Allegiance of Honor (Psy-Changeling #15) - Nalini Singh Page 0,153
you had significant and daily contact with me and the pack.”
“Do you think . . .” Sascha frowned. “But how could she know we were mates?”
Lucas shook his head. “I don’t think she did. No way to predict that. My feeling is that your mother was playing the odds.” He ran his thumb over her skin, petting her, loving her. Skin privileges between mates. Sascha slipped her own hand under his black T-shirt so she could touch the skin of his back.
That got her a feline smile and a lazy lick of a kiss that sent her heart thumping.
“She was Council,” Lucas said afterward, “had access to the old records. She must’ve known that changeling packs had a way of pulling people from the PsyNet. Why not put you in connection with changelings in case it was still true?”
“That sounds like my mother.” Sascha twisted her lips. “She did also probably want the deal. Two birds, one stone.”
Lucas kissed her again, tender this time. Old hurts soothed by his love, Sascha glanced down at a bright mental touch. Yes, you’re a brave explorer, she sent to Naya.
Naya growled in pride before continuing her exploring.
“Let’s go see Nikita.” Lucas’s words had her attention snapping back to him. “Like I said, it’s a good time for Naya to meet her—while your mother’s defenses are down.”
Her heart thumped. “I don’t know if Vasic is free to do the teleport. I know he wasn’t at home when Ivy and I spoke.”
Lucas slid out his phone. “Let me give him a call.”
• • •
SEATED on her bed with work spread out around her, Nikita wasn’t expecting the telepathic page from Sophia. She began to respond . . . but then there was no need to ask why her aide was getting in touch with her.
It didn’t matter how well Sascha shielded herself; Nikita always knew when her child was close. Before she could do much more than gather and put her work on the bedside table and push off the blanket, Sascha was walking into the room with her own child in her arms.
Nikita saw Sophia pull the door shut behind Sascha and her baby and then, for the first time, the three current generations of Duncans were alone in a room together.
“Don’t get up, Mother.” Not waiting for an invitation, Sascha pulled the blanket back up over Nikita’s legs before taking a seat on the bed.
The girl child in her arms stared wide-eyed at Nikita.
“I told you it wasn’t safe.” Nikita was already calculating how to mitigate the danger.
“No one knows we’re here,” Sascha interrupted. “Vasic teleported us.”
An Arrow. But an Arrow who’d previously worked with Anthony and who was mated to an empath as softhearted as Sascha. Since Nikita kept herself out of Arrow business, and the leader of the Arrows, Aden Kai, didn’t appear to want to grab at power, Vasic had no reason to leak news of Nikita’s physical condition.
Muscles easing, she allowed herself to look at the green-eyed child with a wild tumble of silky black curls who Sascha had just placed on the bed, atop the blanket. Instead of clinging to her mother, the child continued to stare at Nikita.
“Your mate’s genes appear to have held sway.”
“Do you think so?” Sascha ran her hand over her baby’s back.
The child was clothed in a simple white sundress. She had tiny white sandals on her feet, the straps decorated with colorful designs.
“Look at the shape of her eyes.”
Nikita did, saw what she’d missed at first glance. The intense richness of the green might be from Lucas Hunter, but the tilt at the corners, the gentle upward slope, came from Sascha . . . from Nikita.
Now that she was searching, she found other small pieces of the Duncan line in this child who was both Psy and changeling. The fine facial bones. The skin tone that was a shade or two lighter than Sascha’s dark honey but still had enough brown in it to make it clear that Nadiya Hunter’s heritage was a complex one.
“She’ll be a striking adult.” Nikita could see the promise of an extraordinary beauty that spoke to a wide cross-section of the world. “Teamed with her mixed-race heritage, it’ll give her a useful advantage in business or politics.”
Sascha’s smile was affectionate, the hand she touched to Nadiya’s hair loving. “She’s going to grow up a good person. We’ll make sure of it.”
That, Nikita thought, was the difference between her and her daughter: Sascha thought in terms of goodness,