by Nalini Singh
Riley’s fingers played over her hip. Worried. Possessive. She leaned into him. “So what happened?”
“The impossible.” Sascha’s eyes sparkled. “The mating bond snapped into place between you two, without removing either of you from your respective webs.”
Riley stirred. “Are you saying you can see both the SnowDancer and DarkRiver networks now?”
“Not exactly.” Sascha blew on the surface of the glass coffee table to steam it up, then used her finger to draw the connections as she explained. “Lucas and Hawke have a blood bond because of the alliance, so the packs are already bonded on some level.”
Hawke shifted and Mercy’s cat picked up an edge in his movements. Not directed at anyone in the room but there. “Why didn’t our networks merge?” he asked.
Sascha looked from wolf alpha to leopard alpha. One was by the fireplace. One behind his mate. Opposite sides of the room. “Because neither of you will submit to the other.”
“Hell, no!” From two different throats.
“See.” Sascha threw up her hands. “I think a changeling network has to have an alpha at the core—and you can’t have two alphas. But the alpha-to-alpha blood bond has obviously had some psychic effect. I can’t see the wolf web,” she explained, “but I can sense that it’s now side by side with DarkRiver’s web on the psychic plane. The mating bond goes from Mercy and disappears, and since you two are mated . . .”
“It means it reappears on the other side.” Mercy thought about it. “If the blood bond hadn’t been there between DarkRiver and SnowDancer?”
“Honestly,” Sascha said, “I don’t know. Could be we’d have ended up with the same result. You’re both so dedicated to your packs—with changelings, such things seem to matter a great deal when it comes to the psychic plane.”
Riley straightened his unbroken leg. “You want us to choose.” A glance at Hawke, then back at Lucas.
“It’s necessary,” Hawke said, pale eyes intent.
Lucas nodded. “Your animals won’t like not having a concrete answer. Plus, we need it for the stability of the pack structure.”
Mercy turned to Riley and raised an eyebrow. “Okay?”
Nodding, he looked to Hawke. “I’ll stay SnowDancer, she’ll stay DarkRiver.”
“There won’t be a loyalty issue,” Mercy said. “My loyalty is to my mate first, then my pack.” It was how it had always been. Pack was built on the ties of family. And family began with mating. “Don’t ask us to keep secrets from each other.”
Lucas made a mock obeisance at her pointed reference. “As if we’d even try,” he said, rising to his full height. “Mates come first.”
Riley brushed his lips over Mercy’s hair in a caress so tender, her toes curled. “It would also,” he said, “make our domestic life easier if you two didn’t declare war against each other anytime soon.”
“Why would we do that when we now have the liaison team of our dreams?” Lucas was all but rubbing his hands. So, for that matter, was Hawke.
“I hate you both,” Mercy said without heat.
Riley put his arm around her. “Me, too.”
EPILOGUE
There was a celebration in the Pack Circle a week later, after Tamsyn and Lara had cleared both Mercy and Riley. It was a joint celebration—of the new life coming into the pack, and of Riley and Mercy’s mating.
Bas thumped Riley on the back. “Look after her or I’ll scalp you in your sleep.” A smile so feral that if Mercy hadn’t known better, she’d have thought her brother didn’t even know what a suit was, much less a financial market.
“Judd said one day it would come back to bite me,” Riley muttered, leaning on his crutches.
“He won’t hurt you,” Mercy teased. “If he does, I’ll use his kitten defurring tools on him.”
Bas showed her teeth. “I’m bigger than you. And I intend to cheat.”
Laughing, she pulled him down for a kiss on the cheek, then pushed him into the dancers. “Go make some woman’s night.” And there were a lot of them giving Bas the eye.
Grinning, he blew her a kiss and merged into the dancers. Grey, she saw with a surge of warmth in her heart, was flirting outrageously with Mia, both of them none the worse for their short kidnapping. Sage was operating a camera somewhere, recording this for Keely’s archival files.
“This is nice,” she said, leaning into Riley’s side as they stood with their backs against a large tree trunk. “Both our packs here.”
“And everyone behaving.” He nodded at the two groups of juveniles, one on either side of the Pack Circle. That the event was being held here was another step into trust. Changelings guarded their Pack Circles zealously. During Dorian’s mating ceremony, certain wolves had been invited down, but it had been a limited number.
But with Riley and Mercy’s mating, Lucas had decided it was time to extend the hand of friendship. Hawke had snarled, but he’d taken it. There was going to be another joint party up in the SnowDancer circle a month from now. However, the SnowDancer alpha had only made a fleeting appearance at this party—Mercy had a good inkling why.
“Hey, as long as they don’t claw into each other,” she said, putting the issue from her mind, “I don’t care how much they glare.”
“Poor Sascha,” Riley said, a laugh in his voice. “She can’t find a minute to herself.”
Mercy glanced over to see Sascha being offered food, drink, a blanket, suggestions for baby names, and God knows what else. Changelings adored children, but their fertility rate wasn’t as high as that of humans or Psy. As a result, any birth was cherished. And any pregnant woman was cosseted, petted, and generally driven out of her mind by the others in the pack—male and female.
As Mercy stood there, amused by the knowledge that Lucas would most certainly be getting a strip torn off his hide later tonight, she glimpsed Kit slipping off into the forest. That wasn’t unusual. He was a twenty-year-old male, after all—a gorgeous one. What was unusual was the girl holding his hand. Sienna Lauren.
Oh, shit.
Mercy was about to go after the two—if only to stop an interpack incident, when Riley said, “Look at her.”
She followed his gaze to find Brenna laughing up at Judd, her golden presence a stark contrast to her mate’s quiet intensity—but no matter what he looked like, there was no doubting the bond between the two. “They’re good together.”
Riley hugged her to his side. “Yeah, they are.” And for the first time, there were no shadows in his eyes when he looked at his sister. It was, Mercy thought, an excellent start. “God,” he continued, “I can’t believe I used to play horsie for her when she was a little bit.” He shook his head. “What games did you play with your brothers?”
“I considered Bas my own personal doll. I used to dress him up in sentinel gear and take him on raids.”
Riley laughed and it was such a rich, open sound that her leopard was enchanted. “Dance?” she asked.
He looked down at his cast. “If you don’t mind staying in one place.”
“If that’s pasted up next to you, sounds about perfect to me.”
Riley proved adept at balance. And fully capable and willing to hold on to his mate when the going got shaky.
Later that same night, tired but unable to sleep, Sascha went to the safe and took out the Eldridge book.
“Sascha?” Lucas called out. “Come pet me.”
“Only if you pet me, too.”
The response was quick-fast. “Deal.”
Smiling through her trepidation, she walked into the bedroom and lay back against her mate’s seated form. “Before we do that, I think it’s time we read this.” Because this wasn’t about her anymore. It was about her baby, too, a child who might be born with his or her mother’s gifts.
Lucas ran a hand through her hair and nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Taking a deep breath, she flipped to the first page of text.
Introduction
The E-Psy, or empaths, as they
are called in the vernacular, are something of a peculiarity. The powerful among them can heal the most devastating of emotional wounds. Folklore says they can cure insanity. That has never been proven. What has been proven is that they can certainly help people through difficult emotional times, absorbing negative emotion in a way that defies even psychic explanation.
During the course of my research for this thesis, I was privileged to interview one hundred E-Psy in the greater New York region, of which three were cardinals, twenty were high-range (Gradients 6.5-9.9), thirty-seven were midrange (Gradients 4.0-6.4), and forty were low-range (Gradients 0.1-3.9).
“Lucas, that’s a lot of E-Psy in one location. If she got that many for a thesis project . . .”
“Means there were a lot more around in the Net.”
Sascha nodded. “Backs up what Faith told us—the NetMind is hiding so many others.” Snuggling against him, she continued reading . . . and found Alice Eldridge’s thoughts mirroring her own.
E-Psy have never been rare, but not much is known about them, perhaps because we study that which we are afraid of. And no one is afraid of the empaths. After having near-constant contact with them for close to twelve months, I feel it is safe to draw the following conclusion: E-Psy are some of the warmest, most welcoming people on the planet. They are quite delightful companions and are rarely seen alone.
However, it is this very warmth and generosity of spirit that makes the other aspect, or in some cases, expression, of their ability troubling to many. It is the ethical dilemma which disquiets them the most and one I will be focusing on in the second half of this book.
Sascha broke off to look at Lucas. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“Wasn’t it you who told me nothing can ever be black or white?”
She thought about it. “Shades of gray.” She nodded. “If I was utterly good, I’d never understand badness.”
“On to the next page?”
“Oh, yes.”
Riley didn’t say a word for several minutes when Mercy mentioned the Kit-Sienna thing sometime in the wee hours of the morning. “That,” he murmured at last, “could be a problem.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“We can’t do anything about it—they’re adults.” He ran his hand down her back. “But we can keep an eye on all the players.”
“Agreed.” A laugh bubbled out of her. “Look at us, in bed and talking Pack business.”
A pause. Then, “You make my heart beat, Mercy.”
Her heart jumped into his hands all over again. He was so damn calm and he made those statements as if they were facts of life. “Riley.”
Kisses on her cheek, along her jaw. “So, how many brat-lets do you want?”
“As many as it takes to drive you insane.” Her throat was husky with emotion.
“Then one redheaded little girl should do it.”
“I love you.” Beyond the mating bond, beyond the sensual draw, she quite simply loved Riley. “More every single day.” And she didn’t care how sappy that sounded.
A slow, perfect Riley smile. Just for her.
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