Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3) - Nalini Singh Page 0,110

the lower end of the scale—or that’s what she’d been taught.

According to Sascha, however, Judd was beyond a 9 in both Tk and Tp.

The ex-Arrow pushed up the sleeves of his sweater. “Your Tk’s matured closer to 1.5—and nothing is useless if you know how to utilize it.” He went to the counter to pick up a spoon she’d left to dry.

Placing it on the table in front of her, he said, “Nudge it.”

Memory did it only so she could prove to him that this was a pointless exercise. The spoon moved a fraction of an inch.

“Do it again,” Judd said.

She did.

When he asked her to do it a third time, however, she sat back and folded her arms. “Why?” It wasn’t even a parlor trick when Tks like Judd could throw missiles around in the sky.

“Imagine if you had the delicate skill to manipulate the tumblers of an old-fashioned lock, or to push in the code on a computronic one. Not many prisons could keep you inside.” A raised eyebrow. “Never leave an advantage on the table.”

Memory sucked in a breath. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll practice.”

A small nod before Judd glanced at Alexei. “Ready to do our patrol, or do you want to rub your scent on your E?” Words so cool it took Memory a second to realize he was poking the wolf, his eyes alive with humor.

“One of these days . . .” Alexei growled before leaning down to kiss Memory. “Do not admire the asshole. It just gives him a big head.”

As the two men left, Memory tried not to think about the wounds inside her golden wolf, scars that meant their relationship could never be like Sascha and Lucas’s, or Jaya and Abbot’s.

So we’ll make it our own, she vowed. I’m not about to give up on you, on us, Alexei Vasiliev Harte. She was too far gone, his name written on her heart.

Chapter 41

It is the recommendation of this PsyMed advisory board that the survivors of Operation Scarab be placed in psychic restraints and kept away from the general populace. It has proved impossible to go backward—the survivors cannot be returned to their stable pre-Scarab state.

—Report prepared for the Psy Council (circa 2003)

HE’D HAD THE emergency overnight brain scans done at an anonymous facility, under a false name. Had even gone to the extent of wearing an expensive disguise, a disguise he only had because his now-deceased grandfather had insisted he always have one ready just in case. He’d felt foolish doing it, but as the head of a major Psy family, there was a high chance someone would’ve recognized him otherwise.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Dr. Mehra. The Gradient 9.8 M-Psy was deeply loyal to the family. The one who had awakened had learned the importance of loyalty by watching not his own parent, but Kaleb Krychek. One of the most ruthless and deadly men in the Net had never—not once—been sold out by his own people.

It had taken time and a careful reading of rare public comments made by Krychek’s employees, but he’d come to learn that Krychek had one rule with subordinates: Be loyal to me and I will be loyal to you. No capricious firings. No bad treatment. Mistakes forgiven as long as they were genuine and an attempt was made to fix it.

The simplicity of that structure had appealed to him. It’d taken time to roll it out across his own network—his grandfather had run their business units a far different way—but these days, he knew he had the loyalty of every single senior member of his staff. But he’d wanted no one to know of these scans . . . and the story they told.

The experienced neurospecialist who’d reviewed the scans, then spoken to him over the phone to get background, had made a chilling diagnosis. “There is evidence of damage in an area of the brain linked strongly with Psy abilities. High probability it’s the reason behind your descent into a fugue state.”

Fugue state.

A time when he was an automaton, driven not by his conscious mind but by the subconscious. A person in a fugue could do many things, become a wholly different individual. Whether he’d ever recover any memories of what he’d done was an open-ended question. Psy brains didn’t always react in medically predictable ways.

The M-Psy had urged him to return to the facility within the week, have further scans, but he didn’t need the scans to know the problem: his sprawling new