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)
Daughter of two ruthless high-Gradient telepaths, Auden Scott is not the child her Psy parents wanted or expected, even before her brain injury. Her thoughts are scattered, her memories fuzzy—or just terrifyingly blank. The only thing she knows for certain is that she must protect her unborn baby . . . a baby she has no recollection of conceiving and who draws an unnerving depth of interest from her dead mother’s closest associates.
Leopard alpha Remi Denier is a man driven by the primal instinct to protect. Protect his pack, protect his allies . . . and protect the mysterious woman who has become a most unlikely neighbor. With eerie eyes that see too much and a scent that alters in ways disturbing and impossible, Auden Scott is the enemy . . . but nothing about this strange Psy is what it seems, and Remi’s feline heart is as fascinated by her as his human half.
Then Auden asks Remi to help her shatter the wall of secrets that is the Scott bloodline. What they unearth will reveal a nightmare beyond imagination. This time, the battle is to the death.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Bloodlines
GENETIC INTEGRITY.
A cold ideal, but one to which certain Psy families committed during Silence. It was believed that the more intensely curated the genetic line, the more powerful the abilities of the children born into that line. As such, potential partners in the creation of the next generation were investigated for any and all anomalies, only the most tightly controlled of the other genetic lines in the PsyNet allowed to intermingle with theirs.
It worked.
Over the more than one hundred years since the inception of the Silence Protocol and the subsequent elimination of emotion from Psy lives, this subgroup of families have refined their bloodlines to such genetic perfection that all their children are high-Gradients. Their cells carry no “extraneous” material that could initiate an unexpected result. There are no genetic leaps, no extraordinary new gifts, but on the flip side, there are no low-Gradients who will be a drain on the family’s resources.
Unfortunately, these families did not allow for a trifecta of wild cards.
First: the unpredictability of nature.
Second: the continued inability of the Psy race to pinpoint the exact genesis of their mental abilities on a biological level.
And third: the interference of those who believe themselves better than their fellow Psy—their own families included. Because for a super minority within this “flawless” minority, genetic perfection isn’t enough. A high-Gradient child isn’t enough. Even power far beyond that of the vast majority of the population isn’t enough.
Dominion over all sentient beings is what they crave.
Power so unqualified that it is a drug.
FIVE MONTHS AGO
Chapter 1
“Stand down. I have your squadmate in the truck.”
—Remington Denier, alpha of RainFire, to Aden Kai, leader of the Arrow Squad, one storm-lashed night (9 April 2082)
REMI SWORE UNDER his breath.
He’d been hoping that what he’d picked up hadn’t been conscious movement, merely branches breaking in the aftermath of the rainstorm that had passed over this part of the Smoky Mountains an hour earlier.
But what was happening on the land adjacent to his pack’s northernmost border had nothing to do with nature. Remi and his people, as well as their very dangerous friends, the Arrow Squad, had been attempting to trace the ownership of that land since two senior Arrows had woken up badly wounded in the single building that sat on the land: a flat square bunker created of old-fashioned concrete.
Back then, it had been draped in camouflage netting and dead foliage. These days, the walls were covered with moss and lichen, the concrete itself dirty and marked by exposure to the elements. Two or three more decades, and the creeping tendrils of the forest would overpower it until nothing of the bunker showed to the naked eye.
Remi would’ve been fine with that—though he’d much rather have found the owner. The Arrows knew who’d been behind their capture, but they hadn’t been able to tie any member of that group to this land. At first, it appeared the trail ended with the name of a deceased five-year-old child, but that had turned out to be just another misdirection.
Last Remi had heard, the squad’s civilian specialist had landed on another faceless shell corporation. “Whoever did the paperwork to hide ownership,” Tamar had muttered, “they were good, did all the same things I would have. Trail’s circular and eats its own tail.”
As it was, the Arrows had had to shelve the search for the time being. The PsyNet, the psychic network that connected the majority of the Psy on the planet and that the other race needed to survive, was breaking down at a catastrophic rate. The squad had focused their power and attention on that looming threat to millions of lives.
“As it is,” the leader of the squad—and Remi’s friend—Aden Kai had said, “we’ve poisoned that location for the owner, regardless. No way to run black ops out of it anymore, not when they know it’s in our crosshairs.”
Now, eyes narrowed, Remi leaned one shoulder against a mature yellow birch, its spring-green leaves a falling rain around him, and watched the small gathering in the clearing in front of the bunker: two women, three men, all of them in suits a little too lightweight for the temperature at this elevation.
The older woman—maybe in her early fifties—was a tall and very thin brunette with skin of pale brown and eyes that appeared dark from this distance. She looked to be in charge, the three men listening intently to whatever it was that she was saying.
The younger woman stood apart, her possibly curly black hair viciously contained in a knot at the back of her head, her skin an ebony that glowed even in the cloud-heavy light. She was on the taller side for a woman, maybe five eight, and wore a black skirt suit paired with a white shirt, her black heels so unsuitable for this terrain that it was laughable.