Page 40 of Primal Mirror

She did what he said, had to do what he said because she didn’t know how to get herself out of this on her own. Remi was all she had, even though she was painfully conscious that he wouldn’t have chosen this.

Auden knew who and what she was—a Scott. Feared by some. Hated by others. Remington Denier was the alpha of a changeling pack. He wasn’t helping her because he liked her. No one liked Auden.

They tolerated her, or found her useful, or saw her as a means to an end.

Jerking back, she wasn’t surprised when he let her go. Of course he would if he was trying to win her trust, trying to show her that he wouldn’t betray her. She couldn’t trust him. She couldn’t trust anyone.

Her father had taught her that lesson with the biggest betrayal of her life.

Her fingers drifted to her temple, the scar just under her hairline a ridged reminder of the price of trust.

Chapter 17

There is a point of terminal velocity, a moment beyond which the psychometric no longer has control of the inputs into their system. I didn’t understand that prior to that day at the Johanssen farm, when I fell into the vortex of an evil so profound that the imprints have become a permanent part of my own memories.

I was institutionalized in the direct aftermath. Not because I was psychotic, but because I believed with every cell in my body that I had committed the atrocities for which I had such vivid memories both visual and emotional. I remembered not just the act of brutalization, but pleasure so violent it was obscene, and I was convinced that warped pleasure was mine.

—Excerpt from Terminal Velocity: A Psychometric’s Journey into Oblivion by Crispin Nicholas (1973)

“I’M SORRY.” AUDEN wiped her face on the sleeves of her loose sweater dress, an action which would’ve horrified her mother.

But Shoshanna Scott had been displeased by Auden from a young age. Why she’d made Auden her successor, even in name only, especially given Auden’s injury, no one would ever know.

Auden did, however, know why Shoshanna had carried her in the womb, rather than using a surrogate. The vast majority of Psy believed that contact with the maternal carrier’s mind influenced the child’s mind—and psychic integrity was as important to the bloodline as genetic.

Her journey to birth had never bothered Auden. She hadn’t even been wounded by her mother’s disdain. To her, Shoshanna had just been her maternal donor, Henry the person who was her actual parent.

A good parent.

A good man.

A good liar.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated through a throat that rasped, the need inside her an aching hurting thing that wanted to hide her face in his arms and pretend this was her life, her world. Safe. Warm. Full of the wild. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Pregnancy hormones?” Remi suggested, ducking his head in an effort to meet her gaze. “It’s not a big deal,” he said when she refused to cooperate. “I’ve held more than one crying pregnant woman in my time.”

Auden tried to make sense of that, couldn’t. “You have?”

“One of the lesser-known duties of an alpha. My chest is well used to being a landing pad for tears.”

He was trying to ease her embarrassment, she thought, and wanted so much to take him at face value. To believe in someone enough to lower her guard even this much, it would be more than she’d known since the day her father sacrificed her to the altar of his ambition. “Thank you.”

“Auden”—Remi’s voice wasn’t all human—“I don’t want to push you after what you just experienced, but we have to talk.”

Her muscles threatened to spasm, they’d gone so tight. “Yes.” It came out a whisper as she thought frantically about how to explain what had happened without coming across as brain damaged. Her baby couldn’t afford for Auden to be seen as weak, as prey. “I need to wash my face.”

“I’ll stay out here. Unless…how sensitive are you? To what you pick up, I mean? Will my presence inside leave strong impressions?”

“Imprints,” she found herself saying—because no one in her life had ever been interested in her ability. “We call them imprints.”

“Right, imprints.” He nodded at the cooler. “You seemed to go into something like a seizure when you touched the handle. Rigid body, eyes shifting to black.”

“It’s better if you stay here,” Auden said, rather than thinking about the image he’d sketched for her. It did sound like a seizure, a bad one. Maybe that was why she had no memory of their conversation, or even of accepting the cooler from him—the seizure had disrupted her neurons, wiped them clean.

Once inside her cabin, she made quick work of washing up. The eyes that looked back at her from the mirror remained that pale Shoshanna blue, so unexpected and striking against the rich dark of Auden’s skin tone.

Shoshanna blue.

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