The runt might be tiny, but he’d also been the most ferocious.

Now, the kitten jumped out of Memory’s hands to land on the forest floor. Tail in the air, it began to prowl around. “Thinks he’s king of the forest instead of a bite-sized snack.”

Putting her hands on her hips, Memory glared at him again . . . then ran over without warning to throw her arms around him. He lifted her up with a grip on her waist, smiling smugger than the cat as she kissed him again and again. The wolf inside him rubbed up against his skin. “I guess this means you want to keep the tiny beast,” he said darkly.

“I know you like him, so stop pretending.” Pressing her nose to his, she gave him a stern look, but she was stroking his nape with her fingers while he held her with her feet off the ground. “What will the rest of your pack say when I bring a kitten into the den?”

“Our pack,” he said, “will say it’s all Riley’s fault. He went and mated a leopard, and now we’re inundated with cats.”

“Oh! Beast, come back here!” Memory wiggled down and went to collect her pet—who was about to wander off into the forest.

“Beast?” He grinned. “I like it. And don’t worry about him getting lost. I’ve got his scent.”

But the kitten was curled up against Memory’s chest, purring like an old-fashioned motor, so he put his arm around his mate and they walked back to the den. The pups gathered around them in astonishment when they reached the play area. Memory put Beast down and all parties stared at one another for a long time.

“No biting Memory’s beast,” was the consensus before the pups returned to their play.

Beast stayed back, watchful and probably planning world domination.

Picking the kitten up again, Memory turned to Alexei. “I love you.”

“I know.” He laughed when she elbowed him, sunlight in his soul. “I love you, too, lioness. Even if you do let me get mauled by tiny beasts.” Reaching out, he scratched the beast on its head.

It threatened to bite his fingers.

Memory leaned up and kissed his jaw. “You’re not on security shift, are you?”

“No, I went to get your ferocious beast.”

“Then come inside and I’ll kiss your sorely mauled body better.”

Alexei’s vision altered, his wolf rising to the surface. “Come on, mate, let’s go scandalize the beast.”

* * *

• • •

IT took a month for Kaleb to notice the change. The PsyNet area around Memory Aven-Rose’s mind was healthier, stronger . . . solid.

Much more so than could be explained by her fledgling abilities.

His eyes went to the place where the wild amber bond disappeared into nothing. A bond the neosentience of the PsyNet continued to protect with an intense and strange secretiveness. And a bond that connected the PsyNet with a changeling pack. Not just any pack, but the biggest and most powerful in the world.

Kaleb couldn’t access SnowDancer minds via the link that appeared to go nowhere, but was it possible the invasion was occurring in the other direction? Primal wolf energy entering the PsyNet? It would do the wolves no harm—choice underlay a healthy PsyNet, else Psy would’ve forced humans into bonds long ago.

To test his theory, he checked the area around Silver’s mind. Healthy. Extremely so. And his former aide and current director of EmNet wasn’t an empath, so that eliminated one possible factor. In point of fact, the two women had only a single similarity: each was mated to a dominant predatory changeling who was part of a sprawling pack.

Whatever was happening, it appeared to be a passive transfer that no one else had noticed. Kaleb would tell only Sahara. These bonds could not become political. They were too important.

“The wolves, bears, and humans of two deadly packs might help save tens of thousands of Psy lives,” he said to her that night.

“Kaleb, we have to tell the alphas at least.” Her blue eyes asked him to choose the side of right, of conscience.

She was his lodestar.

He made it a conference call with Hawke Snow, Valentin Nikolaev, Silver, Memory Aven-Rose, and Alexei Harte.

The big bear alpha let Silver ask the questions, “since my Starlight’s the expert.”

Hawke raised his eyebrow at that and pulled his own Psy mate into the conversation.

The final conclusion was the same as Kaleb’s: nothing was flowing back through the bond. Hawke’s cardinal mate was actually able to enter the wolf network to check and confirm that. “We’re also at usual levels of biofeedback and psychic energy. Far as I can tell, we’ve lost nothing.”

In the end, the alphas made the call to allow it to continue. Each would monitor their pack for signs of trouble, but Kaleb didn’t think they’d ever find any. This was how the PsyNet was always meant to work. “To be a living, vibrant network with multiple kinds of psychic input,” he said to Sahara after the call ended.

She chewed on her lower lip. “Did you notice Memory and Silver’s stable sections are similar in size, even though SnowDancer is much bigger than StoneWater?”

Kaleb checked, saw she was right. His blood cooled. “It’s not only about numbers.” Else, the SnowDancer connection alone should’ve gained them a healthy section of the PsyNet equivalent to California.

“No,” Sahara whispered. “I think Psy have to make human or changeling connections through the world. An even spread.” She thrust a shaking hand through her hair. “How do we change a hundred years of division and isolation and pain across an entire planet?”

Kaleb cupped her jaw, ran the pad of his thumb over her cheekbone. “In the space of a few weeks, we’ve gained a working E-sigma and an entire pack of wolves. Tonight, we celebrate by confusing seismologists around Russia.” Control became a foreign concept when he was with Sahara—the best he could do was ground his enormous telekinetic power.

Sahara’s panicked expression fractured into laughter. “You know, you’re right.” She grabbed his tie and tugged. “Kiss me, Mr. Krychek.”

* * *

• • •

As Kaleb kissed Sahara under a Russian sky, and Alexei chased Memory through a Sierra Nevada forest, minds across the PsyNet began to throw off their shackles and wake to new powers that dazzled and blinded. None were as disciplined as the first of their kind. The initial rogue power surge was a mere ripple. More built on the horizon, ominous weights about to crash onto an already fractured Net.

Anarchy took its first breath.

*. As a point of interest, I have been unable to find any data whatsoever on the rumored E-sigma, a subdesignation of empathy said to be so dangerous for the E involved that the E’s only option for survival is to deliberately suppress their own strength. No E interviewed over the course of this study would explain the E-sigma’s divergent abilities to me. Any mention of the subdesignation resulted in both a flash of fear on the faces of my subjects—and in a sudden and implacable shutdown in communication. Either the E-sigma are a shared dark myth, a kind of empathic ghost story . . . or the Es are so afraid for one of their own kind that they protect them against all outsiders.