Then she saw the scorching yellow and blazing crimson begin to divide and separate into pristine rivers inside her mind, in preparation for a final catastrophic merge. “I’m about to hit synergy!” Turning her into a human bomb of incalculable destructive power, one that would obliterate any trace of two packs called SnowDancer and DarkRiver, of a city called San Francisco, of a mountain range called the Sierra Nevada . . . and keep going.
If you ever go supernova
, Ming’s arctic voice,
the continent on which you stand might cease to exist
.
Ming had been wrong, she realized in that moment when her power was so pure, so clear. There was no
might
about it.
A warm male hand gripping her own, ripping her from the horrifying understanding of just what she was. “The lake,” her wolf said.
She ran beside him. “It might blunt the impact.” Part of her knew it wouldn’t be enough, that even the deepest part of the lake couldn’t contain the tidal wave of her power, but she had to believe. Then she felt an unexpected psychic burn inside of her, saw that the cold fire was eating away at her network shields, would soon pour out into the SnowDancer web in a violent storm. It had never before threatened to penetrate a psychic network—but she’d never been this close to synergy.
Fear twisted knives of ice through her heart as they hit the water. “Hawke! The X-fire is spreading on the psychic plane. I can’t cut my mental bonds, but you can—”
Wolf-blue slammed into her eyes. “Don’t you dare ask me to hurt you.
Don’t you fucking dare
.”
Pain ripped her in two, the world already tinged crimson and gold, and she realized her eyes were drowning in X-fire. A single tear trailed down her cheek as the frigid water reached her thighs. “I’ll burn out your mind.”
He continued to swim farther into the lake, pulling her along. “The others?”
The water hit her breasts, soaked into her chest, into her bones. “The web”—she kicked her legs in an attempt to help him—“will collapse without you.” He was the center, the key. Had her family been part of it longer, they could’ve built failsafe bonds, but as it was, the web was a wholly changeling construct, created by ties of blood . . . Hawke’s blood. “The changeling members won’t suffer any ill-effects.
“Walker and Judd”—she gasped past the cold that consumed her—“will be able to drag the children into a smaller LaurenNet.” She ’pathed Judd a warning. Her sweet Toby, and smart, funny Marlee remained unconscious, a small blessing.
“When you die—” The words wouldn’t come, and it had nothing to do with the fact that her body was in the coldest, deepest part of the lake. “When you die,” she forced herself to say, “the psychic shock will tear me
from the web, regardless of the links to my family.” He’d become her anchor in every way and losing him would destroy her, ending her life and the threat of synergy. “We should dive just in case, but once separated from the web, I won’t be a danger anymore.”
Her wolf cupped her face, nothing but a wild devotion in his touch, in his voice. “Then what’s there to be scared about?”
It broke her heart, that he was hers. “I love you.”
I’m sorry
.
A caress down the mating bond, an untamed kiss that she knew was her wolf before he said, “Forever,” and dived with her in his arms, the water closing over their heads in a sheet of sparkling blue.
Cold. So, so cold
.
It was the last thing she had physical awareness of before the crimson and gold collided to create an inferno that poured over and through her shields with a vicious strength she could never hope to control.
Hawke
! It was a telepathic cry as the flame seared down the mating bond, turning it into an incandescent ribbon.
His arms clenched around her, shocking her back to the world for a single instant before she was wrenched to the psychic plane once again. She watched in horror as the rapacious tempest of her power surged into Hawke. Instead of burning out his mind, it encased it . . . and continued to spread out on the bonds that tied him to his lieutenants, their mates, the healers.
It wanted all of them.
No! No!
Chapter 53
THE FIRE RACED
along the familial bonds, too.
First it hit Judd. Then it hit Walker. And held. She knew both men had risen to consciousness, were shielding to the limit of their strength to save the children as well as Brenna, but she also knew they’d fail. The power continued to pour out of her, surge after surge after lethal surge.
For a blazing instant, the SnowDancer Web was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, a brilliant gold and crimson network lit with pure raw energy. It spoke not of death, but of life. But of course, that was a lie. Even as the minds of Hawke’s lieutenants blazed a terrible red, Walker and Judd finally broke.
WALKER
knew the moment before Sienna’s strength overwhelmed him that he was going to break. Reaching out with his telepathy, he knocked both drowsy children back into unconsciousness. They wouldn’t feel any pain, have any awareness of going into the final goodnight.
Lara
.
A single, painful thought before there was no more time. The brutal energy of an X shoved into his mind. For an instant, it was a thing of beauty,
such unadulterated power that he was staggered by it. If only there was a way to harness this.
Then it rammed into his final telepathic shields, burning them to ash as the wave crashed. He had a moment to glimpse the web and think that the power was arrowing itself to him, as if he was some kind of lodestone. The flame—
so cold, so violent
—shoved into his psychic core a second later. Death had never felt so exhilarating.
In the physical world, he went to his knees, his vision flame yellow and bloodred, but on the psychic plane, his telepathic reach was magnified a thousand times over for a gleaming instant, and he had time to be grateful that he hadn’t been born that way, for a man was not meant to know the world’s secrets.
He waited to die, to feel the frigid burn of an X’s touch, but the power continued to pour through him. Gritting his teeth against the impact of it, he reached out to touch a telepathic hand to the children, found them unconscious but unharmed. That was when he focused his psychic eye beyond the avalanche of power. And saw something so incredible, it would’ve brought him to his knees if he hadn’t already been on them.
The strange twisting motion at the center of his mental star, it had nothing to do with children, nothing to do with telepathy. It blazed diamond bright as it spun at phenomenal speed, acting as a filter for Sienna’s energy. The destructive potential was trapped, eradicated, the rest returned to the network. The interconnected threads of the web continued to burn but second by second, the vicious red was fading into a shimmering gold . . . until at last, there was no more raw power.
Walker’s mind blinked out.
IT
wasn’t until two days later that everyone was functional enough to have a rational discussion. They met in the main conference room, the lieutenants from around the state coming in via comm feeds. Cooper’s mate stood by his side, while the others in the SnowDancer Web, as the Laurens were calling it, took seats around the conference table. The only ones missing were
the children, and the healers from the other sectors—they’d decided to head back home, leaving Lara as their representative.
“That was some trip,” Tomás said, breaking the ice. “Holy hell, I was on speed for two days. I swear I ran patrol nonstop for thirty-six hours.”
“We healed everyone,” Lara said, flexing her fingers, her voice too jerky, too fast. “Everyone in the infirmary, everyone in the pack that we could find with even the slightest injury. Anyone have a sore back? Scratches?”
Beside her, Walker did something Hawke wouldn’t have expected from the quiet, contained Psy. He put his hand under Lara’s hair, curving it around her nape. It was a very changeling display of possession—a signal to every other male in the meeting that Lara was now off-limits.
Hawke’s wolf approved.
“I had sex,” Drew said with a grin. “Lots and lots and
lots
of sex.”
Indigo threw a balled-up piece of paper at him, but she was grinning. Catching the paper, he said, “Hey, no use in good energy going to waste.”
Everyone chuckled, the atmosphere nothing like it would’ve been a few days ago if they’d been talking of Sienna’s power. “So,” Hawke said, playing his fingers through his mate’s hair, “it looks like we all got a boost.”
“She acts like a mini-reactor,” Walker said in that intense, contained way that had everyone paying attention. “Her power is infinite.”
“So we’re going to keep getting mega-hits like this?” Tomás’s dark brown eyes sparkled as they landed on Sienna’s down-bent head. “Not that I don’t appreciate it, sugar, but it did make me ‘hyper,’ according to my mother.”
“Toby hasn’t slept for two days and counting,” Lara said. “He outran his changeling friends—he thinks it’s wuuuuuunderful. His word.”
Sienna spoke for the first time. “I think that was a one-off,” she said, twisting her hands under the table where she thought Hawke couldn’t see it. “Walker and I have been talking, and our theory is that it was because I was trying to contain the power and it built up to a critical mass. If I release a steady stream of it, it’ll boost your energy levels without having a discernible impact like it did this time around.”
Leaning over, Hawke nipped at her ear. She turned bright red. “
Hawke
.”
“No one is angry at you, Sienna,” he murmured. “Look at them.”
He saw her raise her head, glance around, felt the staggering relief that
poured down the mating bond. When she turned and reached up to pull his hand from her hair, bring it to her lips, he was undone, his wolf her slave.
Looking away from her only when she put his hand down on the table, her fingers tangled with his, he found the others had begun to speak amongst themselves, giving him and Sienna privacy. “It’s clear that Walker acts as a filter . . . a valve,” he said during a lull in the conversation.
Matthias looked troubled. “What if something happens to Walker?”
“We’ve been talking about that,” Sienna spoke up, a confidence in her voice that had been missing earlier. “The helix appeared in Walker’s mind around the time my mother was pregnant with me, so there’s a chance one of the other Psy in the network would develop the ability.”
If they were right, she’d explained to Hawke, the implications were astounding. It meant the neosentience in a psychic network didn’t only organize the network, it could
influence
it on the individual level. Which, if the rumors about the current rot in the PsyNet were true, led to some very disturbing suppositions.
“However,” Sienna continued, “we’re not relying on that. Now that we know what Walker’s mind does, Judd thinks he can train his own to mimic the effect. It won’t work anywhere near as well, and the power surge will be a
lot
rougher—”
Matthias cut her off. “It’ll work.” A fierce smile. “That’s the important thing.”
Kenji glanced at Walker. “Does it take anything out of you?”
“No.” Walker tapped a finger on the table. “In fact, I’ve never felt more alive. For the first time in my life, I’m making complete use of my abilities. The valve runs automatically in the background, so it won’t interfere with my normal duties.”
Jem stared at the Psy male. “Wow, I never heard you say so many words in a row before.”
That made Tomás and Drew burst out laughing. Alexei, Cooper, and Matthias were a tad more restrained, but even they had grins on their faces. Hawke’s wolf laughed deep within. His pack, his mate. All here. Life was good . . . except for the fact the Psy Council now knew that not only Sienna, but the entire Lauren family, was alive.
. . .
WALKER
kept his hand on Lara’s lower back as they exited the meeting room. “Do you have patients?”
“No. I healed everyone, remember?” A sparkling look from those tawny eyes. “
Everyone!
Even the ones who were dying. I was super-healer. Or okay, super-healer with super-healer assistants. Did you know Tai kissed Evie right in front of Indigo? With
tongue
. And Maria baked everyone cupcakes.”
“You’re still power-drunk.” It made sense. From what they’d learned over the past few years, it appeared that there was
always
a neo-sentience in any psychic network, and even the most embryonic one would’ve understood that the healers needed the power more than anyone else. Except that there’d been so much energy, giving Lara and the others extra really hadn’t been necessary. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Lara giggled. Slapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m so happy—all those injured, healed. I actually ran out of people. Too bad Alice Eldridge isn’t a wolf or I could’ve woken her up. Elias is kinda mad I found him and fixed him up without leaving even a teeny-tiny scar that he could brag about. When are the rest of the juveniles coming back? I bet you they’ll give me something to heal.”
Hiding his laugh at the rapid speech that reminded him of his daughter—who was attempting to break the world skipping record in the White Zone—he nudged her in the direction he wanted her to go. “Tomorrow.”
“Oh, good.”
As she slid an arm around his waist, he said, “Drew said he had lots of sex. Want to do that instead?” He needed to claim her on a fundamental level, to touch and stroke and caress and know that she had come out of the flames of war unscathed.
Lara’s head snapped up. “Now?”
“Yes.”
She grabbed his hand as if to drag him along behind her. “Hurry up.”
“Wait,” he said as they reached her quarters, “are you too power-drunk to give consent?”
Lara recited the periodic table back at him. “See, all my faculties. Now can we have sex?”
“Yes.”
Her breath turned jagged when he nudged her back into her quarters and locked the door behind himself. Those big eyes didn’t get any smaller when he unbuttoned and stripped off his shirt, then kicked off his shoes and socks. As he took the belt out of his jeans, she sucked in a breath, walked forward.