Never again, not even in the darkest, deepest hole, would she be isolated and alone, she thought fiercely. But Renault didn’t know that, didn’t know the beauty of a bond that wasn’t Psy but changeling. A bond he hadn’t been able to prevent even though he’d imprisoned her mind.

It was too primal, too beautiful, far beyond his comprehension.

“You think you’re so smart to shut all the back doors into your mind.” Another laugh. “But this wasn’t a door. It’s a path tied to your PsyNet biofeedback link. I had to make sure I could retrieve my little mouse if she got out of her hole—retrieve her and put her in another place where no one would look for her.”

Clearly, he’d needed physical contact to do it or he would’ve taken her long ago. Memory didn’t need to hear the technical details, but she urged him to speak, and he did, because she was once again his captive audience—an audience he didn’t respect and considered useless in every way but one.

He took great pleasure in telling her how he’d laid the groundwork in her mind while she was recovering from the coma he’d caused during the first transfer. Laid it so deep that it was part of her core self. So deep that Judd would’ve had to invade her mind in horrific and traumatizing ways to discover it.

Renault’s trap had survived because the former Arrow had treated her with courtesy and dignity.

“It gives me a rope,” Renault boasted. “I can pull that rope and you move. Away from those nasty spies around you and where I want you.” A sudden, piercing look. “You’re inside my mind now and I’m keeping you there. No one will ever find you again.”

Memory asked more questions about his actions, her only aim to keep him talking. And talk he did—between bursts of rage when he’d scream at her to let him in. When he raised a fist to her, she held the eye contact. “You injure my brain and that’s it. No more transfer.” She had to straddle a careful line between appearing too strong and antagonizing him—and appearing so weak that he’d simply ignore anything she said.

“I’ll break you.” Despite the threatening words, he dropped his fist to his side. “I have you now and I’ll break you.”

Memory’s skin went cold, not because of his promise, but because of what she saw on his face. His pupils were dilated, his skin shimmering with perspiration. She’d never seen Renault in such a state—not even when he’d left a transfer a little too late and had come to her wired. “You don’t look well.”

“It’s the medicine,” he said, stepping back from her and running his hands over the stubbled skin of his head. “I had to use it to deal with my illness, but it has side effects.”

“Illness?”

“Muscle tremors, dry mouth, the inability to maintain a steady body temperature.” Renault shivered hard and, hugging himself, hunched in and began to pace again. “I can’t consult top-level M-Psy because your friends have made me a fugitive, and the people I considered allies have shown their true faces.” A twist of his mouth. “They’ll pay. All of them.”

Withdrawal, he was in withdrawal. From Memory and the rush of the feed. “Do you need more medicine?” she murmured, because this was about survival, about stopping a monster, and, most important, about protecting her golden wolf’s wounded heart.

Renault jerked his head toward her, hazel-brown eyes glittering. “Yes.” A manic brightness to his face. “Yes, the medicine calms me and I need calm to break you.” Striding over, he took a pressure injector from his pocket. It looked like the disposable kind you could buy at most drugstores.

Memory’s heart kicked, her mouth like dust. “Narcotics affect my ability,” she blurted out. “Remember that first time?”

He hesitated. “You were in a coma because I overfed.”

“I’ve been tested since I’ve been . . . away,” she said, choosing her words with care so as not to unnerve his disturbed mind. “Any trace of a narcotic in my system and I can’t guarantee the transfer will work. Remember—you gave me a sedative that first time.”

He’d never again bothered with the drugs, because he either had his claws in her mind, or she was in a place where no one could hear her scream.

“You’re lying.” He jabbed the injector against her throat, hard enough to bruise.

“Doesn’t matter to me.” She shrugged. “At least you won’t be able to feed off me while I’m comatose or lost in delirium.”

A pause stretched thin as a wire before he shoved the injector into his pocket. Striding out of sight around a group of the tall metal shelves, he did something in the distance that made clattering sounds; then she heard boxes falling to the floor. When he returned, it was with another rope.

This one was long enough that he tied it around her entire body, pinning her legs and arms to the chair. “You won’t be going anywhere,” he said with a satisfied look followed by a giggle. “I’ll be back soon with my medicine.”

She wondered which drug he was on—it couldn’t be any actual medicine, of that she was certain. Drugs had unpredictable effects on psychic abilities—that part of what she’d said was no lie. However, whatever was happening with Renault, his abilities remained razor-sharp.

“Scream as loudly as you want,” he said as he walked away, tugging the hood of his sweatshirt over his head. “The local laws mean the warehouse has sound shielding. No one will hear you.”

Alexei will hear me, she thought on a wave of defiant love. My mate will always hear me.

A creak of sound, then a shaft of light in the distance that soon disappeared, in time with the clang of a door. She began to struggle the instant he was gone, but it took her only a minute to realize he hadn’t left any slack in the ropes.

“Think, Memory,” she whispered. “Think.”

The chaos of her thoughts narrowed down to the glint of a spoon inching its way across a table.

 . . . nothing is useless if you know how to utilize it.

Stopping her struggles, Memory focused on the knot in the rope that bound her right wrist to the chair arm and reached for the tiny droplet of Tk power inside her, the one that couldn’t even knock a knife from Renault’s hand.

She began to nudge at the knot with her mind.

* * *

• • •

ALEXEI turned left into the Embarcadero, the pull of the mating bond a dull throb in his entire body as he drove on through the darkness that had fallen, onyx curtains eclipsing the light. Surely Renault wasn’t arrogant enough to bring Memory into the heart of DarkRiver territory? One glimpse of her and Renault would be overrun by leopards.

The busy public piers passed, followed by the more utilitarian ones, the buildings hulking shadows against the night sky. And still he was pulled forward. All the way to a section of the city that held a number of large business warehouses. The tug became blindingly powerful, encompassing all the warehouses in the area and driving his wolf to a feral edge.

Parking the Jeep, he got out and took several deep breaths.

As with any city, a thousand, a million strands of scent lingered in the air, but Alexei was a wolf, designed to sift through those strands without becoming overwhelmed. Underneath the heavy mix of the city’s buildings and residents, he caught faded scents of cats and wolves.

None of those scents were fresh, however, and he needed backup. Renault was a teleporter and—“You idiot, Alexei.” Hauling out his phone even as he began to prowl through the area on the hunt for his mate, he called Judd. “Can you teleport to a location in San Francisco?”

“Yes. I haven’t exerted much telekinetic energy lately. Send me a visual.”

Alexei took a shot of a doorway festooned with creative graffiti, sent it through. When Judd arrived next to him, he was wearing a sweaty black T-shirt and workout pants, his feet in black sneakers bearing dark green stripes down the sides. “I heard about Memory. What do you need?”

“Fucker’s teleported her somewhere here.” Memory’s presence was a song inside him, calling to wolf and man both. “I need you to hold him if he tries it again.”

“Doable,” Judd said. “I need a missile of some kind.” After a quick search, he picked up a rocky piece of debris from a construction site where a new warehouse was being put up. “I can interrupt the teleport long enough for you to get to him.”

“You pick up anything?” Judd had Gradient 9.4 telepathic abilities.

“Nothing useful. Too many minds scattered around to zero in on a particular suspicious set.”

Alexei froze, his nostrils flaring. “Renault passed through here.” The cold metal twined with a hint of acidic sweat, that was the hallmark of Memory’s abductor.

He tracked the scent with icy focus, coming to a halt near a doorway cloaked in murk. The street lamp had been smashed, but Alexei didn’t need it to see. The scent was thick here. As if Renault had stopped for long enough to spill the scent like water.

“Hey, I don’t want no trouble.” The hoodie-wearing dealer in the doorway held up his hands. “I follow the rules. I don’t sell to no cats or wolves or kids. Even leave the fucking Rats alone—their alpha’s a bad mofo. I don’t need that kind of trouble in my life.”

The man was human, Alexei judged. A predator preying on his own kind. There was only so much DarkRiver and SnowDancer could do to protect people in their territories—those who hungered for poison would find it. Brodie had found it as a teenager, only Hawke’s immediate and personal intervention stopping Alexei’s brother’s slide into addiction and oblivion.

Controlling his rage at the heavyset bearded male, who was unlikely to have ever met his brother, he pulled out his phone and brought up an image of Renault. “You make a deal with this guy recently?”

“Yeah, but the asshole don’t look so swish now.” A curl of the dealer’s lip. “He nearly broke my arm when he used his telekinesis shit to throw me against the wall. Stole a whole bunch of my merchandise.” He spat to one side of his alcove. “I put out the word among my people on the street. Psy parasite’s dead if he shows his face again.”