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)
Adam had long known he’d lead WindHaven after his grandmother—it wasn’t about nepotism or getting elected. Changeling clans didn’t work that way. It came down to an inner hum of power that spoke to every other member of the clan. Adam’s had exploded to the surface that day in the courtroom when he’d almost managed to break the hold of two powerful adult wing-seconds.
It was that same part of him that allowed a teleport to the Canyon forty-five minutes after he’d returned to sit with Jacques. Sascha, the right side of her face marked with the lines of her short rest, was the one who’d tracked him down to Jacques’s room to request he permit the teleporter and his passenger—another E.
“They’ll have to come in on the plateau,” Adam said, without explaining why. “The X is still up there for a visual reference.”
Adam led the couple into the infirmary less than three minutes later.
“I don’t know how Jaya managed to convince Abbot to teleport her,” she told Adam as the E in question attempted to reach Jacques, while an Arrow with blue eyes reminiscent of the sea watched over her. “She’s running on fumes, and he knows it.”
Jaya Storm’s exhaustion was clear in the droop of her shoulders and the heaviness in her face, but Adam also saw a look of determination that he recognized from his own healer. “Nothing could’ve stopped her, and her mate knows it.” That the two were mated was clear to his changeling senses. “Better he comes with her so he can keep an eye on her.”
“She’s stubborn,” Sascha agreed. “She was the first E to realize that some of us are born with the ability to get through to people locked inside their minds—whether in comas, or due to accidents that take away their ability to communicate in any other fashion.”
Now, as Adam watched, Jaya swayed beside the bed. Her mate was with her in a heartbeat, grabbing hold of her. Jaya turned to Adam with eyes gone obsidian, no whites, no irises, and managed to gasp out, “I couldn’t reach him.”
Adam’s neck stiffened, his chest a giant bruise.
Abbot swung her into his arms at that instant, paused, then shot Adam a look that said he’d just tried to teleport out…and failed. But he kept his silence as Adam led him quickly back outside, leaving Sascha to wait with Jacques. The Arrow met his gaze out on the darkness of the plateau, his mate already unconscious, and said, “Empaths take a vow of confidentiality when it comes to any action related to a patient. As her escort, I’m bound by the same vow.”
Adam appreciated the clear verbal assurance that neither of the pair would be sharing what they’d learned here this night. “Understood.”
“There’s no one else?” he asked Sascha after the couple had left and he’d returned to the infirmary.
Not a single star in Sascha’s eyes. “No, I’m so sorry, Adam.”
Adam knew they’d been lucky to get Hanz, much less Jaya. He’d kept up with what was going on in the PsyNet, had even blood-bonded Psy children into the clan when it appeared their PsyNet was about to collapse with catastrophic effect. Those children were now part of his heart, even though their pulses were distant and muffled because they’d never been fully integrated into the clan, their link to the PsyNet the far stronger bond.
“I was hoping for a miracle.” Naia’s statement was a husky murmur when he told her what had happened only a bare fifty minutes later, the night yet heavy around them. He’d known she wouldn’t sleep much, not just because she was a healer, but because this was Jacques.
“That faint line on the brain wave pattern.” She stroked her hand over Jacques’s tight curls, the shadows under her eyes a dark mauve. “I thought they’d find him in there, just lost.”
“Yeah.” It was all Adam could get out.
Naia, so gentle of heart but with a steel core when it came to the well-being of her clan, came to take his hand, her own warm and soft. “He wouldn’t want this.” A crack in her voice even as she fought for Jacques’s right to leave them for skies eternal. “But you’ll have to make the call.” Gentle voice, her other hand closing around his upper arm in silent comfort. “His parents are in no state to decide.”
Jacques’s parents had been in flight in a distant part of the state when he was shot and had arrived home just in time to see him before Hanz went in to attempt contact. His mother’s tears had been silent and constant; his father’s rage a thing Adam well understood. His sister had arrived a couple of hours after them; younger than Jacques, still a student at a university on the other side of the country, she was barely holding it together. Jacques was her big brother, the one who’d been known to fly all the way across the country just to visit with her over breakfast or lunch.