“For you two to go back to having fun while we three snuggle.” A dreamy, besotted expression on her face as she looked from her baby to her mate. “Come back with a burger and onion rings in three hours.”
“On it.” Kenji, who’d released Garnet to gently pet the baby’s fist with one finger, saluted.
“With fries,” Garnet promised, dropping another kiss on Ruby’s head.
Tex was too smitten with his pup and his mate to notice when they left.
“A death and a birth,” Garnet mused as they walked through the corridor. “The birth makes things feel normal, natural again.”
Twining his fingers through hers, Kenji said, “A death, a birth”—lifting up her hand, he kissed her knuckles—“and a mating.”
Mush, she was all mush again, emotion a knot in her throat. “Shift with me?”
No hesitation, light shattering the air as the agony and ecstasy of the shift reshaped their cells. It was an exquisite, beautiful pain. When it was over, her wolf stood face-to-face with a proud timber wolf with eyes of husky amber.
Her mate.
He bumped muzzles with her.
She bumped back.
And then they were racing through the den as their laughing packmates jumped out of the way and their hearts beat in tune. As they’d do until time ended.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Mamta Swaroop, MD, FACS, for her invaluable and patient help in explaining the consequences of knife wounds to the thoracic aorta.
Arigatou gozaimasu to my friend Akbar Rahman, for checking my rusty Japanese and helping me make up the word umiōkami.
I would’ve never predicted I would one day be discussing stab wounds and blades with a trauma surgeon, or how to invent words in the Japanese language; I love the research journeys on which writing takes me—and the people I get to meet as a result. Mamta and Akbar are both awesome. Any mistakes are mine (and I freely admit I did take artistic license here and there).
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Sascha hung up after a troubling conversation with Ivy Jane. Her fellow E and president of the Empathic Collective had called to discuss the information she’d just received from Kaleb Krychek. Coming on top of the possible threat to Naya that Lucas had warned Sascha about earlier that day, it left her worried on multiple levels.
Naya was her first priority and always would be, but there were tens of thousands of children in the PsyNet, too. Even if the Honeycomb meant the PsyNet wouldn’t collapse on them as it had done in sections prior to the awakening of the Es, the disintegration and hidden weakness within had to be having an impact on all those developing young minds.
It frustrated her that she hadn’t been able to give Ivy any answers. Part of it was because she’d been out of the PsyNet since her defection and was receiving all data secondhand, but mostly it was because they were all stumbling in the dark. No one knew the exact extent of the damage done by a hundred years of forced conditioning, of erasing emotion.
“Coming,” she said when Naya made a questioning noise from the living room.
It would have sounded like “da mi” to most people. Sascha knew her daughter was asking after her milk. Setting aside the issues preying on her mind for now—Naya was far too good at picking up emotional nuances—Sascha breathed deep to calm herself.
She’d just brought out the milk to warm it on a low setting on the cooker when Ivy called. Naya liked it when Sascha made her milk that way, especially if she dusted it with a little dark chocolate.
“Her mother’s daughter,” Lucas said with a sinful grin each time he saw Sascha sprinkling chocolate onto Naya’s milk. Not a lot, never enough to harm their baby’s health. Just the tiniest taste to make this a sometimes treat now that Naya was almost one and starting to become more adventurous with her food choices. The milk would hold Naya over until Lucas arrived home and they could have dinner together—changelings tried to have meals together with their cubs whenever possible.
Naya’s mind touched hers right then, sending her hungry thoughts.
Sascha’s lips tugged up at the corners, all stress suddenly melting away. “I know you’re not starving, munchkin,” she said, layering her response with emotion so Naya would understand her meaning.
Her and Lucas’s baby was smart, but she was still a baby.