by Nalini Singh
“No.” She looked up, startled at his closeness. “That would be the first word Ming LeBon would use.”
Narrowing his eyes, Dorian pulled the organizer out of reach.
“Now that’s a question I want answered. Why exactly was the Council able to keep you leashed by holding Keenan?”
She could’ve lied, but the truth, she decided, would serve as well. It would reinforce his image of her as a cold monster without any maternal feelings. She needed him to continue to treat her with disgust—because even this tiny hint of a thaw in his attitude was threatening to erode the Silence that was her only protection against Amara. “I was already working for the Council in another capacity,” she began, “when the Councilors asked for my cooperation with Protocol I. Since I disagree with the aims of the protocol, I refused. Keenan was an infant at the time and living with me.”
The tiny hairs on the back of Dorian’s neck rose in warning. Whatever was coming was going to be bad, very bad.
“One night,” Ashaya continued tonelessly, “I went to sleep in my bed and woke up in a room at the Center. I was told that my fallopian tubes had been tied.” Her expression didn’t change but he saw her hands clench on the holoframe she’d been attempting to slide quietly out of sight before he’d put her on the spot.
The gesture set all his sense to humming. It was the first true indication she’d given that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t the perfect Psy everyone believed her to be—Psy fully enmeshed in Silence never made any physical movements without purpose. Either it was an act to put him off guard, or M-Psy Ashaya Aleine had more secrets than anyone knew. There was nothing Dorian’s cat loved better than a mystery.
He turned his mind to what she’d said. “I don’t get it. It’s reversible, right?”
“The technique they chose, yes.”
“Then?”
“The point wasn’t to make me infertile,” Ashaya said with frightening calm. “The point was to teach me that they had control over every aspect of my life, including my body itself. I was told that if I dared reverse the procedure and get pregnant, they’d make sure my child was aborted.”
Fury boiled in his gut. He stared at her, somehow knowing that that wasn’t the worst of it. “And if you continued to defy them, they’d do worse?” The torture of it, of never knowing when you’d be violated, it gave him one hell of an insight into this woman’s internal strength.
“They said they would remove my uterus and cause enough scar tissue that even a cloned organ wouldn’t heal me.”
“Okay,” he said, clamping down on the need to touch her, to give comfort in the affectionate changeling way, “that leaves Keenan as your only child. But there’s no emotional connection, so why would the threat to him hold you?”
“Psy are quite fanatical about bloodlines. Did you know?”
He shook his head, intrigued by the changes in her scent as she spoke. Snaps of cold, flares of heat. As if she was fighting a silent battle to maintain her conditioning—and yet nothing showed on her face. She was a very good actress, something he’d do well to remember, he thought, even as he said, “Enlighten me.”
She seemed to take his words at face value. “We’re a race that leaves behind no art, no music, no literature. Our immortality lies in the genetic inheritance we pass on to our offspring. Without that, we’re nothing once we cease to exist. Our psychologists believe it’s a primitive need for continuity, as well, of course, for the perpetuation of the species, that makes us reproduce, though children suck up time and effort that could be better spent elsewhere.”
Smart words, cold words, but her tone was just a fraction off. “So that was all they had on you—if you didn’t cooperate, there goes your genetic legacy?” Perhaps the Council had believed her motivation, but Dorian had seen her bleeding and wounded… and the only thing she’d cared about was whether Keenan was safe.
“No, there goes my immortality.” She refused to break their locked gazes and the leopard approved. “You have no hope of understanding,” she added. “You’re changeling.”
He scowled. “We love children.”
“Children are commodities,” she corrected. “Keenan, by virtue of being the single child it appeared I would ever produce, gained a higher market value. He was worth enough to me that I agreed to the Council’s demands.” She could’ve been talking about stocks and bonds. “Now that I’m out of their reach, I’m free to bear other children. Keenan is no longer important.”
“Callous,” he said, but he was watching that betraying hand. Those clever scientist’s fingers were wrapped around the edge of the holoframe so tightly that bone pushed white against the thin membrane of her smooth, coffee and cream skin. “Except for one thing—why did you go to so much trouble to get Keenan out if you don’t care if he lives or dies?”
A minuscule pause. “Because I knew changelings would be more inclined to help me if I showed some kind of an attachment toward a child.” She looked down and began to shift things in the pack, finally releasing the holoframe. “I knew I’d need changeling assistance in certain matters, and your race’s attitude toward the young is well-known.”
What a load of crock. Dorian smiled behind her back, and it was a smile that held a bite. He’d caught the first hint of the true scent of his prey. Now it was a case of hunting her down until he could work off the fire in his blood, the darkly sexual craving in his gut. Because if sex was the only way to fight this, he’d swallow his damn principles and take her. Once he’d indulged the need, it would most likely abate.
She blinked those big brown—wrong color, the cat growled—eyes. “May I attempt the password now?”
“By all means.” He echoed her arch tone, but his mind was busy going over everything she’d said and done since that night two months ago. An intricate game of subterfuge? Or something more intriguing? “Here.”
Put on guard by his easy cooperation, but wanting to check if she was right, Ashaya went with her first instinct and used the touch screen to input a single word: ILIANA. The screen cleared. “Not difficult after all.”
“Who’s Iliana?”
“An entomologist who specialized in the medicinal properties of insects—her philosophies had a big impact on my own work,” she said, and it was a truth.
“Not exactly the hardest thing for anyone familiar with your work to figure out,” he muttered. “And it’s a single word—so easy to hack, my great-granny could do it.” Turning the device toward himself again, he sat down cross-legged and brought up the menu. “Huh. Lots of applications but no files. No wonder they put in such a hopeless password.”
“I’ve heard this new line of organizers requires a password before any usage.”
Dorian nodded. “You’re right—they must’ve put one in so they could add all these specialist medical programs.”
As his fingers moved over the screen, she realized something. “You know more about the functions than I do.”
“I bet you just know how to use one or two programs.” His smile was bright, teasing, and so unexpected, it sneaked in through her defenses.
Amara’s voice, through a rain of white noise. Unintelligible. But getting closer.
Shoving away the brilliant temptation of Dorian’s smile, she brought up the familiar image of a sheet of ice crawling over her mind, Silencing everything in its path. “I know how to utilize the aspects of the device that relate to my work.” She began to take out the other things in the pack, making an inventory as she progressed. It only took a couple of minutes. She was about to repack when Dorian said, “You forgot the holoframe.” There was a very catlike glint in his eye.
Realizing there was no rational reason to continue hiding it, she pulled out the frame and pressed the On button. An instant later, an uncountable number of light particles came together to form a three-dimensional image of Keenan as a baby. The person holding him—a woman with pale blue gray eyes, curly dark brown, almost black hair, and mocha skin—looked straight at the camera. Her ga
ze spoke of the Arctic.
“Who the hell is that?” Dorian asked.
It was an unexpected question. “It’s me, of course.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
Dorian was uncomfortably close, his body a heated wall, but she couldn’t move away. “It looks exactly like me.”
He snorted. “And I’m the fucking tooth fairy.”
She stared at the image, unable to escape the truth—her secrets were beginning to escape. And this particular secret would find her sooner or later… then one would die, and one would live. “This is Amara,” she said. “My sister… my twin.”
CHAPTER 11
Amara didn’t know how Ashaya had done it, but her sister had literally died for a period of time. Amara wasn’t pleased her twin had given her no warning of the plan—the psychic trauma from the disconnect had left her unconscious for hours. That was how Ming LeBon had managed to track and capture her without a fight.
Now, he stared at her from the other side of a glass wall. “Your sister is gone, dead.”
Amara smiled, aware it irritated Ming to see her parroting human and changeling emotions. He knew nothing. Amara was connected to Ashaya on a level beyond the PsyNet. Nobody had ever discovered that link and as far as Amara was concerned, it wasn’t something that could be permanently destroyed by anything other than death. True death.
“Good,” she said. “I always hated the competition.”
“Hate and love are emotions.”
She shrugged. “Semantics.” What she felt for her sister, it couldn’t be defined, couldn’t be put into one of the nice little boxes preferred by the Psy. “I am who I am.”
“A failure.”
“Ouch.” She put her hand over her heart, pretending shock.
“You know, Ming,” she said in a stage whisper, “you shouldn’t throw stones—you’re a cold-blooded murderer.”
“You broke Silence. Your emotions control you.”
Amara smiled again, slow and dark, well aware there was nothing but emptiness in her eyes. “Are you sure?” Ming was attempting to use psychological warfare on her, treating her as if she really was insane. Perhaps she was, but she was also highly intelligent and more than capable of seeing through his attempts to undermine her self-confidence. “What do you want, Councilor LeBon? What need is great enough that you’ve hunted down the rabid wolf you once called your pet?”
Ming’s eyes faded to pure black, an eerie darkness that Amara was used to seeing in the mirror. “You’re the only one capable of completing your sister’s work. You must conclude what she began. Finalize the Implant Protocol.”
“So little?” She smiled again, showing teeth. “Consider it done.”
CHAPTER 12
I heard the sniper’s voice against my ear when I woke today. He whispered sensual promises so savage, I can hardly believe these thoughts come from some corner of my own psyche. And yet they must. Because, at the end, he called me prey.
And told me to run.
– From the encrypted personal files of Ashaya Aleine
Half an hour after waking, Ashaya snapped on a pair of thin latex gloves included in her first aid kit before heading into Mercy’s kitchen and beginning to open cupboards.
“That’s not polite.” The drawled warning made her glance over her shoulder.
Dorian had been fiddling with the organizer’s security codes for the past thirty minutes, giving her time to clean up and consider her next move. She’d expected him to push for more information about Amara, but so far, he’d remained quiet. She wasn’t fooled—leopards were masters at stalking prey. “I need some household chemicals.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Try under the sink.”
She did so and found most of what she needed. Aware of Dorian’s interested gaze as he came to stand in the entrance to the kitchen, she found a bowl and began mixing the chemicals together. “Would you mind getting me the pale blue tube from my first aid kit?” She expected a refusal, but he left and came back with cat swiftness. “Here.”
“Thank you.” She emptied the pure alcohol into the mix.
Dorian stepped closer, until he was leaning against the side of the counter, his arm braced on the upper level, while she worked on the lower level. She couldn’t help but note that despite his white-blond hair, his skin was golden, as if it tanned easily.
He peered at the mixture and sniffed. “Smells acrid, bitter.”
At that moment, he appeared more feline than ever before. Once, she’d had a neighbor’s domesticated cat sneak into the house she’d called home before the Council moved her to a lab—the creature had watched her experiments with the same fascinated expression.
Not sure how to take his continued lack of aggression, she fell back on Psy practicality. “You’d be surprised at how caustic household chemicals can be, especially when mixed with each other in a selective way.” She shook the bowl gently and saw it was beginning to scar on the inside. “I’ll pay Mercy for this.”
“Don’t worry,” Dorian murmured. “It’s not expensive—I can smell the strength of your brew. Whoa!” His exclamation had her looking down.
The mixture was bubbling.
“Excellent.” Taking the bowl, she carried it carefully into the bathroom, put it in the sink, and pulled out the tissue-wrapped chip from her pocket. “May I borrow your timepiece?”
He snapped it off and handed it to her. An instant later, he gave a horrified shout as she opened the tissue and dropped the tiny piece of hardware hidden inside into the caustic mix. “Jesus, woman!” His hand clenched on her upper arm—the flesh bare since she’d showered and changed into a short-sleeved tee. “What the hell—?”
She forced herself to speak with Psy calm, even as her heart rate skyrocketed. “Twenty-four hours prior to my defection, I coated the chip with a protective layer so it would survive my stomach acids.” She’d put the poison over it, and protected that with a weak substance that would be destroyed the minute the chip touched her mouth. “It made the chip nonfunctional. I need to clean off the coating to get to the data.”
Dorian moved closer, his hand still on her arm, his thumb moving absently against her skin. She almost missed his next words, she was so focused on the stark intimacy of skin-to-skin contact. A normal human or changeling interaction. Except she wasn’t human or changeling. She was Psy. She hadn’t been touched that way… ever.
“How will you know when it’s done?”
She picked up the tweezers she’d found in the small cosmetic set in her pack. “Release me.” As soon as he did, she retrieved the chip and put it on a soft face towel.
“I used your watch to time it,” she explained, returning the timepiece. “The final parts of the solution will evaporate within the next minute, ensuring no moisture damage.”
Dorian left without a sound.
Putting the sudden move down to feline capriciousness, she focused on the chip. It contained data the Council would kill for. And not all of it had to do with the Implant Protocol. Now, she just had to survive long enough to—Her head jerked up as Dorian’s wild energy washed over her, through her. Her eyes dropped to his hands. “Messing with someone else’s property is rude in any culture,” she commented, trying not to think about the implications of her extreme sensitivity to his presence.
“Oops.” He smiled and there was something different about it, something… playful. “Here.” He handed her the organizer he’d pretty much taken over.
“Charm is wasted on me.” A lie. Charm, anger, or outright hostility, something about Dorian touched a part of her that hadn’t seen daylight since those lost hours on the day of her seventeenth birthday.
His smile widened. “Come on, Ms. Aleine. I want to see if that chip still works. I’ll even say please.”
“You have a very catlike curiosity.” She’d never spent much time around changelings, was unprepared for how unlike a human—in the broader sense—he acted. “Do you exhibit human characteristics in leopard form?”
The charm faded away to leave his face expressionless. “I wouldn’t know. I can’t shift.”
She halted in the process of sliding off the back of the organizer. “That’s not normal.”
He blinked, then burst out laughing. Again, the reaction was not what she would’ve predicted, having realized too late that her bluntness would probably be taken as an insult.
“Yeah, that’s me,” Dorian said, the grin creasing his cheeks turning him from beautiful to devastating, “an abnormal freak.”
He confused her. She knew how easy it would be to change that. All she had to do was unlock the emotional center of her brain, give up Silence, and accept emotion. Yes, there were pain controls built into the conditioning, but she had a passive ability and her scientific instincts told her that the more active the ability, the higher the pain. The Tk, aggressive Tp, and exceptionally rare X designations would probably suffer the most.
Of course, as far as she was concerned, the point was moot—for her, the pain would be negligible if perceptible at all… because the controls were already rotted away. One moment of decision was all it would take to break the shackles that remained. Then she could be a mother in more than name only. Then she could find a way to comprehend this leopard in front of her.
So easy.
And impossible.
She’d spent years determined to maintain total Silence for a reason, had succeeded so well that she’d fooled Ming LeBon himself. She’d even fooled herself, until—
A hand waved in front of her eyes. She blinked. “I apologize,” she said, scrambling to rebuild the wall of lies that had kept her alive this long. “I occasionally become lost in thought.”
Dorian watched her with disconcerting intensity. She wondered what he saw. But all he said was, “Switch the chips.”
She did so, then slid the cover back on. Dorian held it for her while she stripped off her gloves. When she took it back, she found herself staring at the blank screen for several seconds. If she’d made a mistake, the game would be over before it began. Evidence was crucial. Otherwise the Council would squash her like a bug.