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Flameout should be avoided unless there are exigent circumstances where your resulting psychic vulnerability will not be more dangerous than the alternate option. The general timeline of recovery runs from twenty-four to thirty-six hours, but may stretch into days in severe instances.

—Part of the mandatory Foundational Psychic Mechanics course taught in the final year of elementary Psy education

Eleri came awake to the sounds of quiet movement and the sense of a fog in her head that felt different from her usual numbness. When she went to scan her surroundings using her telepathic senses, her brain ached as if bruised.

Flameout.

She’d experienced it before, but never to this extent—until she was no longer a being of the Psy. She didn’t even know what it meant for her safety against others of her kind.

It was a good thing she was in a changeling den.

Warm, strong fingers around her own, a rough-skinned hand squeezing hers. “I know you’re awake.”

She lifted her lashes, afraid it was a dream, that Adam’s voice, the way he sounded, were just things she wanted and not things she could ever have—because that yearning…

she could still feel it. But there he was, his hair tumbled over his forehead and his upper body clad in a short-sleeved shirt rather than the tee she’d seen him in before her flameout.

“Twenty-six hours,” he said, as if he’d read her mind, the falcon looking back at her out of his eyes. “Perfect timing for breakfast.”

She’d slept away an entire day. That was bad. Flameouts didn’t ordinarily cause unconsciousness for that long, but she remembered the feeling of strain in her head before she went down, the blood on her fingers when she’d touched them to the liquid by her ears.

When she made as if to rise, Adam put his hand under her back to help her up. That was when she realized she wasn’t wearing her suit, but pajamas of a blue material soft against her skin.

Her hand clenched on the edge of the sheet.

“Naia refused to leave you in the suit.” Adam’s gaze held hers even as the heat and strength of him wrapped around her, his size even more apparent to her this close. “She’s the one who took care of that.”

Her muscles relaxed. She could accept the healer’s touch but would’ve never accepted Adam’s, not like this, not now, not when a lifetime and one terrible choice stood between them. “Jacques?” Her voice came out dry, cracked.

Adam passed her a glass of water. “Far more responsive to Naia, and readings show a healthy brain.”

“Good.” She drank half the glass. “That’s good.”

“You think you can get up?” Taking the glass from her, he put it on the bedside table.

“Yes. I’m fine on the physical level, just out of juice on the psychic.” And well past the twenty-four-hour mark when she should’ve already begun to recover. Whatever had taken place, whatever she’d done, it had wiped her out, the effect likely exacerbated by her extreme Sensitivity.

As she swung her legs around, Adam stood watch as if ready to catch her.

“There’s no one nearby who will hurt you.

Hanz—the young E you didn’t meet—has already left, and Sascha will be heading off within the hour and is happy to keep her distance unless you want to see her.

We’re not calling in any other Es until Jacques stabilizes further. You’re safe.”

Safe.

Eleri had never felt safe, not truly. As a young child, she’d known she was unwanted, an error who needed to be handled.

Bram, Saffy, and Yúzé had made boarding school better, but they’d all been under constant watch there for the signs of serious instability that affected a minor percentage of young Js.

The four of them had been powerless children together.

Later, for a few fleeting years, she’d thought Reagan might be safe, that she could trust him with all the pieces of her. Then he’d lied in that courtroom and she’d understood that Reagan had his secrets, that all he showed her was the surface gloss.

She wasn’t sure she even understood the concept of being safe.

But today, as she got off the bed and saw Adam tense as if to catch her should she fall, she got a glimmer.

“I’m stable,” she said, even as part of her wanted to pretend she wasn’t, a sensation as deep as the yearning…

and nowhere near deep enough. Because a flameout couldn’t fix what multiple reconditionings had taken from her.

“And I would like to say good-bye to Sascha. I think…she tried to help me at the end.” It had felt like a warm embrace that gave her body and mind just enough respite that she could haul Jacques out of the glass pond.

“I’ll ask her to come by.” Adam brushed a strand of hair off her face with a tenderness that she wished she could feel as far more than the merest brush. “We have to talk. It’s time.”

Eleri swallowed hard, and it was a numbed echo of a scream that she was swallowing back. Because there was nothing left of her now that this time had come at last. “Yes,” was all she said aloud, because she couldn’t give it up, even if it was a faded copy of what once might’ve been.

Adam dropped his hand, and it felt as if he did so with reluctance. “Shower’s through there,” he said, pointing to the door. “Anything you need, just yell out. I’ll be outside your room. We’re going to breakfast afterward, because first you need to eat.

“In lieu of breaking in, I asked Mi-ja to let me into your room so I could get your luggage—she’s no doubt told the entire town you’re in the Canyon by now, probably with embellishment.

” An amused smile. “Clan also laundered and pressed your suit if you prefer that over what you have in your luggage. Take as long as you want in the shower—I’m not going anywhere. ”

The final words felt like a promise.

Eleri just nodded, but when the water fell over her face only minutes later, she wondered if this was what it felt like to cry.

She couldn’t, hadn’t been able to for a long, long time, so long that she’d forgotten.

But today, she had things tight and hard and hot in her chest, and the water was raining down her face, and in this place full of changelings with natural shields, she didn’t have to worry about being a Sensitive.

Life was…beautiful…and more painful than death.

···

Adam’s mate looked as cold and as remote as always when she stepped out of her room dressed in black suit pants into which she’d tucked a white shirt buttoned at the neck and wrists. She’d scraped her hair into a tight knot at the base of her neck, her facial bones sharp and her expression flat.

But Adam saw through the wall now, and to the woman within, the one who’d been willing to lay her life on the line to help a stranger. No one truly cold of heart would’ve spent even a moment considering that.

“I would like to see Jacques,” were the first words out of her mouth.

Nodding, he led her into his friend’s room, and when she walked to stand beside the bed, she didn’t touch Jacques even though her hands were ungloved.

“I wouldn’t sense anything even if his shields remain fragmented,” she said at his questioning look.

“My psychic senses flatlined, will stay that way until my mind heals. I have no frame of reference for comparison in terms of a timeline for that healing.”

He took her hand because they were past the angry distance, the attempts to ignore who they were meant to be to each other. And she’d given him permission to take skin privileges—he wasn’t about to stop using that permission until she took it back.

She hesitated, her gaze flicking to his before she curled her fingers around his.

“You feel okay?” he murmured. “Losing your psychic senses, it must hurt.”

“I feel…unmoored.” She flexed her free hand flat, stared at it. “As if I’ve lost a limb or an organ of which I was never conscious, but now realize I need to breathe.”

“It’s only temporary,” he reminded her. “An overused muscle that needs to rest.”

Eleri’s nod was quiet.

“Adam?” Edward poked his head into the room, having taken over from Kavi for the day shift. “Sascha’s here.”

Thanking the nurse for the heads-up, Adam walked out with Eleri to find the cardinal E waiting in the hallway, her cub at her side, both of them dressed for the journey home—in the case of Naya, that included a tiny backpack in which Adam had once seen her stow a bedraggled stuffed wolf.

“Hello, little Naya.” Releasing Eleri’s hand, Adam crouched down to hug this child wild of heart who would always be welcome in WindHaven. She smelled of soft, sweet shampoo and candy.

“Bye, Adam,” she said with her tiny arms around his neck. “We go home. I miss Papa.”

Smiling, Adam kissed her on the cheek before rising to his feet with her in his arms. “I have a feeling he misses you, too.” Lucas Hunter was a man who loved his mate and child and didn’t care who knew it—it was exactly how Adam intended to be with his own mate and fledglings, how he’d always been built to be.

…there’s not much of my original personality left…and nothing but a gray wall in its place…

No, he would not accept that, he vowed again, as Eleri and Sascha said their good-byes next to him. He heard Eleri ask what Sascha had done at the end, and Sascha reply, but didn’t hear the words through the roar of determination in his mind.

Then little Naya piped up after her mother stopped speaking. “Hi!” The greeting was directed at Eleri, before she glanced at Sascha. “Mama, I practice?”

Sascha’s returning smile was patient, loving. “Remember, we talked about asking for permission from the other person? Like skin privileges?”

“Oh yeah.” Turning back to face Eleri, Naya took a deep breath and said, “I telepath you, please? I practice.”

Eleri’s expression remained all but impossible to read, it was so devoid of any cues, but Adam had the sense that she was startled at finding herself facing a changeling child with telepathic abilities.

But she replied quickly enough. “I would be pleased to telepath with you, but my telepathy isn’t currently working. ”

A sudden alertness to Sascha’s posture that told Adam he’d missed something—Sascha, he realized, would’ve never instructed her little girl to ask for permission if she’d believed Eleri to still be in flameout. She’d have told her child that Eleri couldn’t telepath to her at present.

“Oh?” little Naya said at that instant. “You got a big ouch?” She touched her head to indicate the location of the “ouch.” “Mama had big ouch before.”

Her language skills—not just comprehension, but the clarity with which she spoke—continued to impress Adam. He had the feeling it had to do with the telepathy, her mind in casual contact with Sascha’s throughout the day. It made him wonder about the vocal development of Psy children in general.

Beside him, Eleri nodded slowly at this childish explanation of flameout. “Yes. A big ouch. Perhaps we can telepath when we next meet.”

The cub was agreeable, but Sascha frowned. “Eleri, do you need an M-Psy to look you over? We have a clanmate who’s completely trustworthy.”

“No.” Eleri shook her head. “It’s the Sensitivity. It means my mind was already strained before the flameout. It’s intensified the effect.”

“Yes, that makes sense.” Shoulders easing, Sascha took Naya’s hand when Adam put the little girl down. “But please reach out if you do decide you want a consult—especially if the flameout lasts beyond the forty-eight-hour mark.”

“If she doesn’t, I will,” Adam said with a scowl, but kept it at that until after Dorian joined Sascha and Naya and the three of them headed off to the jet-chopper on the plateau.

“You should’ve told me you’re badly wounded,” he growled at Eleri, as if he was a leopard like Dorian and not a creature of the sky.

“The sensation is as expected,” Eleri said. “A sense of emptiness where my Psy abilities should be—it’s just the recovery that’s impacted by my Sensitivity. I’m less able to rebound as fast.” Eyes downcast, she turned her bare hands up, then down as if fascinated by their ungloved state.

The naked vulnerability of her in that moment speared through his worry, making him want only to wrap her up in his wings and in his affection, atone for all the years when she’d been alone in the dark, without her mate by her side.

He’d fucked up and bad, the grief of the youth he’d been no excuse for how he hadn’t returned for her once he was an adult—but he planned to spend his entire life making it up to her.

Shifting close, he cupped her face in his hands. “What do you need, Eleri?” A raw question. “Tell me and I’ll give it to you. I’m your mate. I’ll go capture the moon for you if you want.”

Her fingers settled against his left wrist, the touch cooler than his own body temperature. “Today, why don’t we act…as if we just met in that hallway? As if the years and the choices of the past don’t stand between us.”

It was a kick to the gut. “Come on, then, pretty girl with the big eyes,” he said, shoving aside all other plans, including his intention to talk to her about their relationship, a mating too long suspended in amber.

The harder conversations could wait until Eleri healed.

Today, he’d give his mate what she’d asked for, be the boy she’d wanted to tend to that long-ago day. “Let me show you my lair…and seduce you into the kiss I wanted to steal the first time I saw you.”