Snorting, Selenka jerked her head toward the courtyard.

It was softly lit against the night sky with strings of warm gold-hued lights that crisscrossed the area at roof level. He hadn’t noticed them at all in the daytime, but, then again, he hadn’t exactly been in the best frame of mind.

Today, his eyes went to the woman who now stood in the center of the courtyard, arms folded and feet set apart. Undaunted by her stance, he crossed the distance to her—and he touched her, because his mate was a wolf . . . and because he needed the contact. Though she didn’t pull away when he cupped her cheek, she didn’t soften.

He brushed his lips over hers.

When she still didn’t soften, he repeated the action over and over while stroking his thumb over her jaw. It took an eon for her to part her lips, even longer for her to put her hands at his waist. Her eyes were slits of gold when he lifted his head.

“Fast learner,” she said, her voice husky. “But I will still kick your ass if you allow the fear Ming put in you to win.”

“You can’t,” he said, going with instinct. “I’m an Arrow.”

A taut moment before she threw back her head and laughed.

Ethan was drinking in that sound, long-buried parts of him stretching and reaching for it, when he felt a prickling at the back of his neck. He turned to find Ivo escorting out Vasic, a heavily muscled male, and a woman with cardinal eyes.

The teleporter, his left uniform sleeve pinned neatly back to the stump where his arm had been removed, spoke to Ethan. “Sascha has my contact details for when she needs to leave. Memory and Aden are both in the city, within a fast drive of this location.” He teleported out before Ethan could thank him.

Sascha Duncan looked nothing like her mother. She was tall, her skin honey brown, and her hair a soft ebony. She wore it in a single braid and was dressed in slimline tailored pants in black. The pants had tiny pink flowers on them, the color picked up by her silky long-sleeved top that was cuffed at the wrists and had a floppy bow at the neck.

On her wrist was a bracelet made up of small, colorful blocks that spelled out her name. It fit with nothing else in her outfit, but Ethan knew what it was—a gift from a child. Zaira had a similar bracelet, created for her by two of the children in the Valley, the sunlit place that was the new home of the Arrow Squad.

Then those eyes of cardinal starlight landed on Ethan.

The Architect

Three Consortium power players tracked using Cray’s intel. Two are in custody. The third was killed when she decided to respond with weapons drawn.

—Abbot Storm, Strike Team Epsilon, to Aden Kai

FINDING EZRA HAD been a revelation. It had shown the Architect how to unearth more of her kind. More of the new breed of Psy. Ezra had also given her another gift—he’d shown her what she could do if given access to other Scarab minds. Ezra had been cooperative, even thankful for her intervention; he’d been full of terror, clutched at the safety rope she offered. It had made things so much easier.

Now she had a thread that linked her to him, him to her. As the empathic Honeycomb was meant to link all the minds in the PsyNet, creating a strong foundation for their race.

A Honeycomb link was said to stave off madness, but the Architect had seen the truth with the lens of her new power: it had always been a mechanism of control and surveillance, all of them constantly monitored by those who thought themselves rulers of the Psy. She’d broken the connection during a period of chaos; no one had noticed. The empath linked to her probably believed she’d linked to another E in the aftermath.

But the Architect wasn’t about to be a puppet.

No, she would be the puppet master, the spider with a network of powerful minds willing and ready to serve her. Enslaved in a way that made it seem a joy to serve. Ezra had been the first. Tonight, she’d found a fourth and he was full of lightning bolts that spoke of immense power.

Releasing a single virus that she’d delicately and patiently worked so it wouldn’t kill, but simply . . . encourage the other mind to be receptive to her own, she didn’t immediately target the mind with the virus. Perhaps it would be better to do what she’d done with Ezra and ask for entry.

It was a pity the virus didn’t work so neatly with normal minds. She’d tested it on five subjects after first becoming aware of her ability. All five had gone mad and died by their own hand. Oh well, they were beneath her anyway. As were the panicked questions coming in from the stupid in the Consortium who’d permitted themselves to make connections with Cray. She had far more important things to occupy her mind.

There was a miracle taking place among the Psy.

The growth of a new people.

A better people.

The PsyNet belonged to the Architect and her brethren . . . her children.

Chapter 38

It’s time. Prepare.

—The Architect

SASCHA DUNCAN WAS far from the first cardinal Ethan had ever met, but the sight of her eyes still had a visceral impact. Cardinal eyes were the most extraordinary eyes in the world. A sweep of obsidian dotted with white “stars,” their eyes were pieces of captured night sky. Each set was said to be unique; however, Ethan had never spent enough time with different cardinals side by side to compare. But that Sascha was a power was indisputable.

Her psychic energy pulsed in the air in the same way as Selenka’s alpha strength. But where Selenka’s power was aggressive, a thing of claws and teeth and dominance, Sascha’s was water that just moved around all obstacles in its path.

Selenka half laughed, half groaned right then. “Healer.”

Sascha’s lips curved. “Alpha.” A gently affectionate reply. “I live with one—claws and growls don’t work on me, I’m afraid.”

“Your mate is a cat,” Selenka rumbled. “Wolves are very different.”

“That’s what Lucas keeps telling me,” Sascha said with a light in her eyes that said she wasn’t buying it. “This is Clay.” She indicated the green-eyed male at her side.

His hair was black against dark skin, as were the cargo pants he wore with a plain gray T-shirt. That he was a dominant predator wasn’t in question, but he wasn’t a wolf. No, there was something intrinsically feline about his movements.

Selenka and the leopard shook hands, two predators sizing each other up.

Leaving them to it, Sascha directed her next words at Ethan. “We should speak alone so we can concentrate.”

“Clay and I will wait in the HQ,” Selenka said, before she hauled Ethan down for a kiss, the wet heat a branding. “Everything, Ethan. You deserve everything. Fight for it.”

Her touch, her words, lingered long after she strode into the building. Clay’s shadow didn’t budge after the male stepped inside the doorway.

“Clay’s stubborn,” Sascha murmured, catching Ethan’s look. “I told him you wouldn’t hurt me, and he gave me the ‘look’ dominants reserve for healers and empaths.”

“It’s a wise precaution in unfamiliar territory.”

“See?” came a growling rumble from inside the doorway. “The Arrow agrees with me.”

Lips twitching, Sascha said, “We’ll go sit in those outdoor chairs at the far end, where big cat ears can’t hear us.”

Once seated, Ethan said, “You’ll need to look inside my mind?”

Sascha’s expression turned solemn, no humor in her now. “That’s really why I wanted to speak to you alone—allowing someone inside your mind is a thing that requires great trust, and you don’t know me.” Leaning forward, she braced her forearms on her thighs. “I’m willing to answer any questions you have, tell you what you need to feel that trust.”

“It’s not necessary.” Ethan didn’t budge. “I’ve decided.”

Sascha looked at him for a long moment. “And once you decide, that’s it,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. “Right, then let’s get down to it.” She sat back up, suddenly a cardinal blazing with power where before she’d been an empath, gentle and kind. “First things first—risk factors?”

Ethan told her about his ability to utilize light as a weapon. “There is a minor chance it’ll go wild during the shield-building process while I’m between shields.”

“We’ll build the new ones first,” Sascha clarified. “They’ll be up before you lower the old ones.” The cardinal shook out her shoulders. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

The mental knock against his mind was soft.

It took incredible effort to force himself to lower his public shields, the ones that kept his mind private from the world. No one had been inside his mind since the day he broke free of Ming. But Sascha’s psychic presence had nothing in common with the former Councilor’s. She was also scrupulous in sticking to a path that led only and directly to his inner shields.

It took her time to investigate those shields, but when she finished, it was with a frown even darker than Memory’s. “I do sense a massive power behind your shields, but your mind doesn’t have the feel of one that’s disintegrating.”

“There’s no other explanation for such a violent power rising to the surface after a lifetime of dormancy.” Ming would’ve certainly taken advantage of any power of Ethan’s, especially as he’d been a child when he went into the squad, without the ability to hide anything. “My mind sublimated it for a reason.”

Sascha parted her lips before shaking her head. “We’ll argue about the what and the why later. First, the shields.” She began to throw telepathic instructions at him after requesting access to his mind once more. Ten minutes into it, he realized she was designing his shields from scratch. Her myriad instructions were intended to expose both his strengths and his weaknesses in the area.

Ethan had thought Ming a master shield builder, and there was no question the former Councilor was brilliant at caging minds, but this delicacy of construction was on another level. “Does Aden know you can do this?” he asked halfway through.