He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. This—it was too huge a thing to digest. “I can’t be an empath.” The words fell out of his mouth. “I’m a killer.”

Selenka would’ve eviscerated Ming LeBon with her claws, then spit in his dying face had the former Councilor been anywhere near her vicinity. He’d taken a traumatized young boy and instead of helping him, had used that trauma to his own ends, reinforcing all of Ethan’s terrible views about himself.

But Selenka didn’t give voice to her fury; her mate needed something else from her at this instant. “So am I,” she said, extending her claws so they touched the sides of his face, pricking in just a little.

“I’ve executed threats to my pack without a second thought,” she said, “and I have no guilt at all over Blaise’s death.” She’d heard the faint howls of triumph not long ago, knew the cult leader was dead. “If a telepath came at me and tried to break open my mind, you’d better fucking believe that I’d rip out their throat.”

Ethan’s hands were clamped over her wrists and he was listening. Actively listening. So she kept talking, trying to smash through this seemingly immovable barrier in his mind. Maybe one day, he’d be ready to talk to someone else about this, but right now, she had the best chance of ending his belief that he was a killer and only a killer.

“The first time you killed,” she said, conscious everyone else had shifted out of earshot, “you did so in self-defense. We train our pups not to use their claws or teeth—unless someone is hurting them and they need to get away. Then they’re taught to fight. You fought, Ethan, and you had a right to fight.”

He parted his lips, but she spoke before he could. “Your adult kills? How many did you do voluntarily? Without Ming’s mind controlling yours?”

Silence was her answer.

Hands still clawed, she brushed her lips gently against his. “If someone chained up a changeling as a child and beat and abused them until the changeling had no choice but to kill on command, it’s not the changeling who would be the monster.”

Those clear eyes darkened on a sweep of black. “I wanted to kill the intruders and Blaise. I still do.”

“You have a violent protective drive—they came to hurt people under your care.”

“It’s not a very empathic way to act.”

“You’re an empath—your reality is an empathic reality.”

Emotions swelled the mating bond: torment, pain, guilt, a fierce devotion . . . and hope.

Selenka kissed him again. “You are not the monster.”

Her words were still reverberating in Ethan’s mind when he heard her say, “I thank you for your assistance, but I need you to leave now. Kostya will show you to the entrance and we’ll provide hotel rooms in the city if you have to wait for a teleport pickup.”

This time, Memory didn’t argue, but Sascha said, “Until Ethan has a chance to build the appropriate filters, he needs to create a pressure release valve in his shields.” Her voice was unbending. “I can give him the instructions now if he allows a telepathic send, but he has to follow those instructions within the hour if he isn’t going to risk further bruising to his brain.”

Ethan found the mental space to say, “Send. I’ll do it.” No fucking way was he not doing anything that would give him a lifetime with Selenka.

Sascha was as good as her word, transmitting the instructions at once. Then she and the others all left. Ethan shuddered, his forehead pressed to Selenka’s. He knew he would have questions, so many of them, in the days to come, but right now, he just needed to be with his mate.

Once alone, he went to kiss her in an effort to find his feet again . . . and inside him stirred a sensation akin to a wolf’s fur. He halted, another hunger overwhelming the first. “Can I see your wolf?”

Her eyes shifted from human to wolf before she stepped back and began to strip. She did so with changeling practicality and still he watched her like a slave. She was sleek and strong and beautiful. And his.

“Am I too possessive?” he asked, the vague thought dawning in the part of his brain that wasn’t awash in emotion.

She padded to him naked and proud. “We are as possessive as each other, zaichik.”

Ethan could feel her teeth at his throat, was more than happy with that. Hand at her waist, he looked into her eyes and saw the wolf take control a heartbeat before she broke into shatters of light, and where had stood a woman powerful and dangerous now stood a sleek wolf with dark gray fur at the back that faded gradually into pale dawn gray by the time it reached her stomach.

Her pricked ears were dark at the base, pale at the tips, as was her tail.

Everything about her was beautiful.

Crouching down on a wave of wonder as she shook herself to settle her fur, he ran his hand reverently over her back. She nuzzled at his throat, bit playfully. He felt no fear. This was his mate. “Lovely and deadly,” he murmured. “And mine.”

His alpha mate didn’t argue with his claim, but it wasn’t enough for Ethan. What they had wasn’t enough. “There’s something wrong with our bond, isn’t there?” Static continued to crackle between them. “It’s me. It’s because of my damage.”

He felt the wolf’s primal answer deep inside him: a clawing possessiveness that said it didn’t matter, that he was perfect to her. It was echoed by a rumbling growl and the closing of powerful jaws over his shoulder.

But Ethan shook his head. “I want it all. I won’t let Ming steal this from us.” A dark heat rose in him, a thing with claws that didn’t feel wolf. “Will you have me?”

The look the wolf gave him was very Selenka.

He found the dark embers morphing into a softer, warmer sensation. Rubbing his face against the side of the wolf’s, he said, “I know how to fix it. I know what to do.” It was a crystalline realization inside his mind, born in the wildness of emotion soaking into his senses.

He released the shield Sascha had created, the one that contained his empathy. He released it all the way, and he didn’t put it back up even when the first faint howls growled into his brain. For the first time in his life, he opened his soul . . . and in ran a wolf, the contact so hard and powerful and potent that his mind screamed in ecstasy.

He had told her he was keeping her.

* * *

—

ON the PsyNet, a new bond shimmered into life, a golden rope prickly with claws and entwined with oil-slick black shimmers that were almost impossible to see. That bond snarled at people to keep their distance and it emerged from a martial mind that was all but invisible.

Then the bond was gone as quickly as it had appeared, and the martial mind faded into the Net. Those who’d seen the bond’s split-second appearance were left with dazzled afterimages but could find no trace of either the mind or the bond in the moments that followed. It was as if the two had never existed.

Chapter 44

I do not wish to sacrifice any of my newborn children of power, but war and loss are entwined. To win the world, we must be ready to bleed.

—The Architect

ETHAN OPENED HIS eyes to find himself sprawled on the forest floor, facing Selenka. In human form once more, she had her eyes open and was breathing harshly. He could feel her inside him . . . and the static was gone, the channel between them clear of jagged shards. “I told you you were mine.”

A breathy laugh. “Stubborn Arrow.” A hard kiss. “Boom.” Falling onto her back, she smiled as he came over her. She was naked and he wanted to kiss every inch of her, but he also didn’t want to look away from her smile, so he satisfied himself with petting her with one hand while he braced himself on his elbow and looked into her eyes.

“How did you—” Her eyes narrowed. “You dropped all your shields, didn’t you? Sascha said you need proper filters.”

“Yes,” Ethan admitted reluctantly. “I’ll have to reinitialize my shields as soon as we leave this isolated area.” Or the emotions of the world would pour into him in screaming, howling chaos.

Selenka nipped at his chin. “Don’t be a grump. Now we know any static will be temporary—it’ll disappear once you’re no longer trying to suppress your abilities.”

Forcing himself to accept the logic of that, he checked the PsyNet—a place rife with lightning shadows. Fading imprints too weak to follow. “My Arrow shields have reinitialized, leaving me hidden in plain sight. Those shields are also protecting our bond.”

“I want everyone to see it.” Selenka scowled and gripped at his hair. “Make it visible.”

He nipped her on the chin, got a growl in response. “It’s a defensive skill. No one can find me on the PsyNet this way.”

Selenka considered that, seemed to decide it was acceptable. “I heard empaths give out sparks of color on the Net. How do you hide that?”

He looked, saw black shimmers that slipped secretively into the Net. “I’m not a normal empath,” he said, and for the first time, the word “normal” didn’t hold a terrible weight. “I think . . . I’m okay with being abnormal.”

“You know another word for that?” Selenka’s eyes dazzled, her wolf prowling at the surface. “‘Unique.’ You, Ethan Night, are unique. One of a kind.”

Unique.

Still heavy in the head and in the bones, he nuzzled his mate.

Wrapping an arm around his shoulders, Selenka tugged him down until he lay half on her, half off. When she pulled at his T-shirt, he got the message and took it off. She sighed at the skin-to-skin contact, and he felt the warmth inside him grow and grow and grow.

“I’m happy.” They were the last words he remembered saying before he fell into a sleep contented and at peace, his mate’s body soft beneath his and her fingers caressing his hair.

* * *

—

    TWENTY-EIGHT hours later, Aden asked Ethan to join him as they attempted to speak to the man whose mind he’d pinpointed during the last attack on the Net. Their aim was to find out why those with Scarab Syndrome were turning on the Net.