Page 121 of Primal Mirror

Auden gasped against his chest even as tears of joy ran down Remi’s face. He didn’t fucking care. Because she’d given herself to him, now and forever. “Come on, little cat,” he said. “Open those beautiful eyes.”

Liberty made a happy little sound in the crib that sat next to Auden’s bed.

“Yeah, your mama’s back,” he rumbled to the cub. “She’s just taking her time to rise up out of her sleep.”

Jaya, the empath who’d worked with Auden earlier that day had already left, but she’d done so with a smile that glowed against the dark brown hue of her skin. “She’s tough, your Auden. I don’t know how she did it, but she’s literally rerouted her personality past any damage—and at a speed that should be impossible.”

Because she’s done it before, Remi had thought, his pride a wild thing. “Will she wake soon?”

“Within the day I’d say,” Jaya had predicted, to the shock of Dr. Bashir, who’d predicted a coma of months if not years.

“I’ve never quite seen a mind like hers,” Jaya had added. “There’s…” A deep frown. “The link to her child is profound. It’s beyond the usual maternal bond.”

She’d shaken it off. “But it’s nothing bad. Might simply be a result of the early trauma. I can continue to keep an eye on it if…” A fading of her smile, those empathic eyes soft with pain. “Hope, right? We have to have hope. I’m going to hope that the PsyNet has one last trick in its arsenal.”

But Remi couldn’t think about the impending catastrophe in this instant of joy clawed out of the grasp of nightmare. Trembling, he pressed his lips to Auden’s curls at a time when it felt as if the whole world slept. “I miss you, Cupcake. Please wake up.”

A rasp of breath.

He jerked his head down, saw Auden looking up at him. Her eyes were muddy and unfocused…but they cleared in a slow wave. Lips parting, she tried to speak, couldn’t.

He grabbed the glass of water off the side table, helped her sip it, then put it aside and just held her tight while he fought to breathe.

Her hand spread on his heart. “How long?”

“Three days,” he said. “Just three days.” Even if it had felt like a lifetime. “You’re a fucking miracle.” He kissed those dry lips that were the most beautiful thing in the world to him. “I am so going to spank you for giving me such a fucking fright.”

Her lips curved. “I love you, too.”

He saw the knowledge of their bond in her eyes, in her smile before she said, “Liberty?”

“Hold on.” Shifting off the bed, he picked the baby up from her crib and laid her in Auden’s arms before taking his position on the bed beside her once again, his arm around her back. “You had bad internal bleeding, hemorrhages everywhere, but Bashir, that arrogant prick to whom I will forever be grateful, fixed those.”

“Explains the body aches and exhaustion.” But she was smiling and nuzzling at Liberty as she spoke. “Here I am, here I am. Yes, I know Mama was gone. I know. I’m sorry. I love you so much. I won’t ever go away again.” Her voice was soft and singsong in that way of parents with their cubs.

It melted his heart. “I’m going to make you pregnant every freaking year if you keep on being that adorable.”

A sultry smile. “I saw your fantasies.”

“I saw yours, too.” He cupped her jaw, his heart yet thunder. “You have no idea how much I want to make every one of them raw, naked reality.” Pleasure, play, whatever she wanted, he’d give her. But first of all, he’d hold her until his most primal core was convinced she’d woken, come back to him and Libby.

Auden’s eyes bled to dark, but she glanced down suddenly, whispered, “She can’t understand, can she?”

His shoulders shook as he cuddled both his girls close. “Her little ears are safe from our dirty talk, trust me.” Nuzzling at her curls, he was about to whisper a few more sweet and dirty thoughts to her just because he could, because she was awake and alive, when she jolted.

Claws out, he searched the room for threats. “Auden?”

“The PsyNet. Something’s wrong on the PsyNet.” Her voice was fast, her pitch high. “It’s falling. Crumbling. Oh my God, Liberty!”

* * *

• • •

AUDEN could see the Arrow shield above her mind, but it proved no barrier to the glittering blue spidersilk that was rising up from her own mind. It went through the shield as if it didn’t exist…and so did Auden.

When she turned back and looked, her mind remained opaque…but the spidersilk was spreading across the starlit and fractured darkness of the PsyNet at impossible speed, with her the spider at the center. Because it was a web, with the perfect framework, each fine line followed by another and another.

Radial lines ran out in every direction, going as far as the eye could see, before fading away. “It’s not me,” she whispered on the physical plane, staring down at her sweet baby, whose brown eyes now glowed a glittering blue.

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