and Sascha, was with Tamsyn’s family. The healer’s twin terrors, who’d been known to run amok through the wolf den when Tamsyn visited the SnowDancer healer, were two of Naya’s most favorite people. Alexei was of the opinion the twins were secretly setting up a pint-size wolf-leopard gang. Said gang had already run a successful raid on the den kitchen.
The crew had absconded with an entire cake.
Allowing the amused thought to further calm his wolf, he took the seat beside Memory. She inched closer to him when Krychek chose a seat on the other side of the conference table—directly across from her. Krychek tended to have that effect on people; it was a wonder any woman trusted him enough to allow him close, but the man had a mate.
Then again, Alexei’s fingers were currently clawed—his calm only went so far—and yet Memory had no problem with the hand he had on the back of her chair, the razor-sharp tips of those claws brushing her curls.
Love made people crazy.
Love.
It was a word he wasn’t supposed to know, an emotion he couldn’t afford to feel. Not for a woman who made him wish for the impossible. But it lived inside him, a primal force that had him handing Memory a sixth cookie when she finished the fifth.
“I’ll explode,” she complained, but took it.
His wolf settled.
To the right end of the table, Sascha ate her way through a large chocolate bar. Her face, too, looked thinner. Lucas had his hand protectively on her shoulder; the leopard alpha had chosen to stand beside his mate rather than take a seat.
“The intruder tried to grab hold of me,” Memory said once everyone was settled. “He failed despite the depth of his power.”
“I felt an attempt, too.” Sascha lowered her chocolate bar. “It was like he kept slipping off.”
“I think empathic minds must be immune to him,” Memory said as Luc ran the back of his hand over Sascha’s cheek. “That’s why he has to use proxies to attack us.”
“What did you speak of when he made contact?” Krychek asked, his expression as inscrutable as always—but not only had the man offered an assist during multiple emergency incidents, Judd vouched for him, and that was good enough for Alexei. It wasn’t as if SnowDancer had a sweet and fluffy image, either.
Beside him, Memory said, “He’s going mad and he blames Es—he said he had no problems before we woke up.”
Silence reigned around the table.
Sascha was the first to stir. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said, leaning her body against Lucas’s. “Without Es in the Net, our race would’ve long ago devolved into insanity and murder.”
It was Krychek who spoke next, his midnight voice musing. “Silence was a failure because it gave psychopaths free rein, but it’s possible that for a minority who were on the brink between normal function and mental fracture, the psychic discipline inherent in Silence kept them on the right side of the line.”
“And the sudden influx of emotion in the Net is eroding that control?” Lucas’s eyes were of his cat, the panther prowling close to the surface of his skin.
“There’s now no way to avoid emotion in the Net,” Krychek pointed out. “The fragments emitted by empathic minds are everywhere.”
Memory felt an unexpected stab of sympathy for that desperate mind, but hardened her heart against it. He could’ve asked for help. Instead he’d hurt Yuri and Abbot, violated so many others.
“Murdering Es will collapse your PsyNet,” Alexei said to Krychek, his big body so hot that she wanted to crawl into his lap and wrap him around her. “This guy’s clearly lost it if he’s forgotten that.”
“Yes.” Kaleb Krychek rose to his feet. “I’ll continue to hunt in the PsyNet. This individual is powerful enough to be a deadly—” A sudden chill pause. “Breaking news. Four empaths in County Cork, Ireland, injured when another vehicle plowed headlong into theirs.” The cardinal teleported out.
Shivering, Memory hugged her arms around herself. “That’s not going to be just a terrible accident.” How many of those Es would die? How many had been irreparably injured?
Alexei petted her nape. “Bastard’s getting smarter.” His words weren’t what she wanted to hear. “Much easier to push a single driver to make a wrong move than to force multiple single minds to murder Es.”
* * *
• • •
KALEB stood at the scene of the strange crash on a country road far outside the nearest town; emergency services were on scene and working frantically, and so far, he sensed no