Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3) - Nalini Singh Page 0,135
the psychic watchdogs left by the Arrows should’ve alerted the squad to her disappearance in the PsyNet, her mind swallowed by another. That no one had responded to her disappearance told her a chilling truth.
“How did you move me on the Net?” A Psy’s location in the PsyNet wasn’t altered by temporary moves in physical location—only if the shift was meant to be permanent would the mind move its anchor point.
Renault gave a strange, jagged laugh that raised the tiny hairs on the back of her neck. She’d never heard him laugh before—even in his sickest pleasure, he’d been cool and calm. “Don’t you know, little girl?”
“No,” Memory said, willing to play along with his delusions if it would gain her room to beat him and escape, gain her mate time to find her. Her golden wolf had lost too many people; she would not let Alexei lose her, too. “You know I never had the usual training.”
He hugged his arms around his body as he walked back and forth, back and forth, rocking slightly all the while. “No, you had my training.” A satisfied smile. “I was in your mind long before you found your new friends.” The last word was hissed out. “Where are those friends now? Hmm?”
Memory frowned inwardly, suddenly realizing that Alexei must’ve contacted the Arrows. One of those Arrows was a born teleporter. Yet she remained alone with Renault. “I don’t understand what you did.” She forced a tremor in her voice. “Why has no one come for me?” Even as she spoke, the mating bond surged inside her, Alexei’s love for her a storm.
Never again, not even in the darkest, deepest hole, would she be isolated and alone, she thought fiercely. But Renault didn’t know that, didn’t know the beauty of a bond that wasn’t Psy but changeling. A bond he hadn’t been able to prevent even though he’d imprisoned her mind.
It was too primal, too beautiful, far beyond his comprehension.
“You think you’re so smart to shut all the back doors into your mind.” Another laugh. “But this wasn’t a door. It’s a path tied to your PsyNet biofeedback link. I had to make sure I could retrieve my little mouse if she got out of her hole—retrieve her and put her in another place where no one would look for her.”
Clearly, he’d needed physical contact to do it or he would’ve taken her long ago. Memory didn’t need to hear the technical details, but she urged him to speak, and he did, because she was once again his captive audience—an audience he didn’t respect and considered useless in every way but one.
He took great pleasure in telling her how he’d laid the groundwork in her mind while she was recovering from the coma he’d caused during the first transfer. Laid it so deep that it was part of her core self. So deep that Judd would’ve had to invade her mind in horrific and traumatizing ways to discover it.
Renault’s trap had survived because the former Arrow had treated her with courtesy and dignity.
“It gives me a rope,” Renault boasted. “I can pull that rope and you move. Away from those nasty spies around you and where I want you.” A sudden, piercing look. “You’re inside my mind now and I’m keeping you there. No one will ever find you again.”
Memory asked more questions about his actions, her only aim to keep him talking. And talk he did—between bursts of rage when he’d scream at her to let him in. When he raised a fist to her, she held the eye contact. “You injure my brain and that’s it. No more transfer.” She had to straddle a careful line between appearing too strong and antagonizing him—and appearing so weak that he’d simply ignore anything she said.
“I’ll break you.” Despite the threatening words, he dropped his fist to his side. “I have you now and I’ll break you.”
Memory’s skin went cold, not because of his promise, but because of what she saw on his face. His pupils were dilated, his skin shimmering with perspiration. She’d never seen Renault in such a state—not even when he’d left a transfer a little too late and had come to her wired. “You don’t look well.”
“It’s the medicine,” he said, stepping back from her and running his hands over the stubbled skin of his head. “I had to use it to deal with my illness, but it has side effects.”
“Illness?”
“Muscle tremors, dry mouth, the inability to maintain a steady