Both would kill to protect their own.

“Here.” Nikita uploaded data into the closed vault of the Coalition chamber. They’d built the chamber together, the decision not to use the previous Council chambers unanimous. No one knew what codes or back doors were buried within, what nasty surprises might lurk behind the slick walls.

Nikita’s document flashed up against the black of this vault, silvery streams of data that their minds interpreted into the correct forms for understanding.

Kaleb shifted forward physically. “Where did you get this?” They were looking at an internal HAPMA document that was short and to the point.

The Psy want to enslave us to save their HIVENET. They need a pound of HUMAN FLESH for every pound of Psy. We all know what they’ll do to get that. Brothers and sisters, we will not be SUBJUGATED! We will RISE! We will FIGHT!

Freedom, independence, humanity! HAPMA!

“The group appears to be small, the members fiercely loyal to one another,” Nikita said. “I’ve been unable to track any real information about them. I received this from an informer in the Alliance—it was sent to Bowen Knight an hour after the second round of attacks. My informer was in the right place at the right time, was able to make a copy.”

Once again, Nikita proved why she’d survived so many decades. Kaleb hadn’t been able to break anyone in Knight’s inner circle, but Nikita had obviously found a spy on the periphery. Likely someone as innocuous as a sub-assistant to an assistant.

“Could it be a double bluff?” Anthony asked Kaleb. “Knight feeding the information you gave him to this group, then having it be redirected to him to give him plausible deniability?”

“No,” Kaleb said. “Bowen Knight understands this information could cause widespread panic in the Psy. He might distrust our race, but he’s not capable of inciting a genocide.”

“I agree.” Ivy Jane Zen’s voice, the president of the Empathic Collective speaking for the first time. “I’ve met Bo. He’s a hard man, but he’s not evil or vindictive.”

It was Aden Kai, leader of the Arrows, who spoke next. “How certain are you that the note is genuine?”

“No way to confirm.” Nikita’s psychic tone remained as cold as the emptiness of space. “HAPMA is too new, but it doesn’t matter who sent it, or even if my informant is a double agent who made this up to fool me.”

“No,” Anthony said quietly, “because the fact that humans are necessary to the Net is true.”

“HAPMA could cause catastrophic terror in those of our race by blasting this information to the media,” Aden said. “Why are they using it only to inflame their own people?”

“Hivenet,” Kaleb murmured. “If they really believe that, they must believe all Psy already know and are working together to enslave humans.” To this group, the Psy weren’t individuals but a single hateful mass.

“Secrets are poisonous.” Ivy’s psychic voice was gentle but firm. “I still say we need to share the truth.”

Aden Kai remained silent. The Arrows always watched first. And they backed any calls made by the empaths. Not because the deadly men and women of the squad didn’t have their own opinions, but because they believed the empaths were the Psy race’s conscience—and Arrows had a lot of darkness in their past.

“I would agree with you, Ivy,” Anthony said in his calm, tempered tone, “but Sophia Russo and Max Shannon remain the only Psy-human bond in the PsyNet. No such bonds have formed since the fall of Silence. We’d be giving our people terror without even a flicker of hope to balance it out.”

Kaleb didn’t think in those terms, but he understood them because his mate did. His heart was hers, every broken, twisted part of it. Sahara also believed true love would win in the end, conquer hate and anger and fear. He called her a dreamer. She just smiled and told him she’d be proven right.

I loved you right into my arms, didn’t I?

How could he argue with that when he’d been a scarred, dangerous monster she’d coaxed to her with nothing but laughter and tenderness and love?

“We have no reason to rush a decision,” Nikita said. “These HAPMA fools are killing their own people. Only a small percentage of the victims have been Psy. Our populace isn’t screaming for answers.”

Cold-blooded and practical, that was Nikita. She was also right, except for one thing. “Sooner or later—I’d guess sooner—the tide will turn.” Kaleb had seen too much darkness to believe otherwise. “If they manage to convince enough humans of the truth of their claims, Psy will become the targets.” Kaleb didn’t care about his race as a whole, but Sahara did. She’d asked him to save them.

Kaleb didn’t break his promises to her.

“Kaleb is correct.” Aden’s voice was gleaming obsidian, as black as the martial shields around his mind. “This will only have one outcome, and that outcome is bloodshed on a massive scale as ordinary humans turn against the Psy.”

Nikita shrugged off Aden’s warning. “Most Psy can defeat humans.”

“No,” Anthony responded, “they can’t. Not if humans take shots from a distance or use grenade launchers to blow up Psy houses or any of a million ways in which they can kill without ever getting within psychic distance.”

“No.” Ivy Jane’s voice shimmered with empathic power, the wave of it hitting them all. “No more blood, no more war. We are not the Council and we will never be the Council. We have to find a way to save our people and the humans.” Her mind blazed with empathic sparks. “We give Bowen what he wants. We build a way for humans to shield their minds.”

Kaleb had known it was Ivy who’d make that call. He’d also known Nikita would object to it. “We hand that over, and we lose all negotiating power.”

“This isn’t about negotiating,” Ivy countered. “It’s about honor and integrity and goodness.” Potent emotion in every one of her words. “Today, here, this is our chance to be different, to not be Ming LeBon and Shoshanna Scott and Tatiana Rika-Smythe and Marshall Hyde and all the Councilors who drove our people into hell.”

She didn’t add Nikita’s name to that list, but the implication was there. This was Nikita’s chance for redemption, too. Kaleb didn’t need it. He’d never walked the Council’s path, despite being on it, Sahara’s the voice that held him back from evil no matter how twisted his soul.

“A vote,” Anthony said. “Those in favor of Ivy’s motion?”

Ivy. Aden. Kaleb. Anthony . . . and Nikita.

Chapter 24

Hope is the greatest gift and the greatest evil.

We hoped for so many eons that we could contain the firestorm of our minds, that we could use our psychic abilities without going mad, without shattering into violence, and so we continued on despite the heartache of losing our children and watching our children’s children get ever more fractured.

Hope saved us and hope might yet kill us.

—Extract from The Dying Light by Harissa Mercant (1947)

THIS TIME WHEN Silver walked into the Cavern after her morning shower, she hit the breakfast rush. Seeing her, Dima the Barnacle ran over but didn’t clamp onto her leg. Huge brown eyes, shaded by the thickest lashes she’d ever seen on a child, fearlessly held her own.