"Don't you dare tell me you understand." He pushed off the glass to stalk to her. At that moment, she saw not the man but the leopard within. And she realized the truth far too late - he wasn't human, wasn't Psy, was changeling. The leopard lived in every aspect of him, from his strength to his anger to his rage.
She tried to move back. Not fast enough. He gripped her chin, held her in place. "Do you know what I understand?" he whispered, crowding her. There was no wall at her back but she couldn't make herself move, unable to break the dark intimacy of his hold. "I understand that you come from the same psychopathic race that took my sister from me.
"I understand that you're one of the monsters who protects those murderers. I understand that, for some reason, you make my fucking cock twitch." Brutal words, delivered in a voice that was so soft, so exquisitely balanced, it cut. "I also understand that I'm not led around by the balls and that I'll kill you before I allow you to bring that sickness into my pack."
She believed him. "Just don't take that step because of your discomfort at being attracted to me." It was a compulsion to push him, to claw back. A strange thought, since she had no claws.
His fingers tightened fractionally and he swore, low and hard. "Oh, don't worry, Ms. Aleine. Now that you've shown your true colors, all I have to do anytime I'm tempted to make a pass at you is remember that you have a hard-on for sociopaths. Any attraction I feel will die one hell of a quick death." Turning away, he strode toward his bedroom. "Get dressed. We have an early meeting to get to."
She stood in place long after he'd disappeared, staring out through the glass, but seeing nothing. Her mouth pulsed with the faded imprint of Dorian's lips, hard yet soft, a strange dichotomy. His anger had flamed off him, hot enough to singe. But - her fingers lifted to her lips - he hadn't used his power to bruise her. Not even at the end.
She knew that didn't denote any care on his part. No, it was merely part of the code he lived by. Dorian would take her life without a blink if she proved a traitor or a threat, but until then, he wouldn't hurt her. Predatory changeling men were rumored to be protective as a rule. She didn't think Dorian was any different.
Why, then, did his reaction matter? Why then did she have to fight the urge to walk into his room and demand he stop yelling at her and listen? Why then did he make her so blindingly angry that it spilled out past the broken Silence she kept trying to fix, past her need to protect Keenan, past everything?
Why then... did Dorian make her feel?
Chapter 21
There's no more time. I'll be a fugitive by the time you wake and find this letter. I go knowing that you'll keep your promise, that you'll protect her.
- From a handwritten letter signed "Iliana," circa September 2069
Dorian was pulling on a white T-shirt when his phone beeped. "Yeah?" he snarled.
"Make sure you get Ashaya out without anyone spotting her." Clay's voice. "Teijan says people have been sniffing around."
"Gee, that's a news flash. We know the Council is hunting her."
"Not Psy. Humans."
That gave him pause. "Shit. The Omega virus. Some lame-brain wants to use it as a bioweapon."
Clay grunted in agreement. "One way to take out the Psy."
Dorian thought of a world without Psy. His gut twisted at the wrongness of the idea. "Genocide isn't pretty, no matter the target."
"I'm not going to argue with you. Tally's three percent Psy - Damn it, she hit me."
Clay's joking comment caused something to click in Dorian's brain. "Don't these idiots realize the virus would jump the race barrier so fast it'd give us whiplash? Before Silence, Psy were having children with the rest of us - hell, half the planet probably has some Psy blood. Like you said, Tally's - "
"Did I say you could call her Tally, Boy Genius?"
"And didn't I tell you to stop using that nickname or I'd throw Talin in the nearest body of ice-cold water?" Dorian shot back, but some of his tension receded. He frowned. "Talin's Psy blood is negligible, but if Sascha and Lucas have a kid, or Faith and Vaughn..."
"Council had to know," Clay said. "Omega would keep their people in line. And as a bonus, it'd wipe out the humans and pesky little changelings." A pause. "Tally says they'd probably keep some humans around to clean, sweep, and bow to their greatness in the streets."
Dorian smiled. Tally had that effect on him. If he'd expected anything, he'd expected to fall for a woman like her. Hot-tempered, crazy possessive, and loyal as hell. Instead, he found himself drawn to a woman he - He blew out a breath, trying to get a handle on his reignited temper. "Council might know, but I bet you the people trying to get their hands on the data haven't thought this through. You can't contain a virus to one race, no matter how you engineer it."
"Yeah, well, the world is full of idiots. Just keep Aleine safe." Another pause. "Tally says be nice to her - she's the reason Jon and Noor are alive. If you hurt her, I've been ordered to kick your pretty ass."
"Tell Tally thanks for the compliment." He hung up to the sound of Clay's growl. The instant he stopped concentrating on something else, Ashaya's scent rushed back into him in a wave of intoxication. Wild honey and the lush, hot bite of woman. His body grew heavy. Hungry.
I've protected a sociopath for most of my life...
And still he wanted her.
He didn't know who he was more disgusted with - her or himself.
They were in the car, heading out of the city, when Ashaya finally asked Dorian where they were going.
"Someone's coming to see you."
She thought that over. The list of people who might know to contact DarkRiver to reach her was very, very short. "Where's this meeting going to take place?"
"A location that won't compromise the pack."
That told her less than nothing. But she was patient. Her ability required hours upon hours of pure thought. Falling back on that ability, she brought out the slide she'd put into the small knapsack at her feet and began to focus her psychic eye. It was the part of her mind that saw not a spot of blood but the clear shapes of cells, of chromosomes, of genes.
Of the three races, it was the changelings who'd proved the most difficult to fully fingerprint. Whatever it was that allowed them to shift, it had refused to give up its genetic secrets. Ashaya knew the likelihood of her finding an anomaly, where others had failed, was very low. But for that very reason, the task was intellectually stimulating, a puzzle she was confident would take her mind off the changeling sitting only a foot from her.
She was wrong.
It was as if there was a wash of psychic heat coming off Dorian. When she paused to push up the sleeves of her white shirt, it was to find the tiny hairs on her arms standing up. "Can you tone down your energy?"
"I'm not Psy."
She pushed her sleeves back down, covering up the evidence of her unruly physical response to his proximity. "You're not a restful individual to be around."
"And if that's a surprise, you really know shit-all about changeling males." He snorted, wondering what kind of men she was used to. Then he remembered. "Larsen." The other scientist had taken, experimented on, and killed children. "You're used to reptiles."
"Larsen," she said quietly, "was truly abnormal and I knew that from the instant I met him. That's why I refused to work with him."
He'd expected a political nonanswer and gotten a glimpse of the complex, fascinating woman within the Psy shell. In spite of the caustic mix of anger and sexual need that continued to simmer in his veins, he wanted to peel apart all those layers and find out who Ashaya Aleine really was. Protector of monsters or savior of innocents? "I thought he was running an independent project in your lab."
"Later, he was." Her voice chilled a few degrees. "An experiment I didn't authorize. However, prior to that, the Council presented him to me as an assistant."
"Did anyone ever figure out that you helped Noor and Jon escape Larsen's experiments?"
"I told them the children were dead. That's why I said both the boy and Noor had to disappear when they left the lab. I don't suppose it matters now."
It mattered, Dorian thought, though he didn't say it out loud. Both children had been given new lives, a new start. They'd never have had that chance if this enigma of a woman hadn't put her life on the line. "Why did you do it? Help the kids?"
"I told you that the first time you asked me - politics."
He'd been lying along the solid branch of a heavily leafed tree at the time, eye to the scope of his rifle. Ashaya's tangled sheets and blue ice of a voice had hit him so low and hard, he'd been ready to take her then and there. "It didn't mean anything that they were innocent children?"
A long silence. "It meant something." So quiet it was less than a whisper.
The possessive, protective nature of the cat uncurled in a lazy movement. It pushed at him to reach out, to show her she wasn't alone. But that was the way of Pack. And Ashaya was nowhere close to Pack. "Another fracture in Silence?"
Putting away the slide, she leaned her head against the window. "To kill your young is a sign of true evil." There was something in that tone, a hidden secret that set his senses searching. "I prefer not to think of my entire race as evil."
"Evil, an interesting concept for a Psy."
"Is it?" She looked at him. "It's an intellectual idea as much as an emotional one, the dividing line between being human and being monstrous."
He was about to answer when she snapped upright and grabbed his arm. "No! Take the next exit."
"This is our one."
"No."
Given that she was Psy, he wondered if she'd picked up something. "We being trailed?" Even as he spoke, a strange sense of dread whispered into his mind.