Page 29

Adam still didn’t head for the door, didn’t tell her to follow. “How will I know if you’re overloaded so I can break the connection? Will that protect you?”

“If it’s fast enough, the damage will be minor. Are any of the Es still at the Canyon?”

“Both, but the young one has done enough, has no more to give, and I won’t ask it of him. Sascha’s there and ready to help.”

Sascha.

He had to mean Sascha Duncan, a woman who had done what Eleri couldn’t and defected out of the Net to create an entirely new existence for herself inside a changeling pack.

Eleri said, “She should be able to feel my distress—I won’t be able to control it, not if Jacques’s thoughts breach my mind.”

Stepping back, she said, “I’ll get my gloves. We should do it now while your clan sleeps. Less chance of contact with me.”

That day in the hallway, Adam had dreamed of introducing her to his grandmother, showing her off to Jacques. “My mate,” he’d have said with a huge grin. “My mate .”

The joy of it had been enough to overcome the pain of that day—because he’d known his parents would’ve been delighted for him, too.

Shocked no doubt, because she was Psy, and back then, no Psy had mated a changeling for so long that they’d forgotten it had ever been any different.

But happy all the same…and full of advice about the importance of going slow, of giving Eleri room to become used to the idea.

“You’re both so young,” he could imagine his mother saying, a soft smile curving her generous lips, her skin a glowing copper-toned brown she’d passed on to both him and Saoirse. “You have your whole lives ahead of you. Play together, learn one another, become friends before you become mates.”

He would’ve done exactly as she’d advised, would’ve given Eleri all of himself and all the time she needed. Because in the end, she would’ve been his—they’d both felt the promise in the air that day, not just him.

Today, too many years between then and now, he waited for her to reemerge from the small nook that held the bed, then said, “We can take your vehicle. I flew.”

Eleri stilled for a moment. “I can’t quite conceptualize a shift,” she said at last. “I’ve seen falcons flying overhead, and I know from their size that they’re changelings, but my brain snags when attempting to explain the conversion.”

Adam’s falcon, so close to his skin, wanted to show her then and there. He barely controlled the urge. “I’ll have to drive. You’ll never get up to the Canyon in the dark.”

“I’ll program you in,” she said, and once they were at the car—evidence stowed and locked inside the trunk—she proceeded to do exactly that.

Getting in, he waited only until she was secured before moving the vehicle out without turning on the headlights until they were well down the drive. “Any dealings with Dae since we spoke?”

“He knocked on the door last night asking me if I’d had any issues with the lights, as the businessperson who stayed in the room the night before my arrival complained about that. But he didn’t make any attempt to stay or talk his way inside when I said no.”

Adam frowned. “How late?”

“After dark but just. Mi-ja was in the administration building—I could see the lights.” She pulled out a miniature organizer from her pocket, tapped at it, and small clear screens flipped out on all four corners to seamlessly create a much larger visual field.

Adam whistled. “Expensive tech.”

“Js are well compensated due to the short terms we’re able to work during our lives,” Eleri said, her eyes on her screen.

Adam’s hands squeezed the steering wheel.

“Why,” he said, asking the question he’d avoided since the day she’d walked back into his life, “are there no old Js?” It was a fact of which he’d become consciously aware two years after he’d met her—because he hadn’t been able to stop reading news articles about J-Psy despite himself.

Eleri didn’t reply, her silence a heavy weight in the air.

“Tell me,” he demanded, stripped down to the bone from what she’d already shared about her reconditioning and what it meant.

No flinch from his passenger, but she looked up from her organizer. “The only old Js are the ones who managed to stop active work at an early age and stay under the radar.

“Active Js tend to self-terminate more often than any other Psy specialty. Sensitivity can lead to Exposure. Gloves, shields, nothing works at that point. We become a living and wide-open psychic nerve. We prefer to exit the world prior to that—because we can’t once Exposed. We’re no longer functional.”

Adam’s talons thrust out of his fingers, his falcon’s feathers a shadow under the skin. “Why aren’t you angry? Why aren’t you furious at the injustice of having given your life to a system that just throws you away?”

Her apathy enraged him.

Eleri’s response was to change the subject. “I had a friend in Enforcement check if Dae had a record.”

Adam wasn’t one to let things go, but this wasn’t just about the two of them—because that conversation, they would be having. “He didn’t last time the clan ran a check.”

“Two hits while he was still a juvenile, both for breaking and entering. Wiped from his adult record, but my contact has ways to see below the wipe.”

Adam thought past his instinctive reaction to Dae.

“Lot of the human kids in Raintree do petty shit like that, though I wouldn’t have guessed Dae to be one of them.

” The falcon fledglings knew not to even think about it, because the clan’s punishment would be far worse than anything Enforcement meted out.

WindHaven kids also had the whole sky to burn off their energy, could travel long distances on a whim if they wanted to go to a club or meet up with distant friends.

And they were changeling, they didn’t hanker for big-city living beyond taking flights over new regions.

Flying to a private grotto to go swimming and just hang out was “peak vacation,” per his niece.

“Agreed,” Eleri said now. “It’s not anything probative.” Closing up her organizer, she slid it away into a pocket of her suit coat. “Do you know about the recent spate of strange break-ins?”

“Yeah. Deputies blamed it on ‘punk kids’ and so did the chief back at the beginning, but he was starting to change his mind.”

“The escalation. Near-contact.”

Adam nodded. “Last we talked, he was considering calling in a favor, getting a profile done. He also told people to lock their doors, but place like Raintree? No one really worries.”

He turned onto the road up to the Canyon. “As for Dae, we’ve put a tracker on his van.” Adam had asked Pascal to handle it, the senior wing commander one of the clan’s best at computronics.

“Good.” Eleri’s voice was calm. “If nothing else, it’ll eliminate him from our list. The chance my serial is non-Psy is minuscule, but Dae could be developing into another kind of predator.”

Silence again, the unspoken words between them daggers in the dark.

You were meant to be the one person I could trust without question all my life. You betrayed me.

The angry denunciation of the youth he’d been.

The man he’d grown into knew it wasn’t that simple, that Eleri had had other masters to please…and still, he couldn’t forgive her. Had it been any other day, any other event…maybe. But for her to choose not to speak when it was about justice for the cold-blooded murder of his parents?

Adam’s entire being rejected the idea of forgiveness.