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)
Yellow-green eyes wild and hot with anger.
Claws hard and deadly.
A touch that burned.
That false memory would not fade, would not vanish. It haunted her in her dreams, through which prowled a big cat whose form she couldn’t quite pinpoint. All she could see were his eyes glowing in the darkness…
Chapter 5
Sir, the effect of the last attempt was deleterious, with significant risk of a miscarriage. Dr. Verhoeven has strongly advised that you make no further attempts to test the theory until the fetus is born. I’m attaching his recommendation, as well as notes on Auden’s medical status.
—Charisma Wai to Shoshanna Scott (21 June 2083)
THE WOMAN WHO had once been a Councilor and was now a being far more powerful, took note of Charisma’s message, but put the documents aside until she’d dealt with a more pressing matter.
After she finally had a chance to sit down and go over the medical reports on both the fetus and Auden, she had to agree with Verhoeven’s recommendation. Auden was expendable, but Shoshanna had spent far too much time and money on the infant to put it at risk now.
Well, no matter. She could wait a few more months to test her theory again—after all, she’d waited for years already, since the day the biograft burned her daughter’s mind to cinders.
Leaning back in her chair, Shoshanna took a sip from a glass of clear liquid designed to refuel her brain. In the back of which whispered the word “mother” spoken by her true children, her Scarabs.
Soon, she promised them. My reign draws near. Soon you will be where you were always meant to be: at the apex of the Psy race.
PRESENT DAY
Chapter 6
While I do not wish to have her out of my sight, I believe we must permit this to ensure her continued cooperation. We cannot reinitiate any of the previous measures, not at this late stage. The risk to the fetus is too high.
The most important thing is to keep her calm—and the risk is manageable if she wears the biomonitors I’ve supplied. We can teleport to her if she shows any signs of medical distress.
—Private message from Dr. Nils Verhoeven to Charisma Wai (48 hours ago)
IT WAS LARK who spotted the small black jet-chopper passing over RainFire lands deep into the night hours. She was also close enough to the far northern border that she saw that same chopper come down on the small landing pad that had been put into place on their neighbor’s land a month ago—on the heels of the construction of a one-bedroom insulated cabin.
The Scotts hadn’t bothered to remove the bunker already on the other side of the property—probably too much work and effort.
“I didn’t wake you,” Lark said to Remi the next morning, “because it was just the one person. Pilot.” Biting off a piece of buttered toast, she chewed and swallowed.
The two of them were sitting at a table with Angel, another one of Remi’s sentinels. The dining aerie was fairly quiet, filled mostly with packmates coming off the night shift—it tended to be a mix of security and infirmary crew, with the odd other individual thrown in, depending on their duties.
The majority of those filling plates from the mixed dinner/breakfast spread just lifted a hand in a wave before taking their plates to find solitary corners—or tables with other cats who also didn’t want to talk just yet.
With cats, you had to respect the need for time alone.
Then there was Lark, who had obviously been a bear in a past life. Elfin face, petite frame, midnight skin, and a delicate pixie cap of hair that was a vibrant pink today thanks to her wholesale love of dyes that didn’t last through a change into leopard form, Lark loved company as much as she loved sharing gossip.
“I couldn’t get any specifics,” she added now, “because of the way our neighbors constructed the landing pad right behind the house. Pilot got out and walked straight in via the back door.”
Remi didn’t scowl at the idea of sleeping through a possible threat; a good alpha trusted the people he put into senior positions. An alpha who tried to micromanage predators like those in RainFire would soon find himself alpha of nothing. Cats did not fuck around with idiots who wanted to put them on a leash.
Considering Lark’s intel, he took a drink of his orange juice. “You sure it was only one person?”
“Yep. They were piloting one of those tiny hoppers meant for short-distance flights. Clear glass dome. Only space for two inside, and I saw a single silhouette.”
“They probably took off from the outskirts of Sunset Falls,” Angel murmured, his black hair tumbled after the night and his cheekbones as striking as ever. “There’s that small hangar and attached runway where out-of-region folks can park private air vehicles for when they visit this part of the Smokies.”