Very perceptive, Dorian thought - Amara Aleine was a sociopath, but she was in no way stupid. "So what?" Dorian said. "It's the message that's important."

"The second my twin acknowledges a breach in her conditioning," Amara said, eyes never moving off Ashaya, "she loses all credibility. The Council won't have to do anything to rebut her accusations."

Dorian had an uneasy feeling her point might be valid. He met Ashaya's gaze. "She right?"

Her nod was reluctant. "Silence is being challenged on a number of levels. People know it's failing for some - there are whispers of violence, of madness, but for the vast majority, it's an indelible truth, something they'll fight to maintain."

"Because," Amara said with the absolute detachment Dorian was coming to expect from her, "at the heart of it, they're afraid."

"Psy don't feel." Dorian leaned back against the wall.

Amara turned to him, black pupils stark against the paleness of her irises. "It's the great irony of our race. Psy cling so hard to Silence because at the bottom of it all, they're terrified, afraid that if they let go, the monsters inside their heads will start crawling out, reducing them to the level of you animals once again."

Dorian understood when he was being played. Instead of letting her get to him, he raised an eyebrow. "But you don't think that. You feel."

She gave him a disappointed look. "No, I don't. I'm a pure sociopath. I can pretend, but I can't actually feel."

He was fascinated by the clinical way she described herself. "How do you know if you've never felt?"

She slanted a sly glance her sibling's way. "Ashaya's mind has all sorts of interesting nooks and crannies, doesn't it, big sister?"

"I told you she spied," Ashaya said, and there was pain in it. "Before I learned to block her, she used to shadow my mind every minute of every day. She's the reason Silence never stood a chance of gaining a foothold in my psyche." Her next words were directed at Amara. "You were never under, were you, Amara?"

Amara shrugged. "It's impossible to condition someone like me. Not when Silence is based on the theory that we all feel something to start with." She looked to Dorian again. "They tie the pain controls - the feedback loop that punishes us for 'bad' behavior - into emotion. Since I don't have any, the conditioning made no impact."

"And you made sure it didn't take with me, either," Ashaya said.

"Your mind was more interesting with emotion."

Ashaya's hand fisted. Pushing off the wall, Dorian began playing with his pocketknife, drawing Amara's attention. "Have you ever killed?" she asked him.

"Yes." In defense of those he loved, in protection. And once, in vengeance.

"What does it feel like?" Cold, scientific curiosity.

He balanced the tip of the knife on his finger. "Why? Don't you know?"

A shrug. "It's never interested me for its own sake."

He believed her. Ashaya's sister was a monster, but a monster of a different breed. Left alone, she wouldn't rampage through the streets spilling innocent blood. Nor would she abduct and torture for the sake of it. But, he realized, she would do any cruelty in the name of science, in the name of knowledge. And the true horror of it was that she might actually find answers to questions humanity had been asking for decades. A genius untrammeled by conscience or ethics. With no vulnerability... save one.

"Would you let the Council kill Ashaya?" he asked.

Something primal awakened in the depths of those blue gray eyes. "Ashaya is mine." Like a child staking a claim. "She's always been mine."

"No," he said, folding the knife closed and sliding it back into his pocket. "You can't get into her mind anymore."

For the first time, Amara struggled against her bonds. "I can feel her."

"I know." But he also knew something else. "There's a stronger bond there now and it's so powerful, it strangles your connection to a trickle."

Amara hissed. "The boy?" A disdainful sniff. "I considered him a threat once, but he comes from me, therefore he is me. Her bond to him is mine."

He saw Ashaya sag in relief. He felt like doing the same. He had complete faith in DarkRiver's ability to protect Keenan, but - and so long as they ensured she could never get physically close to the kid - it looked like they wouldn't have to worry about Amara's particular brand of evil. But this wasn't about Keenan. It had never been.

"You can sense it," he said to her, holding a gaze that should've been familiar but wasn't. She even did her hair in the same braids as Ashaya, had the same distinctive skin tone. Yet he knew he'd never mistake one for the other. There was an emptiness in Amara, a strange hollowness that sucked in everything around her. "You know exactly what I'm talking about."

A mute pause, then a slow, malicious smile. "It's not complete. She chooses me."

"Do you think so?" He raised his head as he caught the scent of Pack. Moving off the wall, he strode to Ashaya, closing his hand gently around hers. "Let's go, beautiful."

She glanced at Amara. "Dorian, I - "

"Shh." Raising their linked hands, he brushed his lips over her knuckles. "You don't have to worry." He didn't have a clue in hell as to what they were going to do with Amara, but no one would hurt her while Ashaya was gone.

Amara laughed and it was hollow, too. "Letting a man control you, big sister? My, we have come down in the world." Cool acid in every word.

But the taunt had the opposite affect from the one Dorian was sure had been intended. All hesitation left Ashaya's face, and she met her twin's eyes with steely determination. "Should I let you manipulate me instead?" A soft question weighted with fury such as he'd never heard. "Should I let you bury my spirit as well?" Pulling open the door, she walked out.

Dorian was the only one who saw Amara's expression - pure, lost confusion. As if she couldn't believe that Ashaya would choose anything or anyone over her. But Amara wasn't the one on Dorian's mind right then. Striding out after Ashaya, he saw her standing several meters away, the pine needles a natural carpet around her.

Keeping her in his line of sight, he glanced at Clay, one of the two extra packmates he'd scented in the area. While Clay had come here after escorting the Psy guards out of their territory, Mercy had called to say she was heading to the station to prepare for Ashaya's next broadcast. "Amara," he said to Clay, "is narcissistic, completely without conscience. Single person she cares about is Ashaya. Watch your back."

The other sentinel simply folded his arms. "Exactly like the Councilors then."

Dorian grinned despite himself. "Yeah. Where's my Psy consult?"

"About ten minutes behind us. Jamie's here, too." Clay jerked his head toward the man who'd just walked out from around the side of the house, having apparently done a security sweep. The skilled soldier had a habit of dyeing his hair in incomprehensible combinations of color - today it was a deep indigo streaked with either black or green. He gave a short wave in response to Dorian's nod, but didn't walk over to join them, his eyes scanning the area with predatory watchfulness.

"That's pretty sedate for Jamie," Dorian commented.

"He said it's his camouflage look." Clay shook his head. "Getting back to Sascha - what the hell do you expect her to do?"

Dorian's gaze drifted out to the wolf-eyed woman who stood so alone against those trees. "I need to know if Amara Aleine can be allowed to live."

Leaving Clay, he walked out after his mate. Ashaya had moved deeper into the shadows but he could track her through anything. Reaching her, he put his hand on the back of her head, and urged her gently toward his chest. She came after a short hesitation, but there was nothing broken in her. Instead, she seemed to vibrate with a vivid rage he could feel in his gut. The leopard gave a growl of respect deep within him. This woman's anger was not something to be ignored.

"Ready to go?" It wasn't what he wanted to say, wasn't the question he wanted to ask, but she'd been pushed incredibly far today. And it would get worse still.

In his arms, she gave a short nod. "Let's get it over with."

As they parted and began to walk back to the car, he could almost see her changing, almost see her wrapping the layers of emotionless control around herself. By the time they drove out, she sat straight-backed and alien next to him. It infuriated the leopard.

Chapter 44

Ashaya Aleine is a threat to the Net. Given that the other Councilors seem more worried about their political positions than maintaining the purity of Silence, it appears I shall have to be the one to punish Aleine for her treasonous actions. And there has only ever been one sentence for such a crime: death.

-  From the encrypted personal files of Councilor Henry Scott

Sascha arrived minutes after Dorian and Ashaya left. "I don't want to go inside." She hesitated in front of the greenery-cloaked door.

Lucas's arm came around her waist in a familiar embrace. "Talk to me."

"The badness coming off her... it's painful." She rubbed at her chest, trying to soothe the ache. "And yet at the same time, there's such need in it."

"Missing her twin?"

"Maybe." She bit her lip. "Since defecting from the Net, I've learned that not everything is black and white. There are shades of gray. But, Lucas, I don't know if I can accept this much gray." Her breath grew short, tight in her chest.

"Come on." He turned her toward the trees. "We'll go for a walk. Clay and Jamie have her covered." His hand slid down to tangle with hers as they walked a ways into the muted light of the forest. "This'll do." He moved to stand in front of her as she leaned back against the solid support of a tree trunk, his hands palms down on the trunk on either side of her head.