Page 119 of Primal Mirror

Remi felt no pity for the unconscious man; he’d decided to take advantage of Remi’s wounded mate. Now he was paying the price.

“The family will do what we tell them to do.” Or more of them would meet with a leopard’s claws one dark night.

Remi didn’t play when it came to his mate and child.

Chapter 46

PsyNet status: Critical. Total collapse predicted in thirty-six hours. Mass casualties are to be expected.

Cooperation from the Human Alliance and all major changeling groups has been fed into the survival projection, but the possible success or failure of those attempts to merge with changeling networks, and/or to incorporate humans into small Psy networks as an emergency measure will not be known until Net failure.

The ShadowNet is also ready and waiting to accept refugees, but experiments to date suggest that direct links are not possible and must be made through an emotional tie to an individual already in the ShadowNet.

Current projection: 92% loss of Psy life.

—Report to Ruling Coalition and EmNet from PsyNet Research Group Alpha (21 November 2083)

SILVER MERCANT, DIRECTOR of the Emergency Response Network and mate to the alpha of the StoneWater bears, stared at the report that had just popped up on her organizer. She’d known. They’d all known. But to see it laid out in black and white…

Shoulders locked to rigidity, she pushed away from her desk to look below it—where a small polar bear cub sat playing with wooden blocks. “Dima?” she said, holding out her arms to the child she was babysitting while his mother ran errands.

Sleepy and lazy because it was close to his naptime, he came happily to cuddle with her, and she held him close as her eyes burned and her heart reached for her mate. Valentin was the reason she would survive the collapse—and he was the reason her family would survive.

She and her brother had both mated into the bear clan, and between them, they were near certain they could wrench the rest of the family into the clan.

Because Ena had built a family linked by bonds of love and loyalty unbreakable.

But near certain wasn’t complete certainty. And the Mercant family’s lives weren’t the only ones at stake. Snuggling a half-asleep Dima to her, she thought of all the people with whom she worked on a day-to-day basis, all the good, honorable people who might have no way out.

And the children…

Silver squeezed Dima tight enough that he grumbled little bear grumbles in his sleep. Softening her embrace at once, she kissed his head. If she could, she’d hold all the children of the PsyNet in her arms, give up her life for theirs. Her bear mate, with his huge heart, would do the same. But that wasn’t how it worked, no exchange of lives on the table.

The entire world had stepped up to the plate in the past weeks, when the collapse of the PsyNet had gone from a slow erosion to a sudden oncoming crash. Changelings, humans, the Forgotten, they’d offered to assist in any way possible, but the reason the PsyNet existed in the first place was that it needed to exist.

Even if every one of the contingencies—even the most unlikely—worked as intended, they’d be left with a shortfall of millions.

Millions of lives. Millions of hearts. Millions of deaths.

Hiding her face in Dima’s soft fur, Silver Mercant, ice queen to many and beloved mate to Valentin, cried tears silent and hot.

Chapter 47

Jaya, sweetheart, I have a patient for you. Coma as a result of bodily trauma and insult to the brain. I know things are difficult right now, but if you have even a couple of minutes, I think you could help her as I can’t.

—Message from Sascha Duncan to Jaya Laila Storm (21 November 2083)

“I’M GOING TO put our cub in her carrier for a little bit so she can warm up.” A deep rumble of a voice familiar and beloved. “Libby doesn’t need the incubator anymore, but Finn wants me to use this carrier in short bursts during her visits with you.”

Auden felt the loss of skin-to-skin contact like a limb being cut off, the small warmth on her chest suddenly gone…but the loss was so deep because her joy had been even deeper. Remi had brought her baby to her. She knew it had been him even before she’d heard the rumble of a purr against senses dulled and wrapped in cotton wool.

Our cub.

He’d claimed Libby, would protect her with his life. Libby would never know loneliness, would never be treated as disposable, would never wonder why she wasn’t good enough. She’d grow up loved—by an entire pack, but most of all, by the man who owned Auden’s heart.

At times, she could feel claws against her shields, his leopard wanting to enter. She wasn’t holding him back, didn’t have the power. Her mind was just broken, the shields that held him out the final desperate act of a psychometric bent on survival. Thick, almost tactile shields that had gone up the instant she began to slip into unconsciousness.

The thought started to whisper out of her grasp almost before it had formed, another wave of exhaustion rolling over her. Driven by a sense of vital urgency, she’d struggled against the waves at the start, only to find it tired her out and led her to sink even deeper into the dark, into a place where she could sense nothing.

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