Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
It helped that her own mother, who never sugarcoated anything, had bluntly said, “The child is hitting all her psychic markers ahead of schedule. The DarkRiver network is, quite frankly, far stronger and safer for her right now than any corner of the PsyNet.”
“No, I’m Naya!” her daughter clarified. “This is Mama.”
“Otherwise known as Sascha.” Sascha smiled. “Thank you for flying out on such short notice.” DarkRiver had attempted to arrange a teleport, but everyone in the Net was running on fumes, and the only ’porter outside the Net they knew had just flamed out doing an emergency medical teleport for a SnowDancer juvenile who’d been badly injured in the mountains.
The juvenile would be okay, but Judd was out for the count.
Sascha and Naya themselves had flown in on a jet-chopper piloted by their escort, DarkRiver sentinel Dorian Christensen; they’d landed just ahead of Hanz’s commercial flight.
“It is an honor to meet you.” Hanz inclined his head, his face aglow. “Without you, we would all yet be locked in amber.”
Sascha had come to terms with her status as the first E to embrace who she was, but she didn’t know quite how to process the adoration of young Es like Hanz. “I think it was just time,” she said. “One of us would’ve broken through—if not me, then Ivy or Memory or Jaya…so many of us were on the precipice.”
Naya tugged at her hand.
When she glanced down, her baby pointed to where Dorian stood a short distance away—from where he could watch everything and everyone. While the pack had picked up no indications of any active threats against either one of them, Sascha was the mate of the DarkRiver alpha…and the daughter of Nikita Duncan. Which made her a valuable target, and her and Lucas’s precious cub an even bigger one.
But Naya was on this trip because she loved seeing her falcon friends and adored that she shared a name with Naia, the falcon healer, even if the spelling wasn’t identical. She called the healer “big Naia” and herself “little Naya.”
It didn’t seem to occur to her that she could use her given name of Nadiya—likely because the only person who ever used it was her Psy grandmother. Who Naya got along with far better than Sascha could’ve once imagined; Nikita as a grandmother wasn’t the same woman who’d raised Sascha.
As for any risk—the one thing Sascha would never do was stop her child from living in order to keep her safe. Nikita’s choices had been different; to save her child, she’d had to lock up Sascha’s mind and conceal the truth of her very nature, but that didn’t mean that choice hadn’t left deep scars.
Now the baby Sascha was raising in freedom had pointed out that Dorian was nudging a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m sorry to rush you, Hanz,” she said. “But we only have a short-term spot on the landing pad. If you could follow us.”
“I can hold your hand!” Naya volunteered, smart but young enough that she didn’t understand Hanz didn’t need the assist.
“Oh, my cublet, you’re very kind to offer that,” Sascha said, “but see the sensors on Hanz’s fingers? They’re connected to his brain, so he can see the world around him.”
Her daughter’s face lit up. “Whiskers! Like me!”
Hanz’s smile was as bright as Naya’s. “Yes, I suppose they do act like whiskers, just like your leopard’s.”
“I a panther,” Naya piped up. “Like Papa.”
“I think your panther must be strong and smart.” Hanz held out his right hand, leaving his left free for navigation. “How about we walk each other?”
A happy Naya tucked her hand into his, and the three of them made their way to the sentinel with hair of a brilliant white blond and surfer blue eyes who was one of the most dangerous people in DarkRiver.
The resulting flight was much shorter than their trip to the airport, and Naya was as glued to the window as she’d been on their first flight. Sascha and Lucas’s cub had already asked Dorian if he could teach her to fly the big machine—giving her mother palpitations. Raising a fearless panther cub was going to turn her gray by the time Naya was eighteen, of that she was certain, but Sascha planned to white-knuckle her way through.
Never would she permit her own fears to stifle her baby’s primal heart.
“Dori, Dori!” that wild cub said now. “The big X!”
“Good spotting,” Dorian responded without taking his attention off the flight controls. “Now, sit back while I take us down.”
That landing—directly on the marked spot on the Canyon plateau—was as soft as a feather. Adam was waiting for them, ready to lead Sascha and Hanz inside. “Hello, little Naya,” he said, crouching down to close his arms around Naya when she ran over for a hug.
“Big Naia?”
“She’s busy right now, but you can say hi to her later.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Someone else has been waiting all day for you.”