Allegiance of Honor (Psy-Changeling #15) - Nalini Singh Page 0,50
own.” The idea of being responsible for a fragile new life was no longer scary now that he’d been around Naya for a year, been responsible for her countless times.
He’d kept her safe.
Faith’s smile was shy, startled, happy. “I’d like that . . . but not just yet. I’m still adjusting to the dark visions.”
Those visions came without warning and could relate to anything from a major disaster to a murder to a small accident. “Today?”
“No.” She leaned her head on his shoulder while continuing to pet Naya. “Before we try for a child, I want to be confident that if I have a dark vision while I’m alone with our baby, I’ll be able to ride it out.” A glance up, her cardinal gaze stripped bare. “I don’t ever want to scare our child by reacting badly to a nightmare vision.”
“No rush, Red.” Vaughn nuzzled at her, let her know he was with her. Always. “We’ve got plenty of time yet.” Plenty of years to play and grow together. “We’ll know when we’re ready.”
Faith pressed a kiss over Naya’s soft curls as Naya’s eyes finally closed, thick, curling lashes throwing shadows over her cheeks. His mate had a gentle smile on her face when she looked up. Her lips parted as if she was about to speak, then snapped shut as her eyes widened.
“Red?” Vaughn sat upright from his lazy sprawl. “You having a vision?”
A shake of her head. “My brother is a Ps-Psy,” she blurted out. “A strong one. Nine on the Gradient.”
Blowing out a silent breath, he turned boneless again. “Yeah, I know.” What Vaughn didn’t fully understand was how Tanique’s psychometric ability worked. The younger man could sense things when he touched physical objects, that much was clear. But what exactly he saw, if he even had a visual component to his ability or whether he simply heard the echoes of sounds, Vaughn wasn’t certain.
“The message in the bottle.” Faith’s voice was taut, intense. “Can you get it back? It’s really important.”
Realization dawned. Swinging his feet off the highly polished stump that acted as their coffee table, Vaughn got up. “I don’t know where BlackSea took it after we handed it over, but I know who to ask.”
Chapter 14
VAUGHN LEFT THE room to make the call using the comm in Faith’s workspace. As a DarkRiver sentinel, he had a contact number for BlackSea that was routed to whichever senior pack member was currently on shift as liaison. Today, that happened to be Malachai Rhys. The big male listened to Vaughn’s proposal, then connected him to Miane Levèque after a minute-long delay.
Vaughn knew what Malachai had been doing in that minute when Miane appeared on the comm and began to speak without Vaughn having to explain anything. “The bottle’s in a lab on one of our floating cities,” the alpha said. “I can pledge a BlackSea favor to get it to you via a teleport, but you tell me if I can trust this Ps-Psy.”
Vaughn was unsurprised by her wariness; Psy had long been the enemy of changelings and even now, Vaughn himself only trusted a rare few. “I can’t give you an absolute guarantee,” he responded. “Tanique is Faith’s brother, loyal to NightStar. And NightStar is headed by Anthony Kyriakus, who has no love for the Consortium.”
Wholesale chaos and violence was bad for the F-Psy who were a vital part of NightStar’s power base, especially with so many of them now opening up to visions outside the antiseptic limits of business contracts. If there was one thing Vaughn knew about Anthony, it was that the other man protected his foreseers, including Faith, with a merciless will. “On the flip side,” he added, “Tanique didn’t grow up in NightStar but with the maternal side of his family, so he may have loyalties we don’t know about.”
“Faith NightStar was the one who suggested we ask her brother?”
Vaughn saw where Miane was going. “Not a vision,” he clarified, “but she had a tone in her voice I’ve come to know. I’d never bet against her.”
“I’d be a fool not to heed the advice of the best foreseer in the world.” Miane put her hands on her hips, her cream-colored long-sleeved shirt moving with a fluidity that made Vaughn wonder if it was one of the experimental luxe fabrics BlackSea was famous for creating.
“We’ll need the bottle within the next two to three hours,” Vaughn reiterated.
Miane’s curt nod was a silent promise they’d have it. “This is a massive risk