Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Remi opened, then shut his mouth. “Well, damn.” Shoving his hand through his hair, he said, “Point to you, Ms. Auden Scott.” She was wrong in putting submissives on the end of the “grading” scale—submissives weren’t automatically less important in the hierarchy of a pack—but that there was a hierarchy was the salient point.
Her lips parted, her shoulders easing, and for a single heartbeat, he thought she might even smile. But a pulse later, the mask swept over her features, the Auden who’d dared say she could catch his tail retreating beneath the veneer of Psy ice. “I appreciate the time you took out of your day to give me the lesson.”
Remi didn’t want to leave, especially not when he’d begun to get a glimmer of the woman behind the mask, but he had vows to uphold. And unlike his father, he took his vows dead seriously.
“My pleasure,” he said, and shot her a playful salute.
He’d already half turned on his heel when a sudden thought made him freeze. “Don’t go in that bunker.” Shifting, he locked his gaze to hers again, his leopard in the growl of his voice. “Did Ms. Wai tell you about the paramilitary team that last used it? They hurt people in there. I don’t know how long stuff lasts in terms of your ability to pick it up, but you should know the risk.”
From the way she flinched, it was clear Charisma Wai had forgotten to warn her.
“You understand?” The words came out rough with the leopard’s protective streak—a streak that was so intense and so deep-rooted that Remi had to fight it to allow those under his care freedom.
Given free rein, that part of Remi could turn him into a controlling dictator and he knew it. That was why he surrounded himself with people who’d haul him back if he ever got too close to the brutal edge, and, if necessary, who had no trouble getting in his face about it.
Auden Scott, for all her current physical vulnerability, had the same titanium spine. His cat liked that. A whole dangerous lot.
* * *
• • •
AUDEN nodded to acknowledge Remi’s warning about the bunker, but the man who’d made her forget all the rules for the past hour—and whose eyes had shifted to a feral yellow-gold before his curt words—still hesitated for several long seconds before loping off into the trees with that feline grace of his. She continued to stare after him long past the time she should’ve turned away.
Aloneness enclosed her in wings of soft black.
Shivering, she hugged her arms around herself, and stared at the bunker.
Auden didn’t believe Charisma’s omission had been malicious. Charisma was well aware of the risk to the baby should Auden come into unprepared contact with a surface with a violent past.
In her present state, it could trigger preterm labor.
Charisma would never risk that; she was very, very invested in Auden’s child.
Auden cradled her belly, her heart racing and skin ice. Her shields, shields her father had helped design when she’d still thought him a good man, a good person, held her emotions inside, away from the betraying darkness of the PsyNet. Auden’s Silence had never been flawless—as with most psychometrics she’d just skated through the tests, basically by ensuring she never tried to read anything that might be saturated with emotion.
Easy enough to do in Shoshanna’s and Henry’s homes.
She had, however, had trouble maintaining around Remi. Probably because he was a creature of open emotion, untamed in a way that triggered the part of her that was embarrassingly imperfect by Psy standards.
Auden couldn’t believe she’d told him she could catch his tail.
Her cheeks flushing, she patted at her belly. “That was fun, though, wasn’t it? He’s fun…and wild and deadly in a way that makes me want to be stupid.” Never in her life had she met anyone whose energy prowled so close to the surface of his skin. It had taken all she had not to touch him, feel if that energy had a tactile form.
Was it like his leopard’s fur? A soft enticement before the predator snarled?
Her fingers curled into her palm.
She could think such primal thoughts here, safe in this landscape far from those who watched her and who monitored her baby with voracious intent.
Charisma wanted the child in her womb. Auden just didn’t know why.
“They won’t get to you, won’t ever do to you what they did to me,” she promised again, the words trembling with a rage that had built and built from the first moment when she returned to true consciousness. “I’ll bring down their entire precious empire first.”
Because, no matter how much she might wish it otherwise, Auden was her parents’ daughter. But where they had used their ability to strategize and game the system to grow their power and brutalize those who were weaker, Auden’s actions were shaped by her all-encompassing love for the child in her womb. Her mother had no idea what she’d unleashed when she’d permitted Auden to be impregnated.