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)
But near certain wasn’t complete certainty. And the Mercant family’s lives weren’t the only ones at stake. Snuggling a half-asleep Dima to her, she thought of all the people with whom she worked on a day-to-day basis, all the good, honorable people who might have no way out.
And the children…
Silver squeezed Dima tight enough that he grumbled little bear grumbles in his sleep. Softening her embrace at once, she kissed his head. If she could, she’d hold all the children of the PsyNet in her arms, give up her life for theirs. Her bear mate, with his huge heart, would do the same. But that wasn’t how it worked, no exchange of lives on the table.
The entire world had stepped up to the plate in the past weeks, when the collapse of the PsyNet had gone from a slow erosion to a sudden oncoming crash. Changelings, humans, the Forgotten, they’d offered to assist in any way possible, but the reason the PsyNet existed in the first place was that it needed to exist.
Even if every one of the contingencies—even the most unlikely—worked as intended, they’d be left with a shortfall of millions.
Millions of lives. Millions of hearts. Millions of deaths.
Hiding her face in Dima’s soft fur, Silver Mercant, ice queen to many and beloved mate to Valentin, cried tears silent and hot.
Chapter 47
Jaya, sweetheart, I have a patient for you. Coma as a result of bodily trauma and insult to the brain. I know things are difficult right now, but if you have even a couple of minutes, I think you could help her as I can’t.
—Message from Sascha Duncan to Jaya Laila Storm (21 November 2083)
“I’M GOING TO put our cub in her carrier for a little bit so she can warm up.” A deep rumble of a voice familiar and beloved. “Libby doesn’t need the incubator anymore, but Finn wants me to use this carrier in short bursts during her visits with you.”
Auden felt the loss of skin-to-skin contact like a limb being cut off, the small warmth on her chest suddenly gone…but the loss was so deep because her joy had been even deeper. Remi had brought her baby to her. She knew it had been him even before she’d heard the rumble of a purr against senses dulled and wrapped in cotton wool.
Our cub.
He’d claimed Libby, would protect her with his life. Libby would never know loneliness, would never be treated as disposable, would never wonder why she wasn’t good enough. She’d grow up loved—by an entire pack, but most of all, by the man who owned Auden’s heart.
At times, she could feel claws against her shields, his leopard wanting to enter. She wasn’t holding him back, didn’t have the power. Her mind was just broken, the shields that held him out the final desperate act of a psychometric bent on survival. Thick, almost tactile shields that had gone up the instant she began to slip into unconsciousness.
The thought started to whisper out of her grasp almost before it had formed, another wave of exhaustion rolling over her. Driven by a sense of vital urgency, she’d struggled against the waves at the start, only to find it tired her out and led her to sink even deeper into the dark, into a place where she could sense nothing.
Now she let the waves sweep her along, and she slept.
She had no idea for how long, but she knew Remi was there when she surfaced. His voice vibrated in her bones and made her want to curl up against his body so the sense of him could cover her all over. And then…Oh, my baby. Love poured out of her, rising through the dark to encompass the child Remi had placed against her chest.
Liberty’s tiny hands flexed against the shield, but that shield wouldn’t open even for her.
Auden cried inside, wanting to hold her baby close, but knowing her mind wasn’t a safe place for Liberty. Too many shattered and sharp edges, too many tangled threads. I love you so, my baby.
A brush of a rough hand on her cheek, cupping her face with protective warmth.
Her chest swelled with love as ferocious as the leopard who was hers.
She knew he was speaking to her, but couldn’t make out the words through the thickness of cotton inside her mind. And that mind, it was fading again even as the urgency pounding at her got louder and louder.
A faint voice that wasn’t a voice—not her own, not her mother’s ghost—was pleading with her to wake. It didn’t have words, didn’t speak, but she understood that it was dying and it needed her to wake. Auden tried but her bruised and battered mind couldn’t hold on, not even when the entity that spoke to her tried to offer her its very life in exchange for the unknown thing it needed from her.