Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
StoneWater bears Pavel and Yakov Stepyrev have been a unit since birth, but now Pavel’s life is veering in a new direction, his heart held in the hands of Arwen Mercant, a Psy empath—and the only man who has ever brought Pavel to his knees.
This is it. A point of irrevocable change. For Pavel . . . for Arwen . . . for Yakov . . . and for another pair of twins whose bond has a far darker history.
A low-gradient Psy, Theodora Marshall is considered worthless by everyone but her violently powerful twin, Pax. She is the sole person he trusts in their venomous family to investigate a hidden and terrible part of their family history—an unregistered rehabilitation center established by their grandfather.
Places of unimaginable pain designed to psychically wipe minds, leaving the victims shells of their former selves, the Centers are an ugly vestige of the Psy race’s Silent past. But this Center was worse. Far, far worse. And now Theo must uncover the awful truth—in the company of a scowling bear named Yakov who isn’t about to take a Marshall at face value . . . especially a Marshall who has turned his dreams into chilling nightmares.
Because Yakov is the great-grandson of a foreseer . . . and he has seen Theo die in an unstoppable surge of blood. Night after night after night .
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter 1
Theodora, I’m being told by your handler that you’re refusing to follow orders. Do you or do you not realize that the act you’re being asked to perform is the only way in which you can ever be useful to the family?
If you continue to refuse, you become nothing but a drain on our resources, a failure of genetic potential that will need to be addressed—and do not make the mistake of believing that the fact you’re the twin of a Gradient 9 gives you a protective halo.
You are now seventeen years old, far beyond the point where the loss of one twin will in any way impact the other. Pax has long forgotten you and is thriving free from the burden that was his bond to you. You are on your own.
—Private message from Marshall Hyde to Theodora Marshall (12 December 2072)
BLOOD, THERE WAS so much blood on her. It spurted through the hands she’d clasped desperately to her throat, dripped down the bone white of her fingers to stain them a rich scarlet. Her eyes were stark when they met his. And he knew.
She was dying.
Yakov Stepyrev jolted awake, his heart thunder and perspiration hot and damp on the mid-brown of his skin. He whipped his head around, searching for her . . . but of course his room was empty.
Heart yet a bass drum, he dropped his face into his pillow and mumbled, “Govno, Yakov, you’re losing it.”
It was an effort to flip over onto his back, but once there, he couldn’t stay put. He was a bear—usually he liked to linger in the warmth of the bed while hitting the snooze button on his old-school alarm clock. Usually however, he didn’t wake with his adrenaline pumping from a violent dream about a woman who didn’t exist and had never existed.
He flexed his fingers on the sheets . . . and only then realized his bear’s claws, thick and glossy and deadly, had pushed through his skin. Fur brushed against the inside of his body, the animal that was his other half as unsettled and agitated as the human half of Yakov.
Shoving off the sheet, he gritted his teeth and managed to retract his claws, then decided to work off his frenetic fight-ready energy by doing push-ups on the thickly carpeted floor. He did pull on a pair of boxer briefs first, though. He was no blushing violet—he just didn’t want his cock kissing the carpet with every rep.
But even the strenuous physical activity did little to redirect his mind from the track on which it was fixated. Her. The woman he’d been dreaming about since he was sixteen.
Never like this, however.
Never with blood, with fear that was chill sweat on his skin.
It had been fun in the beginning, when he was a teen. He’d bragged to his fellow juveniles that he knew exactly what his mate looked like, that he was a step ahead of them when it came to the mating dance. His great-grandfather had been a foreseer, hadn’t he?
After the odd experiences both he and his twin had had over the years—when they’d just known things even when those things hadn’t yet come to pass—Yakov had been certain his dreams were a glimmer of foresight. It had made sense to him that the dreams were so powerful because they related to the woman who was to be the one for him.
His mate. His heart.
But he wasn’t a teen any longer, and he was beginning to question his sanity. The dreams had stopped for years . . . only to return with a bloody and brutal vengeance this past week. Every freaking night. Always the same dream, too—of Yakov in his bear form, walking through the mist of early morning until he realized that he wasn’t alone, was walking beside a woman with hair of softest gold and eyes of haunted blue.
She knelt beside him at some point, her hand fisted in his fur as she cried into his neck. Her tears were so hot they burned, and all he wanted to do was change form, take her into his arms. But he couldn’t disturb her in her pain, so he just folded his legs to come down to the ground, and he let her cry until all her tears were done, and she could look him in the eyes again.
“I’m sorry,” she always said, her voice husky. “It’s too late, don’t you see?”
Then, without warning came the blood, the terror . . . the dying.
Yakov’s muscles quivered as he held a plank, but he couldn’t hold back the memory of his rage in the dream, the echo of his bear’s growl of repudiation ringing in his ears.
One thing he knew—the dreams hadn’t been like this back when he’d been a kid. His mystery woman had been younger then and he’d been in his human form, and though they’d met in the same misty clearing, she’d smiled at him in delighted surprise before they’d run through the flowers like small cubs playing a game.