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)
The next time she “woke” it was to the awareness of a stranger nearby. An odd stranger. One who didn’t trigger any of Auden’s defenses when she inserted a thread into Auden’s locked-down mind. A touch that—how extraordinary—didn’t feel invasive but warm and considerate and wanted only the best for her.
On the structural level, the probe reminded her of her own ability. A psychometric? No, it couldn’t be. Psychometrics didn’t work with living beings.
Empaths do, murmured an undamaged corner of her mind. Psychometrics are the physical mirror to empaths.
When the probe began to withdraw, Auden halted it by wrapping a tendril of emotion around it. A hello. As quickly, she released her tendril to set the empath free. She’d never cage another creature, no matter how lonely she was inside the shell of her mind.
The empath halted…and then she began to drop sparks of emotion in a starlit highway. Auden looked at the lovely construct and, with urgency a thrumming beat in her blood, took a step forward, picked up a star.
Primal fury, raging anger, and pain. Oh, such pain.
Auden’s protective instincts surged. Who was hurting Remi? She’d kill them. And she realized she was running, gathering star after star in her arms. Sensing her baby’s confusion and grief at missing her mama alongside Remi’s pain, and Finn was there, too. He was so sad. Oh, and Rina, Rina had cried for her.
The stars overflowed her arms, but she kept on picking them up, until at last there were no more, and when she looked back, she saw that she’d run right through the survival shield her mind had thrown up to protect her. It fell away in front of her eyes, a parting curtain that revealed a mind riddled with a glittering blue spiderweb.
Oh.
A growl.
She turned, looked forward, laughed, and ran straight toward the crouched leopard who was snarling furiously at her for making him wait so long. She smashed into him with unstoppable force and he was primal heat in her mind, devotion unending, and loyalty boundless.
Remi, my Remi.
Her mate had a heart bigger than the sun, his love for her and her child—their child—a thing enormous, and his love for his pack a vastness no one but an alpha or an alpha’s mate could ever understand.
She fell even deeper into him, saw the passion and the need, the fantasies of limbs entwined and his hand around her throat, her body riding his, his mouth between her thighs. Strong hands holding her hips as he drove into her, gentler hands as he petted her down after a peak, kisses along her spine and on her throat.
Facing her now, her breasts crushed to his chest, his hand squeezing her flesh with proprietary passion.
His thoughts. His desires. For her.
Auden gasped, and knew he saw hers in turn. She felt no shame, no shyness. Because he was hers and she would allow him into any and every corner of her soul.
* * *
• • •
REMI’S head spun with the soft and the dangerous and the fierce and the protective. Pieces of Auden. She’d come to him as he held her in his arms. He’d barely felt her stir to wakefulness before she was inside him, a storm wind that brought him to his knees with her violent beauty and endless spirit.
She was love, such love. She was a warrior, ready to battle for her mate and her child. She was a lover who looked at him and saw raw masculine beauty. Images of him in motion in nothing but his skin, her hand stroking his cock, her lips kissing a path down his chest.
Then their fantasies tangled, became one, and they were kissing in a bond only mates would ever know, their hearts and minds forever linked.
Auden gasped against his chest even as tears of joy ran down Remi’s face. He didn’t fucking care. Because she’d given herself to him, now and forever. “Come on, little cat,” he said. “Open those beautiful eyes.”
Liberty made a happy little sound in the crib that sat next to Auden’s bed.
“Yeah, your mama’s back,” he rumbled to the cub. “She’s just taking her time to rise up out of her sleep.”
Jaya, the empath who’d worked with Auden earlier that day had already left, but she’d done so with a smile that glowed against the dark brown hue of her skin. “She’s tough, your Auden. I don’t know how she did it, but she’s literally rerouted her personality past any damage—and at a speed that should be impossible.”
Because she’s done it before, Remi had thought, his pride a wild thing. “Will she wake soon?”
“Within the day I’d say,” Jaya had predicted, to the shock of Dr. Bashir, who’d predicted a coma of months if not years.
“I’ve never quite seen a mind like hers,” Jaya had added. “There’s…” A deep frown. “The link to her child is profound. It’s beyond the usual maternal bond.”