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’d shaken it off. “But it’s nothing bad. Might simply be a result of the early trauma. I can continue to keep an eye on it if…” A fading of her smile, those empathic eyes soft with pain. “Hope, right? We have to have hope. I’m going to hope that the PsyNet has one last trick in its arsenal.”
But Remi couldn’t think about the impending catastrophe in this instant of joy clawed out of the grasp of nightmare. Trembling, he pressed his lips to Auden’s curls at a time when it felt as if the whole world slept. “I miss you, Cupcake. Please wake up.”
A rasp of breath.
He jerked his head down, saw Auden looking up at him. Her eyes were muddy and unfocused…but they cleared in a slow wave. Lips parting, she tried to speak, couldn’t.
He grabbed the glass of water off the side table, helped her sip it, then put it aside and just held her tight while he fought to breathe.
Her hand spread on his heart. “How long?”
“Three days,” he said. “Just three days.” Even if it had felt like a lifetime. “You’re a fucking miracle.” He kissed those dry lips that were the most beautiful thing in the world to him. “I am so going to spank you for giving me such a fucking fright.”
Her lips curved. “I love you, too.”
He saw the knowledge of their bond in her eyes, in her smile before she said, “Liberty?”
“Hold on.” Shifting off the bed, he picked the baby up from her crib and laid her in Auden’s arms before taking his position on the bed beside her once again, his arm around her back. “You had bad internal bleeding, hemorrhages everywhere, but Bashir, that arrogant prick to whom I will forever be grateful, fixed those.”
“Explains the body aches and exhaustion.” But she was smiling and nuzzling at Liberty as she spoke. “Here I am, here I am. Yes, I know Mama was gone. I know. I’m sorry. I love you so much. I won’t ever go away again.” Her voice was soft and singsong in that way of parents with their cubs.
It melted his heart. “I’m going to make you pregnant every freaking year if you keep on being that adorable.”
A sultry smile. “I saw your fantasies.”
“I saw yours, too.” He cupped her jaw, his heart yet thunder. “You have no idea how much I want to make every one of them raw, naked reality.” Pleasure, play, whatever she wanted, he’d give her. But first of all, he’d hold her until his most primal core was convinced she’d woken, come back to him and Libby.
Auden’s eyes bled to dark, but she glanced down suddenly, whispered, “She can’t understand, can she?”
His shoulders shook as he cuddled both his girls close. “Her little ears are safe from our dirty talk, trust me.” Nuzzling at her curls, he was about to whisper a few more sweet and dirty thoughts to her just because he could, because she was awake and alive, when she jolted.
Claws out, he searched the room for threats. “Auden?”
“The PsyNet. Something’s wrong on the PsyNet.” Her voice was fast, her pitch high. “It’s falling. Crumbling. Oh my God, Liberty!”
* * *
• • •
AUDEN could see the Arrow shield above her mind, but it proved no barrier to the glittering blue spidersilk that was rising up from her own mind. It went through the shield as if it didn’t exist…and so did Auden.
When she turned back and looked, her mind remained opaque…but the spidersilk was spreading across the starlit and fractured darkness of the PsyNet at impossible speed, with her the spider at the center. Because it was a web, with the perfect framework, each fine line followed by another and another.
Radial lines ran out in every direction, going as far as the eye could see, before fading away. “It’s not me,” she whispered on the physical plane, staring down at her sweet baby, whose brown eyes now glowed a glittering blue.
Remi growled. “What the fuck is happening?”
“I don’t know,” Auden admitted even as Liberty shook her fists with no indication of psychic stress or hurt. “It’s Libby. She’s doing something through me. I think…I think it needs an adult mind to work, but it’s her power. I’m just the conduit.” She brushed her fingers over her baby’s soft cheek. “It’s a web of glorious beauty, Remi. Like it’s coated with crushed gemstones.”
“It’s a good thing?”
Despite her wonder, Auden frowned and considered it from every angle. “Yes,” she said at last. “It’s not doing harm. I think…I think it might be helping in a way I don’t understand.”
She looked at their daughter again. “What are you doing, my baby?”
But Liberty just yawned before rooting for her breast…and Auden’s milk flowed so fast that it stained her T-shirt. Laughing, crying, she pulled down the loose neckline and fed her child while her mate—and Liberty’s father—cradled them close and purred deep in his chest.