As he closed the message, he recalled the conversation he'd had with Zie Zen yesterday - they'd agreed that Ashaya needed to make a follow-up broadcast. Otherwise, she'd lose all the support she'd gained to date. And, since the Council had decided to focus on damage control rather than disruption, her message would get out far easier this time.
But, he thought, snapping upright, it would also leave Council resources free to trace any broadcast back to the originating location. When added to the fact that all his fellow Councilors knew Ashaya was in the greater San Francisco area... "It could be done." He picked up the secure line immediately and put through a call to his daughter. "Faith, you have to warn Ashaya," he said as soon as she answered. "Ming will be waiting to trace back any new broadcast signal. He could recapture - "
"It's too late," Faith whispered, her voice echoing the way it sometimes did in the midst of a vision. "There's blood, so much blood. Oh, my God, Dorian! Dorian!"
Dorian knew he'd made a fatal mistake the second he saw Ashaya walk out in front of the camera and begin to speak. She was bathed in light, the area around her in shadow. The perfect target.
Perhaps it was simply a leopard sentinel's honed instincts that had him moving before anyone else even realized what was happening... or perhaps he'd received a message he couldn't consciously hear, a scream from a cardinal F-Psy connected to him through the Web of Stars. It didn't matter why he did what he did. It just mattered that when the Tk-Psy blinked into place before Ashaya and fired the gun, it was Dorian who took the hit... straight through his carotid artery.
Ashaya screamed as she slammed to the ground, carried there by Dorian's momentum as he pushed her out of the way. But it wasn't physical hurt that had her screaming. She could feel Dorian's life slipping away, the fledgling bond that tied her to him retreating at the speed of light. "No, no, no."
Twisting out from under his unconscious body and into a sitting position, she cradled his head in her lap and tore off her jacket, using it in a futile attempt to stanch the bleeding. Blood soaked through the wadded material to drench her fingers. She knew what that meant - the wound was fatal. "No." A steely denial that hid her shattered heart. Forgetting about shields, about protection, she opened her psychic eye and searched for the bond she could feel sliding out into nowhere.
He was hers. He couldn't leave her.
But she couldn't find the bond, couldn't use it to hold him to her. It was still invisible, still piggybacking on her emotions for this man who lay dying in her lap. She felt hands on her shoulders, a familiar female voice telling her the paramedics were on their way. Shut up, she thought, just shut up.
In the chaos, a moment of silence inside her mind, of clarity.
She couldn't see the bond because she was locked into the PsyNet.
She didn't know how to cut that link, but she continued to feel the pull of the mating bond. So she gave in to it. A choice made in an instant. A choice she'd made the first time she'd heard his voice.
The bond spiraled through her like wild lightning, ripping her from the PsyNet with such fury that she felt fine blood vessels burst behind her eyelids. As her mind screamed, she was aware of Amara screaming with her, struggling to follow. Ashaya held out a psychic hand.
She had been born first. Amara was her responsibility.
Amara grabbed that hand and left the Net with the same violence, falling into unconsciousness an instant later. Ashaya refused to go into the void with her sister. Shoving away her own pain as unimportant, she searched for and found the new bond that had snapped into place with such raw force. It was dying, fading in front of her.
She gripped it with psychic hands, holding on with every ounce of strength in her. You can't leave me!
Under her physical hands, his blood continued to gush with every beat of his heart, dripping past her fingers and onto the floor. Forcing herself to think past the terror, she scrambled for some way to fix this. But she was an M-Psy who worked on the level of DNA. She had no ability to heal the artery, close the wound.
The bond wavered, began to flicker.
She was going to lose him. "No!" It was an instinctive act to reach out with her soul, to pour her life energy into the bond, and force him to stay alive.
It worked.
For a single, shining second, the bond grew stronger. Then blood spurted harder from his neck and it flickered again.
Ashaya was a scientist. She understood cause and effect. And in that instant, she understood that she could hold Dorian here - hold him here long enough that maybe the paramedics could transfuse enough fluids into him to keep him alive, until a surgeon could fix the wound. She could hold him here as long as her life existed. And then she would go with him.
Keenan, my baby.
Her heart cried and broke in two. It wasn't a fair choice, she thought deep in her very soul. How could she possibly let her mate die? How could she leave her son? Perhaps if she'd had longer, the choice would've tormented her into madness, but she had only the barest fraction of an instant.
And Dorian's blood pulsed over her fingers like an endless river.
Don't leave me, please, Dorian.
Keenan would be safe, she thought, tears blinding her. He would be loved. She'd caught a fleeting glimpse of the small web she now inhabited. Her little man was linked to Dorian, but already, other minds were reaching out, preparing to hold him in the web if Dorian died. Because he was a child and these leopards didn't kill children.
Her sister would die with her, of that she had no doubt. It would end. She could accept her death, accept Amara's death, but she would not accept Dorian's.
So she poured her life energy down the bond, knowing it would only last minutes at most - the psychic transfusion was directly related to how fast he was bleeding out. But it would double his chances of surviving till help came. Her hands were so wet, the jacket so heavy that she couldn't hold it in place any longer.
Then slender fingers were closing over her own, helping her apply the pressure. Somebody was at her back, holding her upright because she was losing the strength to do that herself. And suddenly, someone was shoving psychic energy at her in desperation.