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)
“She’s hemorrhaging badly—I’ve only temporarily stabilized her.” Dr. Verhoeven hovered over Auden. “I can—”
But Remi had already scooped her up in his arms and was racing out at a speed no Psy could ever match. He wasn’t surprised to find Rina running toward him in leopard form. The sentinel would’ve felt it when he leaned so heavily into the pack the instant he’d felt he could get to Auden through a bond strange and oddly young.
He’d known then that his team were fine. None of them had leaned on him in turn, had just given and given.
“Teleport!” he yelled at her—and hoped the Arrows would have the capacity to help them. Because if they didn’t, then he would have to trust Auden to the same doctor who’d caused her harm after harm. “Dr. Bashir!”
Changing direction, Rina raced back up.
The hatch was open when he reached it; Wai or the doctor must’ve left it open in their rush, giving Rina an easy entry. Lift must not be DNA encoded. Whoever had installed the security system had probably considered it overkill when entry was so difficult.
He took the final stairs three at a time.
It wasn’t an Arrow who waited for him in the basement—alongside Rina who’d shifted back into leopard form after making the call for the teleporter’s assistance.
Remi hadn’t even known she had this particular number.
Kaleb Krychek didn’t speak, and didn’t wait for Remi to reach him. Remi was mid-run when he emerged into the center of a high-tech treatment facility, Krychek and Rina at the same distance from him that they’d been in the basement.
Fuck.
He got it, what people meant when they called Krychek a power.
Shoving that realization aside, he put Auden on the stretcher Dr. Bashir himself was pushing into the room. The surgeon might not know much about obstetrics, but he’d had plenty of training in trauma injuries thanks to his links to the Arrows, and he got to work on Auden at once.
Remi refused to leave the room, but shuddered back against the wall while the medical staff worked.
Krychek’s starlit obsidian eyes stared at Auden with an intensity that had Remi snarling.
The cardinal turned to him. “It’s not her,” he said almost to himself. “Then why?”
“That’s Auden,” Remi said, wondering if Krychek had responded to save Shoshanna.
His claws pricked his skin.
But Krychek said, “I know.” Then he was gone.
“I forgot how…intense he can be,” Rina said, her chest heaving now that she’d shifted into human form. “I didn’t call him. He arrived before I could even get to a phone.”
Remi had no fucking idea what was going on, and he didn’t care. All he knew was that Auden was alive. “The others?” he asked, his alpha heart unable to rest until he knew.
“Safe. Scott team had no idea how to fight against trained changelings. They thought they’d be fighting dumb animals and ended up facing a tactical team better organized and more skilled than them. Lark is holding the house with the others and will clean up whatever is in the basement.”
Remi nodded, his eyes on the medical team, and—his heart no longer torn in two now that he knew his people were safe—slid down to the floor, back braced against the wall.
Stars in his peripheral vision as Rina shifted back into her feline form, so she could lean her body against his chest. As if she’d sensed he needed the comfort of pack in a way she could better provide in this form.
“I got to her,” he rasped, his packmate’s fur a thick gold and black under his hand, and the warmth of her body a caress of family. “Like I can get to you or Angel or the others when you need pack energy.”
Zaira thought it was a type of psychic ability Psy didn’t understand. Remi didn’t think about what it was, just that it worked. An alpha’s heart reaching for his people when they were wounded and in pain…but it could work in reverse, too.
“We’re not mated,” he said. “She wouldn’t allow it. Said her mother might be able to use the bond to get through to me, then RainFire.” The hollow inside him where Auden was meant to be ached. “But I still got to her. You felt it.”
The leopard nodded, a question in that wild gaze.
“It felt so young, the bond, somehow unfinished and fuzzy.” He smiled, his aching heart roaring in pride. “Libby. Sweet, ferocious cub as tough as her mother. Bonded to me through blood.” Others could take charge of figuring out how a child could be blood-bonded to a changeling alpha, and still be linked to the PsyNet, but he had no doubts about the bond after today.
Liberty wasn’t old enough to have made a conscious choice in reaching for Remi. No, like any cub in the pack, she’d run to her alpha when she was scared—and her alpha had held her safe in his clawed embrace as he fought off the monsters.