Allegiance of Honor (Psy-Changeling #15) - Nalini Singh Page 0,66

at full speed, crumpling the powerful frame and causing Dorian’s vehicle to flip onto its side. The metal screamed as the truck’s momentum shoved it across the tarmac, sparks shooting out from the contact . . . just as a bigger armored truck roared out at Sascha from the other direction.

The gleaming black vehicle screeched to a stop across the road, blocking Sascha’s path.

She’d instinctively braked when she saw what had happened to Dorian. Now, she came to a full stop. Anything else and she’d have smashed into the armored truck in her way. An armored truck that held people who wanted to hurt her baby. Who had already hurt Dorian.

A strange calm descended on her.

“No,” she said.

“Mama?”

“It’s all right, Naya. Mama needs you to be quiet and to hold your shields tight for a second.” Even as she spoke, she was watching the doors of the truck in front of her shove open, masked men and women in camouflage gear running out with their weapons trained on Sascha’s vehicle. “Okay, sweetheart?” She reiterated her order with a psychic visual. “You understand?”

“’Kay.”

Sascha felt Naya concentrating as hard as possible on maintaining her fragile new shields. They wouldn’t hold against even a weak adult telepath, but it was another small protection. Sascha had already locked her own defenses around her child while gently blocking Naya’s ability to feel what Sascha was about to do. Naya didn’t need to know that thanks to all the developments made by empaths working together as a group, her loving empath mother had figured out how to weaponize her ability.

And she’d learned how to do it against all races.

Including the Psy mind that was currently trying to batter down her shields.

It didn’t matter that she had no preexisting psychic connection to any of her targets.

Maybe it had been inevitable that Sascha would be the one to figure it out—after all, not only had she been out of the PsyNet the longest, she lived surrounded by non-Psy minds who trusted her enough to act as her guinea pigs. And critically, she was connected to not one, but multiple non-Psy minds. Wary of giving enemies in the Net a tool against humans and changelings, she’d shared her discovery only with four other empaths, all of whom she trusted beyond any question.

None, including a fellow cardinal, had been able to repeat her success outside of the Psy race. The others could help humans and changelings in emotional pain by taking away or reducing that pain, but as soon as they tried anything aggressive, nothing happened.

They simply couldn’t tune into the right “frequency,” which was the best way Sascha had found to describe what she did when she used her ability to affect non-Psy minds. It made no difference whether the mind was human—and thus, usually vulnerable to Psy interference—or changeling, and therefore generally invulnerable to the same types of interference.

“We can’t even sense the frequency,” Ivy Jane had said to her. “When I try, I get that horrible pain I felt when I was trying to impact people without using the PsyNet.”

The others had concurred.

It had been sweet Jaya who’d said, “You figured this out after you had a baby. Maybe it’s that bond that gives you the ability.” A frown. “It could be her brain that’s allowing you to find the non-Psy frequency. Once she grows up and the mother-child bond morphs into the mother-adult child one, it may disappear.”

It was as good a theory as any, but right now, Sascha cared only that she could hurt the people—Psy, changeling, or human—who wanted to hurt her baby. It had been difficult for her to teach herself to do something that went against her every empathic instinct, but she’d promised herself she’d only ever use that aspect of her ability when there was no other choice and to do nothing would be to let evil win.

“Dor!” Naya’s sudden agitation had her twisting in her car seat, as if trying to see Dorian. “Mama, Dor!”

“Don’t worry, baby. Dorian is strong. He’s going to be fine.” The sentinel was alive; she could feel it through the Web of Stars, the same way Naya had realized something was wrong. His star was flickering on the psychic network formed by blood bonds with a pack alpha, but not badly—because Lucas was pouring energy into the wounded sentinel.

Changelings didn’t know they did that, but Sascha could see it clear as day. Lucas’s bond with his sentinel had “woken” in a golden blaze the instant