Atonement Sky – Psy-Changeling Trinity Read Online Nalini Singh

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Fantasy/Sci-fi, Paranormal Tags Authors:
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Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 131364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
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She’d spent an hour sobbing in Adam’s arms.

“I would never ask his family to make the decision. It’s a wing leader’s job.” Because they weren’t human, were changeling. “How long before we have no choice?”

“I can keep him alive on machines forever,” was Naia’s quiet response. “There remains that faint brain pattern…and we have the tech to keep his body going.”

“No.” If the mind and heart and soul that made Jacques a hard-assed protector, a loving son and brother, and a blood-loyal friend were gone, then Adam had to let his body go, too. Jacques had spent more time in the air than any of them. If some small part of him was alive in there, he’d hate to be tied to this bed.

“The clan needs to say good-bye, but he wouldn’t want to be seen like this.” Adam broke contact with Naia, squeezed his hands open and shut.

“We can say good-bye to his spirit,” Naia said, “without ever exposing his body.” A single tear rolled down her cheek, to be quickly followed by others. “I’m going to miss you, my friend.” Leaning down, she pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I wonder if you ever knew how much I adore you, you bad-tempered, beautiful man.”

Adam had known, had been waiting for Jacques to figure it out. Now time had run out for his best friend and for the woman who thought he hung the moon.

The last clan funeral had been Aria’s.

That good-bye had hurt, but it had been part of the natural way of things, Aria having lived a life long enough by her standards.

“Too long, Adam,” she’d said to him one night, as the two of them sat under the desert moon, their backs to the Canyon wall. “I’ve outlived a daughter, outlived the man that daughter loved, outlived the mate I loved with all my being.”

Then she’d turned to him, stroked her hand over his hair.

“But I also got to watch two strong and wild grandchildren, then great-grandchildren being born, got to hold each of them on the days of their births. And I got to bear a child, love her, and love the man who helped me make her. It’s been a good life in the grand scheme of things.”

A breath. “And I’ve upheld my vows as wing leader. When I go, I will leave WindHaven in good hands. I can hear the desert singing to me, Adam.” She’d sighed. “My father’s father used to say that our clan lands were blessed with the quietest places, that we were renowned for it until many came here to bathe in the silence, but I’ve always heard the song. Now it calls me home.”

He’d wanted to ask her to stay a little longer, but the tiredness in her voice had been an ache. So he’d put his arm around his grandmother and for the first and only time in their relationship, he’d held her as if he was the wing leader, she the member of his clan who needed his strength.

And, swallowing back his tears at the thought of her presence missing from his life, he’d told her that if she wanted to fly, he’d hold her clan safe for her. “I promise, Shimásání.”

Two days later, Aria, beloved of her family and of her clan, ever to be remembered in their songs, had slipped away to fly wing tip to wing tip with Adam’s grandfather, their skies distant from this world.

Jacques’s death would be nothing akin to Aria’s. They’d mourned her, but they’d also been able to celebrate her. Those who’d known her as a youth—themselves graybeards—had told raucous tales of the young woman she’d been, and of her courtship of Adam’s far quieter and more submissive grandfather.

“She might as well have been a bear as far as he was concerned!” one old friend had said with a slap to his knee. “Poor man didn’t know whether to run or surrender.”

With Jacques, there would be no celebration, only pain and a horrible sense of unfairness. He was Adam’s age, their birthdays exactly three weeks apart, had been in the prime of his life.

Adam walked back to Jacques after Naia was called away to deal with a minor injury. His best friend lay motionless underneath the domed lid of the medical bed that was keeping his body alive, only his face exposed to the air.

And that face…

Adam’s gut twisted. No, this wasn’t Jacques, and Adam couldn’t put off the final call any longer. He’d give Jacques’s family time to say their farewells in the day to come, and then…then he’d let Jacques go.

That thought was heavy in his gut as he left the infirmary, and he was glad not to run into anyone else as he made his way to his office. This far from dawn, the clan slept. Shutting the door to his office regardless, he picked up a pen he never used but couldn’t throw out, then pulled up the documents Jacques had left in the clan’s keeping in the event of his death.


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