Hostage to Pleasure

Sascha nodded but her heartbeat was ragged. Because lying there, Ashaya looked very small, her color faded, her body almost lifeless. “Tammy?” The changeling healer could do more than any medical doctor-for Dorian at least. But Ashaya was connected to him, so if he improved, so would she.

“Should be here soon,” Vaughn answered from the doorway, having come in to hug Faith. “She and Nate were on their way to drop the cubs at playgroup when I called.”

After Vaughn left to take up his watch again, Faith sat down on a chair beside Ashaya’s bed. “When I saw the shooting, it was strange-one of those new visions.”

Sascha perched on Dorian’s bed, holding his hand. Faith had curled her own hand around Ashaya’s. Letting them know they weren’t alone. It mattered, Pack mattered. “One of the ones that’s not clear-cut?”

Faith nodded, but waited as Lucas made a motion to head out the door. “I’m going to check the body.” His mouth was a flat line.

“Mercy tore out the assassin’s throat,” Faith murmured.

“Saves me having to do the job.” With that, Lucas was gone.

“She took her cue from Dorian,” Faith explained to Sascha, having heard this from Mercy when the sentinel first arrived at the hospital, “began running as soon as he did. She was right behind the shooter, managed to use her claws to bring him down.”

Sascha was an E-Psy, but she couldn’t find any pity in her heart for the shooter. Because that man had hurt her family, her pack. “Good.” A pause to get her anger under control. “Tell me about the vision.”

“I saw the shooting,” Faith said with the quiet strength of an F-Psy who saw more than most people could imagine. “Then there was a sort of grayness that came down across it all, a kind of misty fog. I could hear garbled voices, glimpse bits and pieces of movement, but nothing concrete.”

“Things in flux.” Sascha looked from the fallen sentinel to his mate. Then her eyes drifted beyond. Releasing Dorian’s hand, she walked over to Amara Aleine’s bed. “Ashaya had to choose, that’s why. If she hadn’t accepted the bond, we’d have lost him.”

She forced herself to take Amara’s hand. Whatever she was, she was also a sentient being. And, “She made a choice, too,” she said, trying to order the fragments of memory. It had been chaos in the Web of Stars as the mating bond snapped into place, then dragged Amara in with it. “She tried to save Ashaya.” Amara had been ready to sacrifice her own life for her twin’s.

A broken kind of love, but love nonetheless.

“Forecasting stock reports was never this heartbreaking.” Faith rubbed at her temples again. “I almost forgot-in the last vision I had, before the grayness came down, I saw Amara, too. The darkness around her-the taint of the DarkMind-it was gone.”

Sascha closed her eyes. “I can see her in the Net, and you’re right-there’s nothing sticking to her.”

They both considered that. Faith blew out a breath. “The other man I saw. He was always a killer-the DarkMind only made him worse.”

“Amara’s never killed,” Sascha murmured.

“So now, is she-”

“Good?” Sascha shook her head. “No, there’s still an emptiness in her, still the presence of the seed the DarkMind used to get into her psyche. But… let’s just wait and see.”

Faith nodded. “Why do you think the DarkMind couldn’t follow her into our web? The NetMind can.” Sascha saw Faith realize the answer even as she spoke. “Because it’s caged. The Psy do everything to contain their darker emotions, and so the DarkMind is trapped.”

“Yes.” Something else clicked in Sascha’s brain. “I wondered how Ashaya managed to remain undiscovered in the Net, especially after she met Dorian. The mating dance simply doesn’t allow for emotional distance.”

“So why wasn’t the force of it leaking out into the Net and giving her away?” Faith’s eyes shifted from night-sky to obsidian. “Of course. If some sets of twins are becoming direct reflections of the twinning in the Net, and the DarkMind is attached to Amara-”

“-then the NetMind is attached to Ashaya. It’s probably protected her for a long time. It’s why no one ever saw her as a rebel threat.” Sascha looked at the two women lying in adjoining beds. Identical and yet not. Twin expressions of the split in the PsyNet. It made her wonder if reconciliation was even possible. Or had the Net been irrevocably damaged?

Dorian came awake to the awareness that he was surrounded by Pack. They were everywhere in the air around him. But cutting through that familiar warmth was a shining presence that sang to his soul. His leopard uncurled and he turned his head. “Shaya.” There she was, so beautiful.

Her color vibrant, she lay curled up on her side, head pillowed on one hand. Sleeping. Safe. His remembered terror at seeing the gunman inches from her face made him want to bare his teeth and growl. Unable to lie still, he struggled to sit up. He was mildly surprised when no one jumped out to stop him. Taking advantage of his good fortune, he swung his legs over the side of the bed.