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)
The forces inside Adam churned in a turbulent storm. To him, Reagan had made a choice that turned him into a villain. But to Eleri, the same villain had been a hero. A hero who had probably saved her life. As for what she’d done, who better to play judge, jury, and executioner than the woman who had walked in the minds of her targets?
The changeling in him found nothing wrong with justified kills.
But part of the storm was his need for her to feel. “So that’s it?” he said. “Your anger is just gone?”
“No.” Nothing in her tone. “It lives far below the surface of my conscious mind—like a great beast beneath a frozen ocean, a shadow lurking. I’d be at high risk of a catastrophic loss of control if it ever broke through.”
Adam wasn’t done with this, but it would have to wait—he’d almost arrived at the entrance to the underground garage inside the Canyon. The entrance sat a small distance below the plateau, ensuring late-night comings and goings wouldn’t disturb those who lived up top.
It was then that he realized how much he wanted to tell Eleri about his people, how much he wanted to have every conversation under the sun with her. It wasn’t love; it was the primal pull of the mating bond—meant to be born of love or to turn into love.
The latter pathway didn’t exist for them.
We become a living and wide-open psychic nerve. We prefer to exit the world prior to that…
His inner fury darkened, grew ever more animalistic, until Adam wondered who he’d be by the time this was all over.
The SUV’s headlights flashed against the subtle road marker designed for falcon eyes. “We’re here.”
“That looks like a solid wall of stone.”
“It’s meant to.” A quick turn and he was driving into the garage, which was lit up only the softest amount—enough for safety and visibility to their clan, but not enough to permit any light to leak out to outside watchers or those who might think to invade their inner core under the shadow of darkness.
Of course, any such invaders would be at a serious disadvantage, since WindHaven always had patrols in the air above the heart of their home—the place where their young could always feel safe. The memories of the Territorial Wars had never left his people, for while they’d survived as a clan, they’d been devastated in the aftermath.
No one, the survivors had vowed together, would take any of them unawares again. That wary distrust included the Psy who had made him a promise that he believed, but whom he couldn’t trust. And though his heart twisted on that acceptance, he didn’t fight it.
A wing leader’s loyalty was first to his people.
“Aren’t you worried I’ll take telepathic images of your clan’s home location for a teleport lock?” Eleri asked, as if reading his mind.
He could’ve told her that something in the composition of the Canyon disrupted teleport locks. His clan had discovered that accidentally during the Territorial Wars of the eighteenth century. One of the clans they’d been battling had included a family of teleporters—and they’d been using that advantage to the nth degree.
Except they couldn’t get into the Canyon, no matter how many different image locks they managed to acquire. It was a decade postwar, after the two clans were united by a mating, that their once-enemy had shared that strange fact. Adam, conscious that information from the past could become distorted over time, had asked Judd Lauren from the SnowDancer wolves to test the Canyon’s impermeability to teleporters.
“Never felt anything like it,” the intrigued teleporter had said afterward, staring up at the Canyon from Raintree. “The best way I can describe it is mineral static. Like the stone somehow catches psychic energy and twists it. You ever had it tested?”
“Far as our scientists can tell, it’s the same as any other rock around here. Our geologists and others continue to do research on it. My sister’s even gotten in on the act, and she’s an aeronautical engineer.”
“Well, hit me up if you need another test,” Judd had said. “This stuff could be the best anti-Tk material ever known. Take a whole massive threat out of the equation. Lot of people—Psy included—would pay money for that.” A frown. “I wonder if Kaleb or Vasic could ’port through it.”
While Adam knew Judd trusted both men, they were effective strangers to WindHaven, so that question would remain unanswered for the time being. Judd wouldn’t unilaterally mention it to them, either, the trust between SnowDancer and WindHaven as strong as the rocks that made up the Canyon.
But Adam didn’t tell Eleri that.
Instead, he spoke in a space jagged and broken and private that belonged to them alone. “You betrayed me once. You’ve promised never to do it again.” It didn’t come out a threat—it was deeper and harder than that, a challenge from his falcon heart.