"There's hope. Your NetMind is fighting back."
She had to believe that. "And others, too, are starting to wake from the dream." A dream of Silence. "It might take years for the ripples to chase across the Net, but they're there now." Putting her hand on his bare arms, she anchored herself in touch, the very thing that had once threatened to shatter her. "I'm so glad I found you."
His chuckle was a rumble that vibrated in her bones. "Sorry, Red. But I found you first."
"No, you didn't." She scowled - he liked getting his own way far too much. "I walked out into the forest."
"Yeah, but I was waiting for you to walk out." He nuzzled the side of her neck. "I was drawn to your place like an addiction. If you hadn't walked out when you had, I would've come looking."
Her eyes went wide. "Some things can't be changed." It was a thought that might've scared her once.
"What?"
"The future isn't always mutable." And what did that mean? "I've never before considered that. The ramifications are enormous. What is, what isn't changeable - who chooses? What sets some things in stone and others in clay?" Excitement whispered through her. Finally she was in charge of her gift, able to chase things that fired up her imagination.
"Some things are meant to be." Vaughn bit her neck, forcefully bringing her attention back to him. "You were never going to be anyone's but mine."
"You're very possessive." She tilted her head to meet his gaze. "So am I."
The jaguar in his eyes was pleased. "I like your claws."
She stretched to brush her lips over his unshaven jaw. "Do you think you can teach me to purr?"
"Baby, you purr every time I stroke you into orgasm."
Lightning swept over her and everything seemed to become sharper, more in focus. She pushed away and rearranged her body until she straddled him. Face-to-face. It was fast becoming her favorite position, though she did have to bargain with Vaughn for it - her changeling's preferred mode of sex was far more raw. Her flesh heated at the memory of his driving thrusts as she put her hands on his shoulders and leaned in to kiss him. But the expression on his face made her pause. "What?"
"I love watching the lightning in your eyes."
She smiled. It seemed right that her eyes now reflected her mind.
"Is it talking to you again?" Vaughn asked, having learned to read the shift in their bond that signaled a visit.
She nodded. "It's curious about you."
"What does it want to know?"
"Everything. It's thirsty for life, for hope, for sunshine." She spread her fingers over his skin. "Like me. Make me purr, Vaughn."
"Inside or outside?"
Her eyes went wide and she looked up at the night sky, a blanket of beauty and darkness, light and shadow, black and white, as it should be. "Here."
"What about your curious friend?" He slid his hands under her shirt.
Sensation skittered along her nerve endings. "It's gone." The NetMind came and went throughout the day, touching her mind as a child would touch its mother's, looking for reassurance that she was still there. It would be back. And it would teach her more about itself, learn more about her and their world.
"Good. I don't like an audience." His hands came up to close over her unfettered breasts. "You're mine to see, to touch, to pleasure." His fingers squeezed her nipples.
She knew she should protest his possessiveness, but the thing was, she liked her jaguar like this in bed. She liked being his. Liked belonging to a male who'd never let her go, never give her up, Council be damned.
Those fingers were driving her mad and when his mouth followed, she fell into insanity. But what sweet insanity it was.
In the Web of Stars, a hundred rainbow sparks crept into Faith's mind without her conscious knowledge. These were the sparks born of an empath, the single functioning empath in the world, the only one who'd escaped the torture of Silence. It was the lack of working empaths in the PsyNet that had sentenced the F-Psy to certain madness. Yes, to be born a foreseer was to be born with a higher chance of madness, but before Silence, it had been a tiny percentage of the minority who succumbed, not the majority.
The Council didn't understand that in its attempt to purge the E designation from the Net, it had also destroyed the F designation and so many others. Because everything was connected. Everything had a purpose.
The PsyNet was no longer fully functional.
But the Web of Stars was. It was different from the PsyNet and always would be. Because this Web had rainbows and sunshine, emotion and heart, predatory hunger and utter loyalty. Now those sparks healed the broken pieces of Faith and she never even knew that she'd been fractured.