sacks.”
Giggling, Nadiya kissed her mother’s face, unrepentant joy in her expression.
Nikita took a mental snapshot of the moment, to be filed away in her most private memories. She’d never take an actual snapshot, because if it existed, there existed the chance that someone could find it, use it against her by harming Sascha and Nadiya.
The lack of an actual photograph didn’t matter. Nikita’s mental acuity was extremely high. She’d remember, just like she remembered that Sascha had made the same sounds as a child. Sascha had also smelled much the same as Nadiya did when Sascha held her out and Nikita took her into her arms. Perhaps all babies had that innocent scent.
A bright, curious mind glanced across hers. Nikita nudged the child back without causing harm or distress, accompanying the psychic action with a nonvocal suggestion that Nadiya protect her mind. “She needs to stop reaching indiscriminately for others using telepathy,” Nikita told Sascha. “She’s old enough.”
“I haven’t wanted to stifle her,” Sascha replied. “And she’s around friendly minds.”
“She’s Psy, Sascha. A powerful one.” Nikita repeated her nudge when her grandchild reached out again. “No, Nadiya.” A firm command that made the child go still, watchful.
“You must train her,” Nikita told her frowning daughter. “You’ve taught her to shield and you’ve got your own shield over hers, but I can still send telepathic thoughts to her through the link she initiated. I could tell her anything I wanted, send her nightmare images, teach her to fear you, anything.”
Sascha’s face lost color, her eyes stark. There was a knock on the door a second later. Glancing over her shoulder, Sascha didn’t speak, but Lucas Hunter didn’t knock again or seek to enter the room. As Nikita had always suspected, the changeling mate-bond functioned on a psychic level in some fashion.
“You’re right.” Sascha’s voice trembled. “I’ve been so focused on not crushing her or hurting her that I went too far in the opposite direction. It’s like Lucas teaching her not to use her claws in play.” Sascha snuggled her baby when Nadiya made her way back to her. “It’s not hurting her to teach her psychic discipline; it’s giving her the tools she needs to survive and thrive.”
“Exactly.”
There, in that moment, Nikita shared the first moment of pure and absolute understanding with her daughter. Sascha, too, she thought, would do whatever was necessary to protect her child.
• • •
ONCE, Lucas had thought he’d never voluntarily permit his mate and child to be alone in a room with Nikita Duncan, but here he was, holding up the wall outside Nikita’s bedroom suite. Even when he’d sensed Sascha’s sudden distress, he hadn’t barged in. They’d been mated long enough that he could distinguish acute distress from a lesser emotional shock, and this had felt more akin to the latter.
Sascha’s silent response through their mate-bond had eased his concern.
Lucas would never change his mind about Nikita Duncan, not after the things the woman had done as a Councilor, but as he’d told his empath, better a child who knew her powerful—and to a cat—intriguing grandmother, than that she be tempted to find out on her own.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t having to fight the urge to break down the door and get his mate and child out of there. A call from Mercy to do with the joint pack event distracted him for a few minutes, but even then, the majority of his attention remained hyperfocused on the door behind which had disappeared two pieces of his heart.
Sascha proved exactly how well she knew him when she exited. Immediately handing him Naya, she slipped her hand into his. His bristling protective instincts settled, his claws no longer in danger of breaking through his skin. They didn’t speak until after Vasic had returned them home.
Lucas thanked the teleporter, who simply nodded.
Even after they were alone as a family, Lucas and Sascha waited until Naya was down for her nap before they opened up this particular box.
Lucas put on some soft music, drew his mate into his arms. As they swayed to the lazy beat, she told him about the meeting with her mother. “She meant it.” Sascha’s voice was raw. “That she never saw me as flawed.”
Lucas knew others would never understand the import of Nikita’s words, of how much they meant to Sascha. The hurt inside her that her mother had inflicted was no longer a scar, but neither could such pain be easily forgotten. “You’ve never been flawed.” It still pissed him