Memory folded her arms across her chest and refused to reach for the glass. “I swore I’d never take nutrients again.”

“It’s not the same as the old stuff. It’s flavored—pomegranate and peach.”

“I’ve told you not to growl at me.”

Baring his teeth, he bent down until their faces were only an inch apart. “You have drops of blood on your shirt.” His entire body trembled with his fury at her hurt. “Drink.”

Memory unfolded her arms, her gaze softening. She leaned into him and, taking the glass, drank half before placing her palm against his cheek. “Sorry about the blood.” Tender words that sought to mollify his wolf. “It was like a pressure system building inside me. He has so much power and he can’t control it.”

Wanting to bite off the bastard’s head, Alexei pointed toward the plate of cookies and chocolates he’d found in the nearby staff kitchen. The HQ was full of changelings on a daily basis and a number of those changelings were mated to Psy—he’d known there’d be all kinds of fuel within reach. Memory had drunk more of the nutrient mix by then, but she devoured several cookies in a row.

His wolf finally began to calm down.

Only after she’d eaten four cookies and was working on a fifth did he open the door and nod at the others to come in. Lucas entered with Sascha, Krychek behind them.

Naya, her fears assuaged by cuddles from Luc and Sascha, was with Tamsyn’s family. The healer’s twin terrors, who’d been known to run amok through the wolf den when Tamsyn visited the SnowDancer healer, were two of Naya’s most favorite people. Alexei was of the opinion the twins were secretly setting up a pint-size wolf-leopard gang. Said gang had already run a successful raid on the den kitchen.

The crew had absconded with an entire cake.

Allowing the amused thought to further calm his wolf, he took the seat beside Memory. She inched closer to him when Krychek chose a seat on the other side of the conference table—directly across from her. Krychek tended to have that effect on people; it was a wonder any woman trusted him enough to allow him close, but the man had a mate.

Then again, Alexei’s fingers were currently clawed—his calm only went so far—and yet Memory had no problem with the hand he had on the back of her chair, the razor-sharp tips of those claws brushing her curls.

Love made people crazy.

Love.

It was a word he wasn’t supposed to know, an emotion he couldn’t afford to feel. Not for a woman who made him wish for the impossible. But it lived inside him, a primal force that had him handing Memory a sixth cookie when she finished the fifth.

“I’ll explode,” she complained, but took it.

His wolf settled.

To the right end of the table, Sascha ate her way through a large chocolate bar. Her face, too, looked thinner. Lucas had his hand protectively on her shoulder; the leopard alpha had chosen to stand beside his mate rather than take a seat.

“The intruder tried to grab hold of me,” Memory said once everyone was settled. “He failed despite the depth of his power.”

“I felt an attempt, too.” Sascha lowered her chocolate bar. “It was like he kept slipping off.”

“I think empathic minds must be immune to him,” Memory said as Luc ran the back of his hand over Sascha’s cheek. “That’s why he has to use proxies to attack us.”

“What did you speak of when he made contact?” Krychek asked, his expression as inscrutable as always—but not only had the man offered an assist during multiple emergency incidents, Judd vouched for him, and that was good enough for Alexei. It wasn’t as if SnowDancer had a sweet and fluffy image, either.

Beside him, Memory said, “He’s going mad and he blames Es—he said he had no problems before we woke up.”

Silence reigned around the table.

Sascha was the first to stir. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said, leaning her body against Lucas’s. “Without Es in the Net, our race would’ve long ago devolved into insanity and murder.”

It was Krychek who spoke next, his midnight voice musing. “Silence was a failure because it gave psychopaths free rein, but it’s possible that for a minority who were on the brink between normal function and mental fracture, the psychic discipline inherent in Silence kept them on the right side of the line.”

“And the sudden influx of emotion in the Net is eroding that control?” Lucas’s eyes were of his cat, the panther prowling close to the surface of his skin.

“There’s now no way to avoid emotion in the Net,” Krychek pointed out. “The fragments emitted by empathic minds are everywhere.”

Memory felt an unexpected stab of sympathy for that desperate mind, but hardened her heart against it. He could’ve asked for help. Instead he’d hurt Yuri and Abbot, violated so many others.

“Murdering Es will collapse your PsyNet,” Alexei said to Krychek, his big body so hot that she wanted to crawl into his lap and wrap him around her. “This guy’s clearly lost it if he’s forgotten that.”

“Yes.” Kaleb Krychek rose to his feet. “I’ll continue to hunt in the PsyNet. This individual is powerful enough to be a deadly—” A sudden chill pause. “Breaking news. Four empaths in County Cork, Ireland, injured when another vehicle plowed headlong into theirs.” The cardinal teleported out.

Shivering, Memory hugged her arms around herself. “That’s not going to be just a terrible accident.” How many of those Es would die? How many had been irreparably injured?

Alexei petted her nape. “Bastard’s getting smarter.” His words weren’t what she wanted to hear. “Much easier to push a single driver to make a wrong move than to force multiple single minds to murder Es.”

* * *

• • •

KALEB stood at the scene of the strange crash on a country road far outside the nearest town; emergency services were on scene and working frantically, and so far, he sensed no deaths. Two of the Es had minor broken bones, the other two some bruising. No other major injuries. The driver who’d hit them was being treated for slightly more severe wounds, but he was alert and aware—and appeared distraught.

One of the Es was sitting beside him, holding his hand.

The offending vehicle was an old model, likely had no automatic collision avoidance systems. The empaths had been driving a newer model, but the avoidance system’d had nowhere to take the vehicle on this narrow road bordered by centuries-old stone walls. Not when another car was aiming itself at them.

Kaleb stared at the tire marks on the road. “It looks like the solo driver came straight at the vehicle carrying the Es, then tried to avoid it at the last minute,” he said to the Enforcement officer in charge of the scene.

The stocky male with heavy black stubble against pallid brown skin didn’t technically answer to Kaleb; he was human and had no allegiance to the Psy. As far as Kaleb was aware, this particular detective had never been turned by any Psy interests. He was an honest man—and one who didn’t play games.

“I have a witness who pretty much describes exactly that.” The cop, his Irish accent thick, nodded toward a lanky cyclist who sat white-faced on the curb. “She called emergency services, tried to help the injured before our arrival.”

A glance down at the tire marks. “Driver in the wrong claims to have no memory of the incident and I believe him—man’s plain befuddled.” He rubbed his jaw. “Medics say he hasn’t suffered a knock to the head, so we might be looking at dementia, other mental deterioration.”

A logical conclusion, but Kaleb didn’t think so. Not so close on the heels of the attack in Chinatown. He reached for the NetMind and DarkMind, wondering if they’d interceded to protect the Es, but all he got was static and confusion around smaller and smaller patches of coherence. The neosentient twins were failing along with the PsyNet. They could offer him no help against this destructive threat.

Kaleb stared at the road again before sending a message to his fellow members of the Ruling Coalition, then thanked the Enforcement officer for his help. He teleported home a second later. It was empty—he knew that the instant he arrived. It only ever felt like a home when Sahara was in residence.

Taking off his jacket, he removed his tie and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt before stepping out onto the terrace of their home. The gorge fell away endlessly on the other side. Standing by the railing he’d put in when he found Sahara, his lover who couldn’t teleport out of a fall, he entered the psychic vault of the Ruling Coalition chambers.

Nikita Duncan and Anthony Kyriakus were already there. Aden Kai and Ivy Jane Zen arrived at nearly the same time as Kaleb.

As expected, Ivy Jane was already up to date with today’s events.

Power hummed around her, but it wasn’t a power like Kaleb’s—empathic power functioned on its own rules and it was defiant. Even now, the sparks of color from Ivy Jane’s mind infiltrated the minds around her.

Kaleb didn’t fight it—that empathic energy was part of the reason he wasn’t insane. He added his thoughts as Ivy Jane recapped the day’s events, then turned his attention in another direction. “Nikita.”

Sascha Duncan’s mother, a woman as ruthless as Sascha was empathic, didn’t pretend not to know why he’d addressed her. “Regardless of what you might believe,” she said, “I didn’t have knowledge of every single Council stratagem even while I was a Councilor.”

Oddly, Kaleb did believe her. The previous Psy Council had been made up of seven members, each and every one hungry for power. Kaleb included himself in that assessment. So many plots had existed at any one time that no one could’ve been aware of all of them—however, Nikita had been on the Council for decades longer than either Kaleb or Anthony.

“You know where to dig for the Council’s skeletons,” he pointed out.

“True enough.” No emotion in her tone, yet this woman had brought a cardinal E to term in her womb. “As it happens, I’ve been making use of my shovel since your first report of a careless new power in the PsyNet.” She uploaded data onto the walls of the psychic vault, a rain of silver symbols against the black of the Net.