Page 72 of Primal Mirror

—Faith NightStar (Cardinal F-Psy, DarkRiver) to Anthony Kyriakus of the PsyClan NightStar (12 November 2083)

AUDEN WOKE WITH her brain fuzzy. Panic stuttered in the back of her mind. Was she regressing? Going back to who she’d been before the pregnancy? Had she lost more time? Who had she been—

My baby!

A deluge of memory, of pain, visceral and stabbing, that had turned into rolling waves of agony. Her child’s fear, the scent of blood in the air, a leopard’s gold-green eyes looking into hers as he growled at her that she had this, that her cub would be just fine.

She couldn’t feel her baby inside her anymore, and when she managed to move her hand to her abdomen, it didn’t feel right. Too small. Not hard enough.

A delicate psychic light, a bond unbreakable.

Her child was alive, but where? Had her family taken her? Please. Please.

Her breath coming in pants, she struggled to open her eyes.

“You’re all right, sweetheart.” The touch of a hand on hers that felt gentle.

An empath?

“There you go, your vital signs are stabilizing. Don’t force it, just let yourself come out of it naturally. You didn’t put yourself under so whatever you feel when you come out of that, this’ll be different. You lost a lot of blood—your body shut down.”

She’d understood all those words, she realized, and she wasn’t fading into a heavier fuzziness but coming out into clarity. Her eyes opened on that thought—and she found herself looking into the face of a man with smile lines at the corners of his eyes and sandy hair that fell over his forehead.

“My baby.” It came out a rasp at the same time that she remembered the man’s name: Finn. His name was Finn, and he was one of Remi’s people.

Remi, who’d promised her that no one would steal her baby.

“In the incubator,” Finn said with a smile. “I’ll wheel it over so you can see her. She’s tiny but perfect. Strong little lungs, too. Just needs a bit of extra help keeping her body temperature stable—you can still give her cuddles, but we’ll have to time it.”

He vanished on that, but she soon heard the sound of wheels on a hard floor. Turning in that direction, she watched as the clear box of what appeared to be a state-of-the-art incubator neared her bed.

Her eyes teared up. Her little girl was so small, so fragile. “Is she—”

“Totally fine,” the healer assured her. “Enough weeks on her that she was out of the danger zone as soon as I got her over the shock of the birth.”

After locking the incubator’s wheels, he helped Auden struggle up into a seated position, then—with infinite care—removed her baby from the incubator—and from the wires that went out from her tiny body. “Skin-to-skin contact is the best, especially as you won’t be able to hold her for long until she graduates from the incubator.”

Not caring about her modesty, only about her baby, she undid the strings of her loose hospital smock from around her neck, and lowered it off her arms and down her chest. Finn kept his eyes gently averted as he handed Auden her precious baby.

So small and fragile, her eyes closed and her skin delicate beyond bearing, her baby nonetheless curled her hands against her heart and Auden heard a whispered sigh in her mind. “I have you. I’m so sorry it took this long, my baby.” Tears streaked down Auden’s face. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

She was barely aware of Finn throwing a soft blanket or shawl around her shoulders that she tugged to wrap around herself and her child. “Mama will never ever let you go.” She pressed the softest of kisses on her baby’s head, which was covered in a tiny knitted cap. Under her hand, she wore a diaper of the same tiny proportions.

Auden didn’t know what color her eyes were. Might be blue like her own, or brown like those of the male genetic donor. Her skin was far paler than Auden’s, which wasn’t a huge surprise. The paternal donor’s skin had been on the other end of the spectrum to Auden’s. But…She frowned, checked her baby’s body, and saw not a single hint of the level of melanin in her own skin.

Her baby’s skin was the color Auden’s mother’s had been—a creamy white.

Odd genetics, she told herself, thinking of an article she’d seen once where a set of twins had come out divided when it came to skin tones, one with skin of ebony, the other with skin of white. As if each parent’s genes had chosen a child in the womb.

None of it mattered, Auden’s love for her child a fierce beat in her soul.

She wanted to see if her girl had tiny black curls or if she’d been born with mere wisps, but she didn’t want her head to get cold, so she left it for now. Something to discover another day.

Today, she just inhaled the sweet, innocent smell of this child she had no memory of conceiving and who she loved beyond compare, and she hugged her close and she listened to her near-imperceptible breathing—and her murmurings inside Auden’s mind. Even so young, her voice was crystalline.

Her baby was a strong, very strong, telepath.

And she loved being cuddled by her mama.

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