"Yeah, well, you almost took off my hand." He flexed his wrist, raw from the grip Lucas had had on his paw.
"Had to keep you from clawing off my ear. I don't think my mate would've been too impressed with a one-eared panther." Lucas began to grin.
Vaughn scowled. "What?"
"Faith'll teach you."
Dropping his head between raised knees, he blew out a rough breath. "Faith - " He couldn't say it, couldn't betray her even to Lucas. She was his mate. That loyalty came before everything else. Until she walked away, until she broke the bond, he'd honor it with everything in him.
Lucas gripped his shoulder. "She'll tear you up worse than any animal, make you feel as if your heart's being cut into a thousand pieces, but she'll also heal you in a way no one else will ever be able to do."
If she came to him.
For the first time in over twenty-four years, Faith was absolutely lost. Her life had been circumscribed since birth.
She'd never really had a choice. But now she had to make one that would change the course of her entire future. The problem was, she didn't know how to make that choice.
So she spent the morning uploading a backlog of vision triggers into her mind, and the afternoon spitting out prediction after prediction until Xi Yun intervened. "You can't sustain this level of activity."
Showed what he knew. "Thank you for stopping me. I forgot." What had once been truth had become nothing more than a useful excuse.
"It's my job." A small pause. "I'm sending a meal plan to your kitchen computer. Your bioreadings are showing low amounts of certain minerals."
"Acknowledged." Ending the communication, she went into the kitchen and took her time sipping the prescribed soup and chewing the meal bars.
But it was still only four in the afternoon when she finished. Restless, she went into her bedroom and opted to occupy her mind with the data flows of the Net. It was procrastination, but she decided she was allowed - no one should have to deal with as many shocks as she'd had to in the preceding days. Given room to breathe, maybe her subconscious would discern an answer on its own. In the meantime, she'd put her conscious mind to decoding the puzzle of the Council's sudden interest in her. And they weren't the only ones she had to be wary of.
Kaleb Krychek could prove a very dangerous adversary if he decided she posed a real threat to his promotion. She wanted to see whether she could learn anything further about him - likely a futile task given his skills, but it was better than obsessing over a jaguar who wasn't there to confuse, challenge, and infuriate her.
Who might never be there again.
The PsyNet was the same star-studded darkness - bright, brilliant, and beautiful. Vaughn didn't understand what it was that he was asking her to give up. This sprawling net of minds was full of such energy, such mental capacity, such strength. The cardinals blazed supernova bright, while the lowest Gradients were mere glows, but every single mind contributed to bringing light into the black isolation of total individuality. The PsyNet was the greatest gift of her race, the greatest art they'd ever create. If she dropped out of the Net, she'd lose the light, be alone as she'd never before been alone.
The Council's possible offer was a chance to immerse herself even deeper into the Net, to become one of the caretakers of this magnificent creation. And Vaughn? Wasn't he something amazing, too, something she'd never imagined she'd be allowed to touch? He assuaged the loneliness inside of her by his very presence, giving her an intimacy, a closeness the Net could never provide. If only she could have them both.
But she must choose.
Mentally shaking her head to dislodge the question for which she had no answer, she took herself to one of the main data conduits. Though information could be accessed from anywhere in the Net, most of the raw data was shunted through these points and, as such, was in its purest form.
Eschewing a search that might send up red flags, she set her mind to copy files that responded to certain keywords and then simply let the continuous uploads flow through her. Her act was nothing unusual, so she didn't bother to check if anyone was following her.
When nothing met her specifications after almost an hour, she left the stream in favor of surfing the Net, sieving the random data through preset filters. The process wasn't as haphazard as it sounded for a very straightforward reason: the Net was anchored in the minds of millions of psychic beings and was therefore itself ordered by the principles of psychic energy. No one had managed to completely explain those principles to date, but all Psy knew that if you looked for something with enough focus and for long enough, the Net would start to throw you cookie crumbs of relevant data.
As it did for Faith.
A few whispers reached her. As she'd told her jaguar, something spoken within the Net never left the Net, though words spoken behind vaults and shields were locked into place and degraded in secret. Unshielded whispers, too, would eventually degrade, but until they did, they were part of the biggest living information system in the world.
Kaleb Krychek has been seen with Nikita Duncan.
The Council has a short list.
. . . possibly an F-Psy...
Enrique was Tk-Psy, too.
She was surprised by the whispers - the Council was skilled at ensuring a data blackout when necessary. Logically that meant they had to have leaked the short list. A test? Set Kaleb against Faith and wait to see which one walked out alive? She wouldn't put it past the Council to employ such barbaric tactics under the guise of efficiency, but it made no sense in this situation.
If they'd wanted pure lethal strength combined with cold Psy practicality, then Kaleb was, without a doubt, the correct candidate. He'd proven that over and over. Which could mean the leak was a warning to Kaleb that this time, something else was part of the equation. If it was, it was a worthless one. Faith knew nothing would ever keep Kaleb from taking her down if he decided she needed to be neutralized.