Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3) - Nalini Singh Page 0,156

his grandmother had once told him a strange tale: “She swore that a non-twin Harmony pair in her home village once brought her brother back to life after he drowned. According to her, he had no pulse for at least fifteen minutes and the resident M-Psy pronounced him dead, but the Harmony pair said his mind wasn’t gone and they were able to revive him.”

Aden’s father had made a dismissive noise. “Of course, she wasn’t exactly fully compos mentis at that point. I accept Harmonies existed—there are rumors of a classified coda to the Protocol dealing with them—but if these paired abilities are so powerful, why have they disappeared? Why hasn’t the Council done everything in its power to locate and draft Harmonies into service?”

“Maybe the ability demands a base emotional connection?” Aden’s mother had suggested, before the two of them got interrupted by another Arrow and the subject was dropped.

Very young at the time, Aden had forgotten the entire conversation until this moment when he stood face-to-face with twins who appeared to have an ability that only worked in concert.

“I need to act now,” Pax Marshall said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be rational.”

Aden stepped aside so the two could enter Yuri’s room. There was no need to warn them their lives hung in the balance—they knew. Though the sister wouldn’t be hurt unless she did direct harm to Yuri.

Arrows were no longer monsters.

Marshall put one palm on Yuri’s temple. His sister echoed him on the fallen Arrow’s other side. Then the two connected hands over Yuri’s chest. They didn’t speak as they closed their eyes, but on the psychic plane, Aden saw energy sparking through Yuri’s mind.

The other man wasn’t brain-dead—if that had been the case, Aden would’ve made the hard call the very first day. No, the senior Arrow was in a gray no-man’s-land between life and death, the damage done to his brain catastrophic, but not enough to kill him. Aden and Vasic were maintaining his shields.

And because they were, Aden could see what the twins were doing.

Pax was the more powerful by far, but he was only the conduit—and the source of the raw material. It was Theodora who was somehow taking Pax’s psychic energy and using it to weave something from nothing. She was building neural material with a delicacy Aden hadn’t ever seen. Only Judd came close. Another Tk who could move minuscule components with his mind.

Clenching his gut, he maintained the shield. When Vasic joined him in the hospital room an hour later, they switched on and off as per their plan to ensure the shield was never less than impenetrable.

The operation took hours.

The sister collapsed first, Marshall a second later. Both were caught instinctively by Vasic using his telekinesis. He lowered them gently to the floor just as Yuri’s mental activity spiked so sharply across the neural monitoring system that it set off an alarm.

Chapter 59

Long-sleeved black shirt with fine silver pinstripes.

—Order placed by Memory Aven-Rose

MEMORY COULDN’T BELIEVE she’d allowed Aden to talk her into this. “I don’t know Pax Marshall and he hurt people I care about,” she said to Alexei. “I don’t want to help him.” She’d tried that one time in Chinatown, but she’d changed her mind in the interim, her anger growing with each hour Yuri’d spent fighting for his life.

“Okay. Want to go home?” No sarcasm, just wolfish acceptance of her anger.

“Ugh.” She kicked at the grass on the outskirts of DarkRiver territory. “Aden says Yuri is awake.” Joy had her eyes burning all over again.

The senior Arrow apparently had some memory loss. About a month’s worth. As a result, he didn’t remember Memory. That was all right—she’d make friends with him again, starting with when she went to visit him with her gift of a stylish new shirt. She’d also remind him about the whole being-asked-out-on-a-date situation, to nudge the romance back into gear.

All that mattered was that Yuri was awake. It was a miracle—but it still didn’t make her feel positive toward this Pax Marshall. “I don’t even know what I’m meant to do.”

Alexei hauled her close for a kiss. “Want me to tear the asshole’s head off?”

Memory considered it for long enough that his eyes gleamed amber. “No,” she grumbled at last. “But only because of his twin—she helped Yuri, even though she had nothing to do with hurting him. I’m doing this because we owe her, not him.”

A sleek black vehicle turned into the meeting spot. Pax Marshall, aristocratically handsome with