"Thank you."

Quiet. But it was a quiet unlike any she'd felt in the Net, filled with emotions that battered at her conditioning with unrelenting force.

The door to the cabin swung open even as she fought to maintain her death grip on Silence. "Dorian? Who's that with you?" The speaker was female, her hair a vibrant red that touched the curve of her spine.

"You didn't get a message from Vaughn?" The sniper - Dorian, his name is Dorian - all but carried her inside the cabin and put her in a chair in front of the fireplace. His words might've been harsh, but he was careful with her, almost... gentle.

The female closed the door, frowned. "No, I just got back from - She's Psy!"

"Keenan's mother." When he returned his attention to Ashaya, the absolute blue of his eyes felt like flames licking at her, a weapon against which she had no defense. "She's injured. Needs stitches." The words were bitten out.

"Get me the kit. You know where it is." The woman moved to Ashaya. "Name's Mercy."

Ashaya fought the impulse to turn, to keep Dorian in her line of sight. He was dangerous to her in every way that mattered, and though he'd saved her life tonight, she wasn't sure he'd continue to let her live. "You're a medic?" she asked Mercy, even as she listened for the sound of Dorian's return.

"No, but I've had some extra training." She bent down for a quick look. "No use unwrapping that before I have tools in hand. You mind a scar? Can always get it removed later."

Dorian returned, kit in hand. "You're alive," he said with a shrug that was as feline as the way he walked - a grace that held a lethal promise. This man would make a pitiless enemy. "I wouldn't complain."

"No." She wondered whether he'd have shrugged as negligently had he found her mauled body tonight. Likely. "All that matters is that the leg works."

"It will. Dorian, can you...?" Mercy jerked her head in the direction of the sofa.

Dorian moved without argument to expand the compact piece of furniture into a bed. Mercy covered it with a thick sheet, then made as if to help Ashaya. But Dorian was already there, his arm strong and hot around her waist, the heat a vivid indication of his wild changeling energy. "You're not as bony as most Psy in the Net."

She'd studied emotions, understood them better than others of her race, but she didn't know how to answer him, how to comprehend the nuances in his voice, the strange gentleness of his hold. So she stuck to the truth. "Metabolism and genetics." As she spoke, she realized the implications of the distinction he'd made - between Psy in the Net and those outside it.

"On your stomach," Mercy said as they reached the bed. Once she was in position, the other woman gave her a pillow for her head, then placed several towels under her right tibia. "This is going to be rough and ready but it'll get you in shape. You can get one of your people to look at it later."

Ashaya heard something rip, and realized the redhead had torn away what remained of her pants leg from the knee down. "I don't have a people."

"Huh." A quick movement and the bandage fell away. "Lynx. They don't usually attack humans. What did you do to piss them off?"

"I believe they thought I was food."

Dorian made a sound of disagreement. "I think I saw signs of kittens nearby."

"I see." And she did. "They were protecting their young." She pressed her face into the pillow as Mercy probed the wound with a tool she couldn't see.

"Sorry - you want an anesthetic?"

"No," Ashaya said immediately. "Psy bodies don't handle anesthetics well."

"I thought I heard Sascha mention something like that."

Suspicion gelled into knowledge. "You're part of DarkRiver." The leopard pack that had two Psy members, one of whom was Sascha Duncan, daughter of Councilor Nikita Duncan.

"That's no secret," Mercy said but Ashaya sensed a rise in the tension blanketing the room - after a lifetime spent negotiating the cutthroat waters of the Council substructure, her survival instincts were razor sharp.

Dorian's voice sliced through the tension with the lethal efficiency of a steel blade. "Put yourself under." It was an order.

One Ashaya chose not to obey. She was already so vulnerable. If she put herself into the trancelike state that was the Psy version of anesthesia, she'd be placing her life totally in their hands. Preferring to remain conscious, she gritted her teeth and buried her face in the pillow. The choice, she told herself, had nothing to do with the fact that it was Dorian who'd given her the command.

Dorian's eyes narrowed at Ashaya's defiance. "She's not out." He was certain she couldn't hear him. Her withheld screams had to be a solid wall in her ears.

Mercy didn't stop what she was doing. "Her choice. She's keeping her leg immobile, that's all that matters."

"And people call me hard." He shoved his instinctive urge to protect into flippancy, but his hands curled, claws scraping inside his skin. The leopard was still agitated, still trying to break through the human shell it had never managed to shed. The choking need to shift was something he'd learned to live with - he'd had no choice, having been born latent - but the hunger hadn't been this bad since childhood. One more thing to blame on Ashaya Aleine. "Would you like a hacksaw, Dr. Frankenstein?"

Mercy scowled at him. "Let me concentrate. Med school was a long time ago, you know. And I only went for a couple of years."

He grunted but didn't interrupt again. As she worked, he found himself unable to move from his position beside the bed, the leopard insisting he watch over Ashaya. But even that obstinate cat understood she was nothing like the two Psy women he knew and respected. Both Sascha and Faith had heart, had honor. Ashaya, on the other hand, was one of the Council's pet M-Psy, the butcher in charge of creating an implant that would turn the individuals of the PsyNet into a true hive mind.

She was also, a part of him insisted on remembering, the woman who'd saved the lives of two children at considerable risk to her own, mother to a little boy whom Dorian had promised to protect... and the only female to have awakened the leopard to raging sexual need with nothing but her scent.

He'd dreamed about her.

Always the same dream. Night after night.

He was in the branches of that tree again, Ashaya's face in his sights. A slight squeeze of the trigger and she would cease to exist, to complicate his life. But then she laughed, eyes sparkling, and he knew it was just a game.

He was standing in front of her now, pulling her braids apart so he could thrust his hands into her hair and crush the electric coils of it in his palms. She was still laughing when he took her lips, such luscious, soft lips.

Such cold, cold lips.

The leopard grew angry, thrust her from him. She stood there, unmoved. Then she raised her hands and began to undress. She was beautiful in the moonlight, her skin gleaming with the night's erotic caress. Entranced, he walked to her. She put her arms around his neck, pressing her lips to his pulse.

As his hands cupped her breasts, the warmth leached out of her. Her eyes filmed over with frost... and he realized she was turning to ice in his arms.

What a fucked-up dream, he thought, staring at the back of Ashaya's head. What was worse was that despite the screaming horror of it, he always woke with a pulsing hard-on, his body beaded with sweat, his heart racing a hundred miles an hour. Hungry, he was so damn hungry after two months of those dreams - with no relief in sight.

And that pissed him off, too, that he couldn't go near another woman without his mind sending out sinuous reminders of the woman who haunted him nightly. If he hadn't been utterly certain that no Psy could manipulate a changeling for that long and with that much subtlety, he'd have suspected some sort of a telepathic suggestion.

The compulsion to touch her, take her, was a constant beat in his blood by now. It staggered him, the brutality of it. He didn't know this woman, definitely didn't like her, didn't particularly like himself around her. But the leopard's craving for her threatened to turn him traitor to not only his people, but to his own sense of honor, a cipher led around by the cock.

Like hell.

He'd become a sentinel despite his latency - stubborn, unflinching will was his trademark. If Ashaya Aleine tried to use the sexual pull between them to bring him to heel, she'd find herself face-to-face with the cold-blooded sniper at his core.

Chapter 8

Councilor Kaleb Krychek looked out the window of his Moscow office and saw the trail of an approaching airjet. "Lenik," he said, using the intercom rather than telepathy. His administrative assistant paid more attention when he wasn't trying to protect himself against the rumored twist in Kaleb's secondary talent - the ability to induce madness. "Do I have any appointments this morning?"

"No, Councilor. You're free until the four o'clock with the BlackEdge pack."

He turned off the intercom and considered the possibilities. It couldn't be Nikita, the Councilor with whom he had a quasi-alliance. She was in Nara, Japan, having an afternoon meeting with a man who made his living stealing information from secure PsyNet databases.

Information like Kaleb's training history.

He hadn't eliminated the leak at the source. There were some things he wanted Nikita to know. A small light lit up under the smooth black surface of his desk as the airjet landed on the roof. He passed a hand across another section, bringing up the images from the surveillance cameras that surrounded the landing pad.

His visitor was no one he'd have expected.

However, by the time Henry Scott walked into his office, Kaleb was prepared for anything the other Councilor might throw his way. "Councilor Scott." He turned from the window and nodded a greeting.

"Krychek." Henry waited until Lenik had closed the door behind himself before advancing farther inside. His ebony skin, stretched smooth over the oval of his skull, seemed to soak in the light, rather than reflect it, but it was the aristocratic lines of his face that held the eye.