Shards of Hope (Psy-Changeling 14)

Yet this girl flicked no mental switches.

Sliding out his portable organizer, he found the list of attendees at the session and eliminated them one by one until he was left with a seventeen-year-old girl who was a strong telepath, but who also had a notable ability in the rare illusion range.

The latter would be useful when it came to the abduction of victims. On the negative side, she also registered as stable and loyal to the squad.

Of course, he did, too, but he knew how to manipulate the tests. Did she?

He scanned several other files, all of teenagers who were old enough to be fully trained but young enough to mold to his specifications. But he kept coming back to the girl; she even looked like the female victims he preferred when he had a choice. Every other kind of victim was a mere snack—this specific type fed his hunger.

Brown haired, pale skinned, not slender, not overweight, with small breasts.

She was the one.

He just had to find a vulnerability, a crack.

Chapter 27

ZAIRA WOKE CURLED up on her side with Aden behind her. Even as her eyes opened, she remembered the previous night, remembered the warm flex of Aden’s chest under her exploring fingers, the taste of him under her lips, his hand in her hair. They’d come to a halt not long after he began to kiss her body, her mind overloaded by the unfamiliar influx of potent sensual sensation, but the intimacy of it had been searing.

As it was now.

She didn’t feel alone, didn’t feel lost. Not with Aden’s pulse beating strong and steady against her. Beyond that sound was the pounding barrage of the endless rain, though it sounded less powerful than before. “Aden?”

He stretched against her before curling himself around her again, one of his arms crossing her chest to close over her shoulder. When he spoke, his voice was unusually lazy. “Is it time to get up?”

Zaira wanted to say no, to stay in this warm, safe cocoon where there were no rules and she could touch him, claim him without fear—and where he could put down the responsibility on his shoulders and rest—but this was bigger than her needs or even Aden’s. It had to do with the survival of the squad. “The rain.”

Sudden alertness in the tension of his body. “I hear it.”

They got up and completed their morning routine in silence, both of them aware their secret time was close to over. By unspoken agreement, they dressed in the clothes in which they’d come to RainFire. The repairs were more than good enough to stand the test, and if the two of them were to face the outside world, they had to do it as Arrows.

“Zaira.” Aden curved one hand around the side of her face. “This doesn’t have to end here.” Quiet words containing a strength that had won the loyalty of the deadliest men and women on the planet; only today all that intensity was focused on her alone. “I don’t want it to end.” He drew her closer, his voice dropping, becoming even more quiet, impossibly more luminous with power. “I want you by my side.”

Zaira didn’t trust herself in a world without boundaries. And yet she’d never wanted anything as much as she wanted what he was offering. Perhaps she was shortchanging them both. Maybe Aden was right and she had the control to become more . . . to become his, without ending up a murderous monster drowning in rage. “We can try,” she said, taking a risk that could change everything or destroy them both. “I’ll try.”

Aden’s fingers tightened against her face, a tremor shaking his body. “Thank you.” Rough words.

“For what?” She was the one who might get to keep him.

“For giving me you.” He drew back while the staggering impact of his words was still slamming through her. “Let’s go to breakfast, find out when the changelings think the terrain will become navigable.”

Remi met them in the breakfast room. “My gut says the last of the rain will clear within the next couple of hours.”

“Land stable enough for vehicles?” Aden asked while Zaira knelt down to listen to something a pajama-clad Jojo was excitedly telling her.

Remi nodded. “The sentries have been sweeping out to survey the landscape over the past hour. So far, they’ve found nothing overtly problematic.”

Aden had a feeling it wasn’t only the sentries who’d been out; Remi had a fresh cut under his eye where a branch might’ve whipped his face and his hair was damp and roughly tumbled. More, the RainFire alpha struck Aden as a man who wouldn’t send his people out into a situation he wouldn’t enter himself.

“We can drive you out to where you can contact your people,” the other man said once Zaira rose to her full height, Jojo having scampered back to her mother. “Or we can return to where I found you, see if we can retrace your route to where you were held.”

Aden didn’t glance at Zaira before he answered. They both knew there was only one possible decision. “We go up to the bunker.”

“Be ready to move in ninety minutes. The rain should be trailing off by then.”

Finishing breakfast, the two of them returned to their aerie to make sure they were leaving everything in order. Aden then headed to fulfill a commitment he’d made to offer another training class to RainFire’s younger soldiers, while Zaira chose to remain behind. The fact was, she’d experienced several stabs of pain in her head since soon after waking.

With each stab came a hint of porousness in the thick black fog around her mind. She could almost catch glimpses of PsyNet traffic. Nothing concrete, more ghost shadows of what might be, but if she was in the process of going psychically active, she had to put herself back into the right frame of mind.