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)
“I understand.” His alpha’s heart pulsed at the idea of any such harm coming to RainFire—and it raged against trapping Auden and her cub. She’d already been wounded over and over again by the people who were supposed to care for her—and now he was being backed into a corner, forced to stifle what little freedom she’d managed to claw for herself.
Never before had he so totally hated himself for the decision he had to make.
Chapter 29
The Mother found you. She was angry you weren’t hers. I heard. I told the others. I said we should ask you. If you could say no to her, you must be strong. Will you be our Father now?
—PsyNet message from unknown sender to Pax Marshall (circa September 2083)
PAX MARSHALL, HEAD of the Marshall Group, stood on the balcony of his San Francisco apartment, the setting sun’s rays a dance of gold and orange on the silvery waters of the bay.
Father. Father. Father.
It was a constant murmur in the back of his brain now, the whisper of his Scarabs. Because they were his. Who else was going to look after their tormented souls? He was the most powerful one, and he was the lucky one.
Because he had his twin.
The far better half of their pairing.
And a big part of the reason he was sane while other Scarabs had lost their grip on reality.
His sister wouldn’t understand his choice, would tell him to take the Scarabs to a treatment facility. But that was just it. Pax knew the options, knew that there just weren’t enough specialist empaths to help all the Scarabs.
The Es were burning themselves out trying, but they couldn’t force abilities that weren’t there—because it was only a subset of a subset of Es who could stabilize Scarabs. The rest…could put on Band-Aids. Short-term fixes that dulled the mind and the heart in the quest for sanity.
A soft cage.
How could Pax lead all these broken people to that? They hadn’t done anything wrong. All of them—Pax included—had simply been unlucky enough to be born with a mind that was never designed to process the amount of power that now rushed through their system.
Silence had hidden that flaw their entire lifetimes. Its fall had opened floodgates that could never be closed, their power driving them to madness as it filled them to overflowing with delusions endless.
The others in the PsyNet had little sympathy for them these days, even knowing they were victims of their own minds. Because the erratic Scarab energy was a large part of the reason the PsyNet was on the brink of collapse. It had been heading that way prior to the rise of the Scarabs, but Pax’s kind had sped up the disintegration to critical.
Major tears in the psychic fabric, casualty after casualty, were a daily occurrence now. The PsyNet couldn’t be saved. His sister, his twin, his heart, would be fine. When the time came, she’d be wrenched into the changeling network inhabited by her bear mate.
As for Pax and his Scarabs…if they were to die anyway, wouldn’t it be better that they die alive and dazzling in their manic brilliance?
One final incandescent flame before the lights went out forever.
Chapter 30
I see a spider…filaments of blue. Death. Light. Anarchy. Order. Screams. Peace. I can’t untangle it. Two different timelines melded into one. It doesn’t make any sense.
—Faith NightStar (Cardinal F-Psy, DarkRiver) to Anthony Kyriakus of the PsyClan NightStar (12 November 2083)
AUDEN WOKE WITH her brain fuzzy. Panic stuttered in the back of her mind. Was she regressing? Going back to who she’d been before the pregnancy? Had she lost more time? Who had she been—
My baby!
A deluge of memory, of pain, visceral and stabbing, that had turned into rolling waves of agony. Her child’s fear, the scent of blood in the air, a leopard’s gold-green eyes looking into hers as he growled at her that she had this, that her cub would be just fine.
She couldn’t feel her baby inside her anymore, and when she managed to move her hand to her abdomen, it didn’t feel right. Too small. Not hard enough.
A delicate psychic light, a bond unbreakable.
Her child was alive, but where? Had her family taken her? Please. Please.
Her breath coming in pants, she struggled to open her eyes.
“You’re all right, sweetheart.” The touch of a hand on hers that felt gentle.
An empath?
“There you go, your vital signs are stabilizing. Don’t force it, just let yourself come out of it naturally. You didn’t put yourself under so whatever you feel when you come out of that, this’ll be different. You lost a lot of blood—your body shut down.”
She’d understood all those words, she realized, and she wasn’t fading into a heavier fuzziness but coming out into clarity. Her eyes opened on that thought—and she found herself looking into the face of a man with smile lines at the corners of his eyes and sandy hair that fell over his forehead.