Rage tore through him . . . and came up hard against the echo of a late-night conversation in a dingy no-name bar. It had to do with Tamsyn and Nathan, and the story Nathan had told him about how he’d blocked the mating bond.

Alexei had gone out of state, found a dive of a bar where no one would try to stop him from getting blind drunk. He didn’t need the comfort of pack. He needed to get so drunk that he forgot Brodie was dead, Etta was dead.

His plan might’ve worked in a pack with a less intelligent alpha. Hawke had sicced the cats on him, and Nathan had been in the area at the time. He’d slipped onto the bar stool next to Alexei’s, and they’d sat in silence for over an hour, while Nathan nursed a single beer and Alexei downed three before admitting to himself that he hated being drunk, hated being out of control, and wasn’t going to get shitfaced that day.

The most senior of DarkRiver’s sentinels, Nathan had a powerful presence. He also had that vibe some men got when they became fathers—calm, nonjudgmental, used to misbehavior. And Alexei needed to talk.

He’d unloaded on the sentinel.

“I never want to mate,” he’d said at some point. “The idea of murdering my mate when I go rogue is a fucking nightmare.” He’d shaken his head, his hand tight around the bottle of beer he’d stopped drinking. “Grandfather, father, brother, it’s a fucking unbroken chain of death.”

Nathan, midnight-blue eyes calm, had asked Alexei if he was sure. When Alexei reiterated his vow, Nathan had told him the story of his own mating. “Tammy left me, and no one would tell me where she’d gone,” he’d said toward the end. “I’d blocked the mating bond too long and it hurt her so much that she left.” A roughness in Nathan’s voice that said everything about his panic.

“I did the only thing I could to track her. I dropped every shield I had, and the mating bond snapped into place like a thunderclap booming in my soul. Her heart had always been open to me. I was just too much of an overprotective idiot to see it.”

The leopard sentinel’s words ran through Alexei’s mind in the space of three heartbeats. He knew what he had to do. Memory’s life over his need to stay sane? No contest. As for afterward, he’d deal with it. Even if it meant asking his alpha to execute him at the first sign of madness.

No one, and especially not Alexei, was going to hurt Memory ever again.

His wolf snarled in agreement.

He opened his heart wide, no fear, no hesitation. The shields he’d put in place after Brodie’s death, they fell with a crash at his feet. The mating bond shoved its way through time and space—and there was his Memory. Her heart as open to his as Tamsyn’s had been to Nathan. The visceral punch of the bond snapping into place sent Alexei to his knees, his breathing harsh gasps.

Inside him burst a kaleidoscope of emotion and color and piercing love and he knew that was her: Memory. God, she was even softer inside than he’d realized. The world would crush her if he wasn’t around to teach her a little cynicism, a few growls.

Rising to his feet as his heart thundered, he called his alpha and told him what had happened. “Blast Memory’s and Renault’s faces across our network and those of our allies,” he said afterward. “Make it impossible for the bastard to hide.” Changelings across the world, millions of humans linked to the Human Alliance, Psy who had signed the Trinity Accord, each and every one would get the blast.

“We’ll blanket the planet,” Hawke promised, but Alexei didn’t think Memory was in another country or even another state. Renault had been bony and hollow-eyed when he appeared, far from his full power, and the mating bond felt strong inside Alexei, not stretched thin by huge distances.

Hanging up, he began to run.

At full speed, he was faster in this terrain than a vehicle, since a vehicle could only go along certain routes. Branches whipped past his face, small creatures scurried in panic at the approach of a predator, and the wind turned into his ally, pushing rather than obstructing.

His target was the beacon of Memory’s presence.

Nathan had told him the mating bond wasn’t like a homing signal—it’d get him to the general area, but then he’d have to hunt by more conventional methods, using the senses of his wolf.

Erupting out of the trees halfway through DarkRiver territory at a specific spot often used by both packs to park a car or two, he found a familiar dusty Jeep, the keys in the ignition. Hawke. The forest tracks were smoother from this point, the vehicle an asset.

Shooting out onto the main highway not long afterward, he turned the Jeep in the direction of San Francisco and floored the accelerator.

It still wasn’t fast enough.

The only thing that kept him sane was that Memory’s light burned strong and unflinching inside him; she wasn’t badly wounded or dead. He’d know. As her mate, he’d know. “I’m coming, lioness. You fucking kick that bastard’s ass in the meantime.”

Chapter 51

Alert. Alert. Alert. Subject lost from view.

—Alarm sounded by psychic sentries around Memory Aven-Rose’s mind

WRISTS TIED TO the arms of a heavy old chair, Memory watched her captor pace back and forth in front of her. Her heart pounded from the wild storm of emotion that had burst inside her soon after Renault teleported them into what appeared to be a warehouse.

Boxes sat neatly stacked on metal shelving against the walls, while a small hovercrane stood silent in one corner and more prosaic forklifts in another. A large number of pallets were stacked on the floor not far in front of her, blocking her view of what lay beyond. The only light came from wide horizontal windows high up near the peaked roof.

Whenever Renault spoke, his voice echoed in the cavernous space.

The walls had to be either soundproofed or the warehouse isolated, because she couldn’t hear anything from the outside. She’d also been very loud when they teleported in, and he hadn’t seemed to care. At the time, he’d been focused on tying her to the chair he’d hauled out of what looked to be a back office, while using telekinetic strength to immobilize her.

His mind couldn’t break into hers, but it had snapped shut around her like the deadly jaws of a great white shark. That skill of his he’d honed too well for her to counter—Memory had told herself not to panic, that she was no longer a child without resources. She’d spent hours with Sascha and Amara, had learned plenty of tricks.

And she was no longer alone in the world. Alexei would come for her.

Renault’s split focus on containing her on both the psychic and physical planes was probably why he hadn’t noticed her go rigid, her heart stopping for a brilliant, blinding moment of beauty that had claws pricking from inside her skin and fur brushing her senses.

Alexei. That was Alexei.

Her golden wolf had initiated the mating bond and Memory had accepted—of course she’d accepted. She’d never had any intention of rebuffing him should he ever reach out to her. But it wasn’t meant to be this way—she was terribly afraid that he’d regret their connection afterward, but in that searing moment when he’d reached for her, all she’d felt was incandescent joy.

Mine, Alexei’s mine. And she was his.

“The ropes aren’t that tight,” Renault snapped when she stayed stiff, fighting not to betray her joy. “Stop the theatrics.” He walked over and, with a smile he’d learned to fake, cupped her face. “It’s time for us to get reacquainted.” His eyes gleamed, his tongue flicking out to wet his upper lip.

An addict waiting for his fix.

Fear threatened to close a hand around Memory’s throat. But she had Alexei inside her and she wasn’t the Memory who’d walked out of the cage nearly four weeks ago. She was the Memory with glittery shoes given to her by a wolf who thought she had the heart of a lioness, and she was the Memory who practiced with a high-functioning psychopath day after day.

Amara, at 9.9 on the Gradient and icily rational with it, was more proficient at attempting to breach Memory’s shields than Renault. And Memory had learned to block Amara. So though the contact with Renault burned her, though the howling black hole of his nothingness tried to suck her under, she held firm. “You are not going to feed from me ever again.”

Letting out a terrible scream, he slapped both hands to her face, so hard that her ears rang. She blinked back the sting, set her jaw, and raised an eyebrow. “Losing control already? Tut tut.”

He released her with a violent jerk, began to pace the room again. Every few minutes, he’d return, touch her, try to enter her mind—and fail. And fail. And fail. Memory didn’t celebrate, not with Renault’s eyes bulging and his mental stabs increasingly erratic. Unstable as he’d become, he could kill her in a single burst of rage.

She also had another problem: the psychic watchdogs left by the Arrows should’ve alerted the squad to her disappearance in the PsyNet, her mind swallowed by another. That no one had responded to her disappearance told her a chilling truth.

“How did you move me on the Net?” A Psy’s location in the PsyNet wasn’t altered by temporary moves in physical location—only if the shift was meant to be permanent would the mind move its anchor point.

Renault gave a strange, jagged laugh that raised the tiny hairs on the back of her neck. She’d never heard him laugh before—even in his sickest pleasure, he’d been cool and calm. “Don’t you know, little girl?”

“No,” Memory said, willing to play along with his delusions if it would gain her room to beat him and escape, gain her mate time to find her. Her golden wolf had lost too many people; she would not let Alexei lose her, too. “You know I never had the usual training.”

He hugged his arms around his body as he walked back and forth, back and forth, rocking slightly all the while. “No, you had my training.” A satisfied smile. “I was in your mind long before you found your new friends.” The last word was hissed out. “Where are those friends now? Hmm?”

Memory frowned inwardly, suddenly realizing that Alexei must’ve contacted the Arrows. One of those Arrows was a born teleporter. Yet she remained alone with Renault. “I don’t understand what you did.” She forced a tremor in her voice. “Why has no one come for me?” Even as she spoke, the mating bond surged inside her, Alexei’s love for her a storm.