Page 39 of Primal Mirror

The imprints burned into Auden’s senses, shoved through her veins, her synapses sparkling fire.

Pregnancy intensifies our ability to sense imprints.

The imprints pulsed in a living beat within her, her skin feeling as if it rippled with fur.

“Auden?”

Only then did she realize she wasn’t alone. She stared uncomprehendingly at Remi. “When did you get here?” Her eyes caught on the arm she’d raised in a startled motion…and she realized that not only was she standing in sunlight, but that her dress was blue. The last thing she remembered wearing had been black.

The cooler slipped from her grip. “What—”

Her eyes clashed into those of feline yellow-green. She noticed with some distant part of her brain that he’d caught the cooler before it hit the ground, put it aside. But his attention was on her. “Do you know who I am?”

Auden’s mouth went dry that he’d even ask that. “Why wouldn’t I? Remington Denier, alpha of RainFire. Remi.”

He watched her with unblinking focus. “Do you remember what we were talking about just before?”

Her shoulders grew tight, her hands clammy all at once. She tried to speak, but her tongue was too thick in her mouth. It had happened again, and this time outside of the Scott compound, where it could be hushed up and forgotten.

“Of course I do,” she said, hoping she could bluff her way out of the blank spot in her mind.

“Liar.” A single soft word that crashed her world to her feet.

Emotion rolled over her in a wave of terror held back far too long, and suddenly, to her absolute horror, she was crying. Huge gulping sobs that wracked her frame and had her searching her PsyNet shields with manic desperation to ensure they hadn’t fallen.

Officially, Silence might no longer be the Psy way, but emotion remained verboten in her family. A single hint that she’d broken the line, and she’d lose the little freedom she’d carved for herself.

Across from her, Remi seemed to lock up that big body, his hands fisted at his side. Growling deep in his chest, the sound rough against her senses, he said, “Come here. If you can handle the contact, come here.”

She shouldn’t. It went against every rule of the world in which she’d been raised. It also exposed her to this changeling who was all but a stranger to her, and who now knew that something was very, very wrong with the ostensible scion of the Scott empire. But she stumbled forward anyway, her cheek ending up pressed to the hard warmth of his chest, and her hands gripping the sides of his T-shirt.

He burned hot, his scent of the forest wild.

And his arms, when they came around her, were so strong that panic fluttered at her.

“Just say the word when you want me to let go.” His voice was a rumble-growl against her, a vibration that comforted despite the danger of the creature she heard in his voice. “Skin privileges are just that, a privilege not a right.”

Skin privileges.

The words penetrated the sobs wracking her, but she was too distraught to understand them. She could’ve blamed it on the imprints on the handle of the cooler—so warm, so joyous, so of family and of care—but she knew the truth.

This was the result of months of fear, months of “waking” to find herself somewhere totally different from where she last remembered being. Months of Dr. Verhoeven telling her that it was a lingering symptom of her neural scarring. But if that were true, it should have improved as she became more and more herself.

It hadn’t.

It was getting worse.

Never before, however, had she done an act this reckless—flown the jet-chopper from the compound to this remote cabin. A flight of which she had only vague memories. Of last night, after her arrival, she had nothing.

Dr. Verhoeven had suggested that she might be having “invisible” micro seizures that were wiping out her memory. Charisma had confirmed much bigger grand mal seizures after Auden came to herself with severe bruising on various parts of her body.

What if that had happened while she’d been in the air?

She could’ve killed her baby.

“Shh, little cat. You’ll make yourself sick.” A deep purr of a voice that vibrated into her bones. “Listen to my voice, focus on it.” He kept on talking, telling her about the kinds of trees prevalent in this region, which birds called it home, which smaller creatures shared this land with his pack.

It was a glimpse into a wondrous world far beyond her experience.

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