The Psy-Changeling Collection (41 page)
“Lucas,” she said, pushing at his shoulders until he got up and looked down at her with those hunting-cat eyes.
“What’s wrong?” His body tensed.
“Nothing,” she whispered, starting to shudder. “Nothing. Everything’s perfect!”
“Kitten, you’re scaring me.” He leaned down to kiss her. “What did you see?”
“You’re part of a network, Lucas. The feedback you give me is bolstered by the sentinels and Tamsyn.”
He thought for a moment. “The blood oath links the sentinels to me on a psychic level?”
“Somehow,” Sascha said. “I don’t understand how—nobody has ever seen this before—the Psy don’t know changelings can link this way.” Part of her wanted to share the exciting discovery, but a bigger part of her wanted to keep it secret, a weapon unlike any other. “You didn’t know?”
“No. I knew the sentinels gave me their loyalty but we’re not Psy.”
“You have Psy potential. Everyone does. Don’t forget— we all started with the same basic material.” She frowned. “Sienna Lauren was right.”
“Why is Tamsyn in the net?” Lucas asked, and then answered his own question. “She’s linked to Nate through the mating bond. The cubs?”
“They’re there, too.”
“Why aren’t parents and siblings?”
“I’m guessing but I’d say that parents aren’t because those are bonds we break as we grow older. We love but we’re no longer as intertwined. The cubs will likely drop out as they age.” She frowned. “Maybe sibling bonds aren’t strong enough? From what I see, it’s only mating bonds and the blood oath that work.”
“I can understand that. Mating is psychic on some level. The blood oath—well, I guess there’s a reason it’s been passed down through the centuries.”
She looked again at the web and her hands clenched on Lucas’s biceps. “The Laurens were wrong on one point.”
“What?”
“This is amazing! Though I’m the solitary Psy, there
is
a multiplication effect. Our web is bursting with energy.” She couldn’t work out how but now she had a lifetime to figure it out.
They were both quiet for a long while.
“Sascha, what does this mean?”
“We’re safe,” she whispered, barely believing it. “Seven adult minds are feeding the web . . . giving me what I need. It’s more than enough.”
Lucas clasped her to his chest, rolling over on his back. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She kissed his chest, his neck, his chin. “Yes! Thank you for being so damn stubborn.”
He didn’t return the caresses, holding her so tightly she could barely breathe. “You almost killed yourself for no reason.”
“No, Lucas.” She squeezed him back. “I lived because of you. That’s how I’ll always remember it.”
“It’s going to take me a long time to forgive you.”
Sascha wanted to cry in joy. “We’ve got forever.”
EPILOGUE
They held a
meeting of the sentinels and Tamsyn later that week. The leopards were sprawled around the living room of their lair, some seated, some standing.
“So you can come into our minds?” Mercy asked.
“Only if you let me. I’d never walk in uninvited—I can’t.” Sascha knew she was talking to the most independent members of DarkRiver. They would hate to be vulnerable on any level.
“But I know you’re doing something to me,” Dorian said quietly. “I wondered what it was. It feels like before . . . when I wanted to go for your throat.”
“I’m sorry, Dorian. That’s not something I can help.”
Amazingly, the sentinel gave her a slow smile. “I can handle being kissed by you.”
She wanted to blush. “It’s not like that.”
“A hug, then.” He shrugged. “It feels good.”
The others frowned. Clay said, “I don’t feel any different.”
Sascha wondered how to say this but Dorian beat her to it. “Because you don’t need patching up, Clay. Right, Sascha?”
She sighed. “I think you’re a menace but yes, Dorian’s a little bit more battered than the rest of you. Once he’s up and running, my empathic gifts won’t really affect him, like they don’t really do anything to you.” The sparks healed, but on the most subconscious of levels. Dorian was only feeling them because he was so hurt.
Lucas squeezed her shoulders as she stood in front of him by the short hallway that led to the kitchen area. “We’re giving you a choice. Sascha says she can cut some of you free from the web without doing damage.”
“Tell me, Sascha,” Tamsyn said, “is it easy to slip in and out of our minds?”
“No. Every mind has a natural shield. On the PsyNet, the only open minds belonged to the exhibitionists. All of you are shut up tight. To go in without your consent, I’d have to rip you apart.”
“And kill us.” Vaughn’s eyes were almost glowing.
“Yes.” She wouldn’t lie to them, wouldn’t tell them they weren’t vulnerable to her. “Remember, I’m an empath. Causing you pain would double back on me.”
“When I took the blood oath,” Vaughn said, “I vowed to lay my life down for Lucas. As his mate, you have that same promise.”
She’d expected the loner, the jaguar, to balk. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, Sascha darling.” He prowled over to stand in front of her, tall and beautiful and dangerous. She gasped as he brushed his lips over hers. “My life is yours.” Then he was gone, a golden blur as he leaped off the porch.
Shaken by the commitment, Sascha leaned backward into Lucas. Her eyes followed Dorian as he stood and walked over.
“I’ve been yours since the day you first took my pain.” Dorian picked up her hand and kissed her fingertips, before leaving the same way as Vaughn.
Mercy uncurled from her cushion and came to stand in front of Sascha. Her stunning face was serious but there was a smile in her eyes. “Think you could find out some male secrets for me?”
Sascha smiled. “The only male I know that intimately is this one.” She turned to steal a kiss from Lucas. “And his secrets are mine.”
Laughing, Mercy hugged her. “I’m a sentinel. I vowed to stick by Lucas to death. If he trusts you, so do I. I’ll see you later—I’m going to catch up with Dorian.”
Clay, the most distant sentinel, the one who never touched her, was the one Sascha had feared most would choose to be cut from the web. She didn’t know what effect it would have on him, and had discussed it with Lucas. They’d decided to wait for the decisions before borrowing trouble.
Now the dark-skinned man came to stand in front of her. “My mind is not someplace you want to be,” he said quietly.
She felt his coolness, felt his control, wondered what lay behind it. “I’ll only come in if I’m invited.”
He touched her cheek and she knew he’d accepted. Moments later, he was gone. Nate and Tamsyn were the only ones left. The healer was grinning. “You know I’ll never say no, and Nate’s so dedicated, I think he loves our alpha more than me.”
“I resent that,” Nate grumbled. “I might love football more than you, but definitely not Lucas’s ugly mug.”
Sascha laughed at their joking, fully aware they were crazy for each other. The web spoke for itself. It was bursting with light, with rainbows, with love. “The Web of Stars,” she whispered.
“Is that what it looks like?” Lucas’s voice was a rough purr in her ear.
“Yes.” The starry plane of the PsyNet was barren compared to the Web of Stars, a cacophony of color and emotion, a web created not by need alone but by choice. Choices of loyalty, choices of love, choices of emotion. “I’ve got so much to learn.” Her powers were growing, changing,
becoming.
“We have a lifetime.”
Turning, she wrapped her arms around him and threw back her head as he picked her up to spin her around. Her laughter sparkled along the Web of Stars, flickering joy that affected every mind within it. It was small and barely aware, but at that moment, the Web was far, far stronger than the PsyNet could ever hope to be.
Contents
This one’s for my mum, Usha,
the most extraordinary woman I know.
With love.
MADNESS
Clinical insanity
.
The number one cause of death for F-Psy before Silence.
Death by insanity? For the F-Psy, it was very much a harsh reality. They became lost in the visions of the future their minds created—so lost that they forgot to eat, forgot to drink, and, in extreme cases, forgot to make their hearts beat. The Psy are their minds, and once those minds are lost, their bodies can no longer function.
But the dead were the fortunate ones. Those who broke under the pressure of the visions and yet survived were no longer sentient, no longer anything close to sentient, their minds locked in a world where the past, present, and future clashed and splintered over and over. As time fractured, so did they.
Surprisingly, the F-Psy were divided about the implementation of the Silence Protocol. Some thought it would be a precious gift to feel no emotion, for then they’d be safe from the threat of insanity, safe from the hideous illusions of their minds . . .
safe
. But there were others who saw Silence as an act of betrayal against their very gifts. The F-Psy had stopped countless massacres, saved countless lives, done endless good, but they had done it all with emotion. Without emotion, their abilities would be controllable, but crippled.
It took ten years, but the proponents of Silence won the mental battle raged across the millions of minds in the PsyNet. As a result, the F-Psy stopped foreseeing the human darkness of the future and withdrew into the sheltered walls of the business world. Instead of the saviors of innocents, they became the most powerful tools of many a Psy enterprise. The Psy Council declared their services too valuable to share with the other races and gradually, the F-Psy disappeared from public view.
It is said they prefer to remain out of the limelight.
What very few know, what the Council has hidden for over a century, is that though they are wealthy and cosseted, the once-resilient F-Psy have become the most fragile of beings. Something about their ability to foresee the tangled threads of what could be leaves them unable to function fully in the real world, necessitating constant surveillance and care.
The F-Psy rarely travel, rarely mingle, rarely function on any level aside from the mental. Some of them are close to mute, able to communicate their visions and only their visions, by scattered bursts of sound or, in severe cases, through diagram and gesture. The rest of the time, they remain locked in their Silent world.