Page 25 of Primal Mirror

Remi stared at her. “Are you daring the alpha of a predatory changeling pack?”

“No.” She took aim. “Just making a statement.”

She fired.

This Auden, Remi realized with a sense of the portentous hanging over his head, could be far more dangerous to him than either of the avatars he’d previously met.

The question was, was she real…or a mask created with him as a target in mind? “I have to head back,” he said and it wasn’t a lie. He also, however, needed space to think.

Her face fell. “Of course.” The quicksilver faded. “Thank you for the lesson.”

Remi found himself hesitating, once more viscerally conscious of her aloneness. “I can help carry the target inside for you. Might rain overnight.”

“No.” A stiff look, the corners of her soft mouth pinched. “No, I prefer to do it myself.”

Remi thought of her fingers on his comm device, the way she’d clutched at her abdomen as she whimpered that it hurt, and realized he had no idea how her psychometric abilities impacted her daily life. But from the guarded way she was looking at him, she didn’t plan on sharing anything with him on the point.

He could’ve left it, but that didn’t sit right, especially when her reticence was going to roadblock things he could do to help her. “Psychometric stuff?”

A rapid blink, a long pause.

“I have friends in the PsyNet,” he added. “Rumor is you’re a Ps-Psy, and I know that’s right because of what you did with my comm. No one knows your Gradient, but guesses are 7 or higher, because of your parents.” Remi made a face. “I don’t get grading people that way, but I guess it works for the Psy.”

Narrowed eyes, the stiffness eroding under a flash of irritation she couldn’t conceal. “From what I know, changelings do the same.”

It was his turn to scowl. Folding his arms, he set his feet apart. “You’ll have to explain that to me, Deadshot.”

She folded her own arms, and held his gaze with the moonstone blue of her own. “Your grading scale goes from dominance to submission.”

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.

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