Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
“I don’t know what it is,” he said. “I’ve tried to set her free, but I can’t.” No matter how many times he’d searched, he hadn’t been able to find the strand of his web that connected him to her, her to him. It might feel like it was coming from her, her cat prowling through his mind, but logic said it had to be him.
He was the Psy, the telepath.
His was the web, so sticky and impossible to escape.
Warm laughter from Tamsyn, her eyes sparkling. “Oh, what I scent isn’t a Psy thing, Ivan. She’s marked you, and we cats tend to be possessive.”
Ivan wanted to believe that until it was a compulsion. “She doesn’t know me.”
“Are you sure?” Tamsyn stirred something on the stove. “I think her ocelot knows exactly who you are.”
Nathan coughed into his hand, his expression amused when Ivan glanced over. “Guess you better figure out how to tangle with a cat.”
SOLEIL was so full of emotion that she couldn’t separate one from the other. Joy, sheer joy, confusion, love, worry, so much more. She wanted to hold the cubs close, wanted to press herself tight against Yariela, wanted to rub their scents all over her and hers all over them.
She was home. Home at last.
But she was worried about Ivan. The leopards would consider him a threat. She had to make sure they knew that the only reason he was here was because he’d wanted to bring her home.
Panic fluttered in her at him being alone with unfriendly predators.
Stirring from the cuddle pile of her pack, she rose to her feet. The others stood with her. When Yariela went to lead them inside, she followed along on quick feet. In front of them, the two cubs ran to the door and back again, too excited to stay still.
Open wounds inside her began to scab over. The cubs were alive. So was Yariela. Which likely meant gentle and kind Salvador was also alive. She wouldn’t know about the soldiers until she asked. But this changed everything.
Lucas Hunter hadn’t murdered her pack. He’d saved them.
Emotion choking her but not enough to overwhelm her worry for Ivan, she followed Yariela through the doorway—and found herself looking immediately to the right. Right into the eyes of her Psy. He was uninjured … and sitting in front of a plate of cookies.
She blinked, shook her head. Nope, still cookies there.
Ivan wasn’t eating the cookies, however, quite unlike the boys who sat on the breakfast stools to her left. One of them dropped a cookie toward an ocelot cub; it was snatched out of the air by sharp little teeth.
“Boys,” Tamsyn said in a firm maternal tone that had all involved parties attempting to imitate angels complete with shining halos. “As for you two on the floor. You know we eat off proper dishes in this house.”
Razi and Natal ran around the counter to nuzzle at Tamsyn’s legs, their bodies fluid and their markings an echo of their parents’. Smiling fondly, the healer bent down and scooped them up in her arms to nip at their noses. Unrepentant, the cubs pretended to bite her ear while only licking at her earlobes. Laughing, she put them on the counter near the twins, where they both sat up neatly, ready for cookies.
Every so often, they’d look back, as if checking to see that Soleil was still there.
Soleil’s cells burst with purest happiness. The children were happy, healthy. DarkRiver had given them not just a home, but love. Soleil would do everything in her power to pay back that gift. Now, however, she needed her human voice. But though she was changeling and used to shifting into her skin, she felt shy doing it in front of strangers.
Even as she went to nudge Yariela, ask the question with her eyes, Tamsyn said, “Spare clothes are in a trunk by the front door. Yariela, will you show her the way?”
Of course a healer’s home would be stocked with clothing for those who might drop by. People always dropped by the homes of healers. That was just how it was. Even Soleil, young healer though she’d been, had been used to visitors—there to chat, to grab a bite, or to get looked over for small wounds.
She’d had a special stash of colorful bandages that she’d put on the cubs when they came to her with scrapes and scratches. The little ones had loved them so much that they quite often wouldn’t shift for a day or two, just so the bandages would stay on their skin.
Now she followed Yariela’s slower form to the trunk. Leaving Soleil there, the senior healer disappeared down another hallway, no doubt going to her room to get her own clothes. After shifting, Soleil changed into a pair of sweatpants that were far too large in the waist but were the right length for her height. They had a string tie at the top, so she used that to cinch it tight.