ONE DAY PASSED. Two. Three. On the fourth, when nothing suspicious happened and the Rats reported no new whispers about Death Mask, DarkRiver didn’t stand down its alert, but it began to consider whether the mercenaries had simply been passing through on their way elsewhere.
Sascha hadn’t stopped living her life in the interim, but she had kept Naya in Yosemite, deep in the heart of the pack’s territory. However, that couldn’t continue forever. Her cub was missing her friends at the nursery attached to DarkRiver HQ, so Lucas had brought her in this morning. Now, at just after one-thirty, Sascha was picking her up and driving them back home so the two of them could go visit Mercy.
They were in an armored vehicle that didn’t even pretend to be anything but a protective tank. None of DarkRiver’s children would travel in anything but these for the foreseeable future. The entire fleet had been checked by mechanics when the Arrows first reported the ugly things being said about Naya; the vehicles were then assigned to families who needed to move in and out of the city.
Often they carpooled, but today, Naya and Sascha had the vehicle to themselves.
She pulled away from DarkRiver HQ’s parking lot with a wave at Lucas, who stood only a short distance away, having walked her and Naya outside. He blew her a kiss, then bent and blew one to Naya; their baby was safely ensconced in back in her special car seat that protected her while giving her a view out the windows and a clear line of sight to Sascha.
Sascha could hear Naya making kissing sounds as she blew kisses noisily back. “Bye, Papa! Bye, Papa!”
That kept her busy as Sascha merged into traffic. She wasn’t alone, of course. Dorian was in a rugged Jeep behind her, his task to escort her and Naya home. DarkRiver had made the decision not to put everyone in the same vehicle when an escort was needed; a second vehicle made it harder for anyone to mount an effective ambush—plus, it put two different sets of eyes on the road at different points.
Flashing her rear lights to acknowledge the sentinel, she smiled when he flashed his headlights in return. Then she focused on the road and on keeping Naya safe as they drove home. She’d made this journey countless times, but she never took anything for granted. Still, she had her favorite sections.
“Look at the trees, Naya,” she said as they passed through the Presidio. “Those are eucalyptus trees.”
“Eutus?”
“Yes, eucalyptus.” It was so easy to praise her child, to make her happy. She’d never understand how mothers under Silence had been able to shut down that violently powerful maternal urge. “Do you know which animals eat eucalyptus leaves?”
“Kila!”
Sascha laughed, well aware there was a good chance Naya didn’t fully understand their discussion. But her baby knew the answer after the number of times they’d passed this way—and she got just as excited every single time.
“Good girl,” Sascha said. “Koalas eat eucalyptus leaves.” As she drove, she told Naya about the marsupials and how they carried their babies in a pouch.
Naya’s mental pattern was happy in Sascha’s mind, her baby finding pleasure in listening to her mother’s voice. When Sascha ran out of koala facts, she told Naya about the upcoming DarkRiver-SnowDancer event. A few more minutes and she knew her cub would nod off. It was good timing; the nap would leave her energetic and active for the visit to Mercy and Riley’s.
They’d just passed a private driveway without incident, the curving street ahead empty of traffic, when a large truck fitted with a heavy metal bull bar roared out from that drive at high speed. It was aimed straight at Dorian’s Jeep. The sentinel managed to avoid a full-on collision with a lightning-fast turn, but it wasn’t enough.
The truck smashed into the back half of the Jeep at full speed, crumpling the powerful frame and causing Dorian’s vehicle to flip onto its side. The metal screamed as the truck’s momentum shoved it across the tarmac, sparks shooting out from the contact . . . just as a bigger armored truck roared out at Sascha from the other direction.
The gleaming black vehicle screeched to a stop across the road, blocking Sascha’s path.
She’d instinctively braked when she saw what had happened to Dorian. Now, she came to a full stop. Anything else and she’d have smashed into the armored truck in her way. An armored truck that held people who wanted to hurt her baby. Who had already hurt Dorian.
A strange calm descended on her.
“No,” she said.
“Mama?”
“It’s all right, Naya. Mama needs you to be quiet and to hold your shields tight for a second.” Even as she spoke, she was watching the doors of the truck in front of her shove open, masked men and women in camouflage gear running out with their weapons trained on Sascha’s vehicle. “Okay, sweetheart?” She reiterated her order with a psychic visual. “You understand?”
“’Kay.”
Sascha felt Naya concentrating as hard as possible on maintaining her fragile new shields. They wouldn’t hold against even a weak adult telepath, but it was another small protection. Sascha had already locked her own defenses around her child while gently blocking Naya’s ability to feel what Sascha was about to do. Naya didn’t need to know that thanks to all the developments made by empaths working together as a group, her loving empath mother had figured out how to weaponize her ability.
And she’d learned how to do it against all races.
Including the Psy mind that was currently trying to batter down her shields.
It didn’t matter that she had no preexisting psychic connection to any of her targets.
Maybe it had been inevitable that Sascha would be the one to figure it out—after all, not only had she been out of the PsyNet the longest, she lived surrounded by non-Psy minds who trusted her enough to act as her guinea pigs. And critically, she was connected to not one, but multiple non-Psy minds. Wary of giving enemies in the Net a tool against humans and changelings, she’d shared her discovery only with four other empaths, all of whom she trusted beyond any question.
None, including a fellow cardinal, had been able to repeat her success outside of the Psy race. The others could help humans and changelings in emotional pain by taking away or reducing that pain, but as soon as they tried anything aggressive, nothing happened.
They simply couldn’t tune into the right “frequency,” which was the best way Sascha had found to describe what she did when she used her ability to affect non-Psy minds. It made no difference whether the mind was human—and thus, usually vulnerable to Psy interference—or changeling, and therefore generally invulnerable to the same types of interference.
“We can’t even sense the frequency,” Ivy Jane had said to her. “When I try, I get that horrible pain I felt when I was trying to impact people without using the PsyNet.”
The others had concurred.
It had been sweet Jaya who’d said, “You figured this out after you had a baby. Maybe it’s that bond that gives you the ability.” A frown. “It could be her brain that’s allowing you to find the non-Psy frequency. Once she grows up and the mother-child bond morphs into the mother-adult child one, it may disappear.”
It was as good a theory as any, but right now, Sascha cared only that she could hurt the people—Psy, changeling, or human—who wanted to hurt her baby. It had been difficult for her to teach herself to do something that went against her every empathic instinct, but she’d promised herself she’d only ever use that aspect of her ability when there was no other choice and to do nothing would be to let evil win.
“Dor!” Naya’s sudden agitation had her twisting in her car seat, as if trying to see Dorian. “Mama, Dor!”
“Don’t worry, baby. Dorian is strong. He’s going to be fine.” The sentinel was alive; she could feel it through the Web of Stars, the same way Naya had realized something was wrong. His star was flickering on the psychic network formed by blood bonds with a pack alpha, but not badly—because Lucas was pouring energy into the wounded sentinel.
Changelings didn’t know they did that, but Sascha could see it clear as day. Lucas’s bond with his sentinel had “woken” in a golden blaze the instant Dorian was hurt. Already Lucas would be tracking Dorian’s vehicle, trying to contact him. He’d call it an instinctive awareness; Sascha knew it was an unconscious psychic link. Different from those made by the Psy but a psychic link nonetheless.
Lucas would also already be attempting to contact Sascha, but her phone was buried in the bottom of her handbag, and she’d pushed mute on the car’s mobile comm the instant the car came to a halt. She couldn’t risk an interruption to her concentration. She also couldn’t split her energies enough to reassure Lucas through the mating bond. He’d understand.
After this was over, he’d know why she’d done what she had.
All those thoughts passed through her mind in the split seconds it took her to calibrate it to send out a crippling wave of horror and terror: a concentrated dose of the worst nightmares given potent form. In front of her car, the assault team fell almost as one, their weapons lying unheeded around them as they curled up and screamed and screamed, their hands at their ears in a futile attempt to block the empathic pulse.
Two turned over onto their sides and vomited.
It was just as well that Naya wasn’t tall enough to see through the windscreen. Sascha had already opaqued the window next to Naya; she’d also blocked a large percentage of her baby’s audio channels, leaving only enough that Naya wouldn’t be scared and could still hear her mother. Now she turned to smile at her child while actually looking out through the back window to see if Dorian was still trapped inside his vehicle.
The doors of the truck that had hit him were open. One man lay crumpled by the driver’s side door, while others lay on the road between her car and the truck. They’d planned to box her in on every side. She didn’t really care about their plans; her attention was on Dorian.
Because the sentinel had managed to climb out of his mangled Jeep.
He was limping badly but was mobile.
Stopping partway on his walk to her, he lifted what looked like a phone to his ear.
When her phone rang heartbeats later, the sound dull, she snatched up the handbag she’d left on the passenger seat and dug through it with frantic hands. There! “Dorian, are you okay?”
Naya gave a big sigh of relief. “Dori!”
Focused on the sentinel as she was, Sascha felt the deep stab of pain that pulsed through Dorian as her cub’s innocent cry traveled through the line. “Sascha?” His voice was gritty.
“Yes?”
“Can you shield me?”
Her eyes widened. “How are you still standing?” She immediately pushed a shield around his mind to block out her own broadcast. “I was hoping you were too far away.” And that he’d forgive her if he caught the edge of it—she’d had to make certain she caught the assailants in the truck so they couldn’t hurt him while he was pinned down.
“I knew it was you,” Dorian said and, voice suddenly far less strained, gave her a wave. “And it was nothing like what these fuckers are apparently feeling. I’m guessing the fact you’re connected to me through our web has something to do with it.”
“I’ll come—”
“No, stay inside the car. Keep the squirt company and tell her Dori says hello.” As she watched, he nudged a fallen assailant with the foot of his injured leg. “These bastards are all down and fucked.” He sounded pleased by that. “How long can you keep it up? Should I incapacitate?” He had a gun in hand, aimed it at a pair of kneecaps as she watched.
Sweat broke out over Sascha’s spine as she thought about what she’d done and what Dorian was asking her. But she had to see this through—the threat to Naya and to Dorian remained. “I can keep it up until help arrives.” It was the first burst that took the most energy. Though she couldn’t keep up the pulse forever, or even an hour, she knew she wouldn’t need to. “Is Lucas on his way?”
“Yes,” Dorian replied. “With half the pack—from every direction.”
That proved to not be too much of an exaggeration. First, however, came multiple humans who lived in the area and who wanted to render assistance. They’d staggered out despite catching the edge of Sascha’s blast. When she quickly pulled back the radius, belatedly realizing the extent of her reach, they ran inside their homes and raced back out with rope to help tie up the assault team.
Afterward, Sascha heard that those humans had begun calling in to DarkRiver the instant they’d seen the deliberate collision. At that point, they hadn’t even realized the man inside the crushed vehicle was a leopard—they’d simply seen danger and reached for DarkRiver.
It said a lot about what the pack had become to this city.
The human residents had helped tie up three of the downed attackers when DarkRiver descended on the scene. So did Drew and Indigo. The SnowDancer couple had been in the city when they’d received the emergency alert through DarkRiver’s network of local contacts.
Teijan also arrived on a high-speed jetcycle, as did Max Shannon. Sascha hadn’t even known the ex-cop—and Sophia Russo’s husband—was in the alert network, though she should have. He was Nikita’s security chief, and for all Nikita’s flaws, she’d already proven she’d protect her child and grandchild.
“We’re fine.” She scrambled out of the car when Lucas ran to them. She’d stayed locked inside until then, both so Dorian wouldn’t worry when he had other matters to handle and so she could keep tailoring her broadcast to keep it clear of any rescuers. “We’re fine,” she repeated as his arms locked around her.
“Naya?”
“She didn’t hear or see anything. Just got a little worried about Dorian.” Her heart thumped against her rib cage, her body starting to shake. “He’s hurt.”
“Jason’s doing some first aid.” Pulling back so he could scan her for injuries, Lucas said, “After that, he’ll take Dorian straight to an ER for deep scans to ensure there are no internal injuries. Tamsyn’s been alerted.”
“Papa!”
Lucas flexed his fisted hand and took a deep, steadying breath. Then, one hand firm around Sascha’s, he leaned down to smile at Naya through the open driver’s side door. “Hello, princess. What are you doing? I thought you were heading home?”
Naya’s response was earnest and largely incomprehensible.
“Yes,” Lucas said, clearly responding more to her tone than her words. “Papa’s going to take care of it. Don’t worry.”
Naya smiled.
Lucas reached in and over to tap her on the nose before rising to his full height beside the car again. “I’ll drive you home.” It was a growl, his panther prowling behind his eyes. “Don’t argue, all right?”
“I won’t.” Sascha’s throat was dry. Her muscles felt like jelly all at once. She needed to have him close as much as he needed to be close. But before she could surrender to the need to bury herself in her mate’s arms, there was one other thing she had to do. “I have to see Dorian.”
“Go.” Lucas stayed by the car, so Naya could see and hear him as he oversaw the retrieval operation.
While Sascha had stopped her broadcast the instant there were enough people on scene to disarm and restrain the attackers, the mercenaries remained disoriented and shaky on their feet as they were thrown into DarkRiver vehicles for transport. Dorian, meanwhile, was seated in the very back of an SUV, the trunk door lifted to block out the sun while Jason patched him up.
Tamsyn had taken the young male on as an assistant after he showed an interest in studying medicine. He didn’t have a changeling healing ability but that didn’t matter if he proved himself suited to be a medic. Another doctor in the pack would take the weight off Tamsyn when it came to a number of injuries that didn’t need her specialist attention.
The interesting thing was that Jason showed no inclination to go roaming anytime soon. It was similar behavior to that of most healers—they loved being near pack too much. If they did travel, it was for short bursts only.
“Even though he doesn’t have the healing ability,” Tamsyn had told Sascha, “I think he’s a healer at heart; he’s just going to practice the drive a different way. His grades are more than good enough to get him into medical school.”
Calm and collected, the twenty-one-year-old had stopped the blood flowing from Dorian’s head wound. He hadn’t, however, had the chance to wipe away the rust red that had already run down the side of Dorian’s face. He was too busy checking the sentinel for broken bones and internal injuries using a handheld scanner.
Dorian already had visible heavy bruising on one side of his face and no doubt his body. The colors were vivid against the surfer-gold of his skin. And his white-blond hair, it was matted dark red on the side with the wound.
“Dorian.” Close to tears, she touched her fingers to the undamaged side of the sentinel’s face.
Taking hold of her hand, he pressed a kiss to her palm. “I’m fine, Sascha darling. A little busted up, but that was those bastards and that fucking goddamn truck. You can’t scare me.”
Sascha thought of the pulse she’d sent out, knew it must’ve been horrible. And still he’d fought his way out in an effort to protect her and Naya. “Can I make it up to you?”
A curious look that was so feline, she didn’t need his eyes to change to know she was talking to the cat now. “Go for it.”
He gave a startled laugh as she blanketed him in a wave of innocent happiness that tasted of all the pups and cubs that Sascha knew. “Damn, that’s good shit.” His grin was beautiful. “You could make a fortune charging for a hit.”
Having satisfied himself the sentinel wasn’t bleeding inside, Jason glanced up from taping Dorian’s ankle. “I want some.”
Sascha poured the same sensations over the younger male.
“Whoa!” He grinned, too, held up a hand. She high-fived it before looking guiltily back at Dorian.
The sentinel crooked a finger and, when she leaned in close, he dropped a soft kiss on her lips. The affectionate touch of one of her favorite packmates, it told her he really was all right. “I’m tough,” he whispered. “Go pet Lucas. He’s freaked out.”
Still shaky inside, she left Dorian and Jason with another wave of childish joy, so pure and unfettered that it made both men collapse into laughter once more. Then she walked straight back into Lucas’s arms. He held her trembling form until she could breathe again. At which point, she stroked her hands down the viciously taut muscles of his back.
“I’m unharmed and so is our daughter,” she whispered in a subvocal tone, aware of the sharp little ears in the car. “We’re not easy prey.”
“Damn straight you’re not.” A hard kiss, his claws brushing her hair and skin as he cupped her face with one hand. “Come on, mate. Let’s get our cub home—we have enough people here we can trust to keep us updated.”