"I'm not Psy."
She pushed her sleeves back down, covering up the evidence of her unruly physical response to his proximity. "You're not a restful individual to be around."
"And if that's a surprise, you really know shit-all about changeling males." He snorted, wondering what kind of men she was used to. Then he remembered. "Larsen." The other scientist had taken, experimented on, and killed children. "You're used to reptiles."
"Larsen," she said quietly, "was truly abnormal and I knew that from the instant I met him. That's why I refused to work with him."
He'd expected a political nonanswer and gotten a glimpse of the complex, fascinating woman within the Psy shell. In spite of the caustic mix of anger and sexual need that continued to simmer in his veins, he wanted to peel apart all those layers and find out who Ashaya Aleine really was. Protector of monsters or savior of innocents? "I thought he was running an independent project in your lab."
"Later, he was." Her voice chilled a few degrees. "An experiment I didn't authorize. However, prior to that, the Council presented him to me as an assistant."
"Did anyone ever figure out that you helped Noor and Jon escape Larsen's experiments?"
"I told them the children were dead. That's why I said both the boy and Noor had to disappear when they left the lab. I don't suppose it matters now."
It mattered, Dorian thought, though he didn't say it out loud. Both children had been given new lives, a new start. They'd never have had that chance if this enigma of a woman hadn't put her life on the line. "Why did you do it? Help the kids?"
"I told you that the first time you asked me - politics."
He'd been lying along the solid branch of a heavily leafed tree at the time, eye to the scope of his rifle. Ashaya's tangled sheets and blue ice of a voice had hit him so low and hard, he'd been ready to take her then and there. "It didn't mean anything that they were innocent children?"
A long silence. "It meant something." So quiet it was less than a whisper.
The possessive, protective nature of the cat uncurled in a lazy movement. It pushed at him to reach out, to show her she wasn't alone. But that was the way of Pack. And Ashaya was nowhere close to Pack. "Another fracture in Silence?"
Putting away the slide, she leaned her head against the window. "To kill your young is a sign of true evil." There was something in that tone, a hidden secret that set his senses searching. "I prefer not to think of my entire race as evil."
"Evil, an interesting concept for a Psy."
"Is it?" She looked at him. "It's an intellectual idea as much as an emotional one, the dividing line between being human and being monstrous."
He was about to answer when she snapped upright and grabbed his arm. "No! Take the next exit."
"This is our one."
"No."
Given that she was Psy, he wondered if she'd picked up something. "We being trailed?" Even as he spoke, a strange sense of dread whispered into his mind.
"Please, just go that way."
He went with gut instinct and listened. "Where are we going?"
She didn't answer, but she was doing something very un-Psy-like and leaning forward, her hands braced on the dash. He couldn't see her eyes but he had a feeling they'd gone the pure black of a Psy utilizing a lot of power. But Ashaya was an M-Psy and, as she'd told him herself, didn't have any powers that were useful outside the lab. So either she'd lied or something else was going on.
She didn't say anything for a very long time. He'd have worried that she'd gone into some kind of a trance except that he could feel her alertness, her absolute focus. "Ashaya, we keep going this way, we miss our meeting." His own urgent sense of something being seriously wrong kept him driving.
"Don't turn back." It was an order.
Leopards, as a rule, didn't listen to anyone outside their hierarchy. In Dorian's case, the list of men and women he'd obey was very, very short. Ashaya wasn't on it. "Give me a reason."
"Get off here." She was leaning so far forward, her head almost touched the sloped windshield of the bullet-shaped car. "Get off." The strain increased when he didn't change lanes.
Intrigued despite himself, he moved with cat-swiftness and took the exit. "Now wha - "
"Straight through the intersection."
The directions kept coming, though when he asked Ashaya where they were going, she remained silent. He might've kept questioning her except that fifteen minutes from their destination, he realized where it was that she was taking them. His mouth tightened, even as he wondered how she could've possibly found out.