Page 34 of Storm Echo

“Jax?”

“A drug.” So strange, that it would be in his heart. No medic had ever warned him of deposits in that region of his body. “It opens the mind, intensifies the world, offers false freedom.”

Sitting up without warning, her spine rigid, she took his face in her hands. “Don’t put poison inside you.” An order, the stars in her eyes shifting to a primal tawny gold. “Promise me.”

“I’ve never taken Jax of my own free will,” he told her, because this was a dream and he didn’t have to fear that the truth would make her see him as defective. “My mother used it while I was in the womb—and she gave it to me when I was a child.”

A haze of red in her gaze now, flames of anger licking at the gold and husky brown. “It harmed you?”

“My brain pathways are abnormal.” There was no way to dress that up when the configuration of his brain was so bizarre that the neuro specialists his grandmother had hired didn’t know what to make of it.

Whatwasknown was that of those adult Psy confirmed to have been exposed to Jax in utero, ninety-six percent experienced episodes of “serious mental instability” in their late twenties to midthirties. Ivan sat right in the center of that zone. “I thought I had it under control, thought my brain had figured its way around the toxic deposits. I was wrong.”

She ran her fingers through his hair, and he thought she must be leaving behind a trail of starlight. “You’re so afraid.”

“Fear is useless. I’m pragmatic.” He knew what awaited and he’d prepared for it, planned for it. But … he hadn’t prepared for her, had never foreseen how desperately he’d want to fight the fate his mother had chosen for him.

“You’re so sure the worst will happen.”

“Ninety-six percent,” he said, not quite ready to tell her that it wasalreadyhappening; his short clock was now in its final countdown. “The remaining four percent had significant other abnormalities. I might have fooled myself for a time, but the fact is that no one escapes Jax when it’s present during cell development and growth.”

Hands fisting in his hair, she scowled. “I’m not done with this conversation, but I have to go.” She looked over her shoulder, as if being tugged by unseen hands.

Desperation was a howl inside his skull. “Will you remember me when you wake?” he asked her. “Will you rememberus?” As they’d been in the forest in Texas, a fragile bubble of happiness.

“I don’t know. I’m so splintered inside I can barely see my way out.” Starlight fingers brushing his cheek … and then she was gone, the stars falling until he held an overflowing handful that flickered and began to die, one by one.

Chapter 18

Gina: Hey, anyone heard from Soleil? She hasn’t posted since before what happened and I can’t see that Yariela has, either. I know it’s only been three days, but I feel sick to the pit of my stomach. I just want to know they’re okay.

Brett: Yeah, I’m the same. Best-case scenario is that they’re just picking up the pieces and will respond to comms later.

Shamita: I hope so. I hate that no one from SkyElm has reached out to the rest of us for assistance. That alpha of theirs is a total ass according to my own alpha, but we would send help regardless. But we can’t go in without an invitation.

Gina: Brett, you’re a cat in the same general region. You heard anything on the feline network?

Brett: Nada. SkyElm’s insular at the best of times, and right now, they seem to be ignoring all attempts at contact—my alpha tried to reach out directly, got nothing. The only thing I can confirm is that thereweresurvivors—we were able to find that out via a human contact on the ground there.

—Chat log: Primal Care Forum (17 February 2082)

SOLEIL CAME AWAKE with no physical movement to betray her change in state. It was a skill she’d cultivated as a child, after being placed in temporary foster care with the kind of people who should’ve never been carers. But her cat wasn’t having it today, too startled by the other scent in the room. Of a much bigger cat.

Her eyes flicked open.

To see a face of warm beauty leaning over her. The woman’s eyes were the shade of rich caramel against skin kissed by the sun, the hair that tumbled over one of her shoulders an intense brown, and her presence a protective blanket.

Soleil knew her: Tamsyn Ryder, the senior DarkRiver healer.

Changeling healers had long had an informal alliance; they shared healing knowledge regardless of politics and other such vagaries. Back in 2080, however, Tamsyn had set up a forum to facilitate that sharing. Having the forum also allowed for information to be saved so it could be searched. Most of all, the forum was an open conversational space for healers across the world.

“Politics is for alphas and sentinels,” Tamsyn had written in the introductory text. “Healers heal.”

Before the massacre, the forum had been one of Soleil’s favorite online places. She wasn’t, however, worried that Tamsyn would recognize her. As SkyElm’s junior healer, she’d never joined any of the visual communications.

“There you are.” Tamsyn’s voice was as warm as her presence. “How are you feeling?”

Soleil did an internal check. “Tired but okay.” And with an echo of loss inside her that had nothing to do with SkyElm. It was colored in a strange glowing orange edged with scarlet … and in shards of blue, like the eyes of the man who’d saved her life … and now thought he owned it.

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