to areas in a surveillance shadow because there was no point in being arrogant and relying only on the blocker.
The house was more active now—he could hear movement, see lights at several corners. But it was a big house, and the entire group in residence was focused on the area Angel had turned into a circus. Remi heard a scream at that instant, knew his friend had taken one of them down to ensure they saw him as a continued and deadly threat.
Smile cold, Remi slipped out of the house right under the noses of the guards. Even if they spotted him in the external lights, none of them could match his speed. On their cameras, all they’d see was a human form racing away with one of their own.
As for Angel…well, there was no tiger pack in the country. Only friends and packmates were aware that Angel was a tiger, not a leopard. Remi could deny sending an assault force of “tigers” with a straight face.
He’d sent only a single highly intelligent tiger.
Who joined him at their vehicle ten minutes later, jumping into the back seat beside their package before Remi drove out. No one sought to stop them. If Remi had to guess, the guards were still hunting ghost tigers.
A shimmer of light in back.
“That was fun,” Angel said with a rare grin Remi saw in the rearview mirror. “I got four of them. Left them alive, but nicely mauled.”
Remi’s own grin was vicious. “We have to keep this asshole drugged until the Scotts decide to toe the line.”
“We could send the family his pinky finger in a lined box as further incentive.”
“You’re terrifying sometimes, my angelic friend.” Because he knew Angel—protective and fiercely loyal Angel—had meant that.
A shrug he heard in the rustle of the clothing Angel was pulling on. “Sometimes, you have to play with bastards on their own level.”
It was at times like this that Remi wondered about the lost years of Angel’s childhood, the ones about which he refused to talk even to Remi. “Scotts are about bloodlines, and they have no one else suitable of age if Hayward vanishes.”
Remi felt no pity for the unconscious man; he’d decided to take advantage of Remi’s wounded mate. Now he was paying the price.
“The family will do what we tell them to do.” Or more of them would meet with a leopard’s claws one dark night.
Remi didn’t play when it came to his mate and child.
Chapter 46
PsyNet status: Critical. Total collapse predicted in thirty-six hours. Mass casualties are to be expected.
Cooperation from the Human Alliance and all major changeling groups has been fed into the survival projection, but the possible success or failure of those attempts to merge with changeling networks, and/or to incorporate humans into small Psy networks as an emergency measure will not be known until Net failure.
The ShadowNet is also ready and waiting to accept refugees, but experiments to date suggest that direct links are not possible and must be made through an emotional tie to an individual already in the ShadowNet.
Current projection: 92% loss of Psy life.
—Report to Ruling Coalition and EmNet from PsyNet Research Group Alpha (21 November 2083)
SILVER MERCANT, DIRECTOR of the Emergency Response Network and mate to the alpha of the StoneWater bears, stared at the report that had just popped up on her organizer. She’d known. They’d all known. But to see it laid out in black and white…
Shoulders locked to rigidity, she pushed away from her desk to look below it—where a small polar bear cub sat playing with wooden blocks. “Dima?” she said, holding out her arms to the child she was babysitting while his mother ran errands.
Sleepy and lazy because it was close to his naptime, he came happily to cuddle with her, and she held him close as her eyes burned and her heart reached for her mate. Valentin was the reason she would survive the collapse—and he was the reason her family would survive.
She and her brother had both mated into the bear clan, and between them, they were near certain they could wrench the rest of the family into the clan.
Because Ena had built a family linked by bonds of love and loyalty unbreakable.