Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3)(14)

Power, the Ruling Coalition has in orders of magnitude. Respect? That, too, has begun to root. The question is, will it last? Or will the Ruling Coalition fall prey to the same ambition and greed that corrupted so many of our past rulers?

—Editorial, PsyNet Beacon


KALEB KRYCHEK, DUAL cardinal and the most powerful man in the PsyNet, finished doing up the obsidian cufflinks Sahara had given him for a birthday gift. Pure black, they gleamed against the equally deep black of his shirt, and he knew that each time he looked at them today, he’d think about how she’d kissed him when she placed them on his cuffs the first time.

Only Sahara had ever given him gifts, and hers were the only gifts he would wear.

“Strike me dead, why don’t you?” Dressed in one of his shirts, the buttons only partially done up, she leaned in the doorway to their bedroom, a mug of cherry-flavored nutrient drink in her hands. “You’re lethal to the female system.”

He would never become used to how she saw him: to everyone else, he was a deadly cardinal telekinetic with unknown motives, but to Sahara, he was the boy who had been her friend and the man who was her love. Sahara believed, truly believed, that he would do good if offered a choice between good and evil.

Kaleb, however, had never been in any doubt about his own conscience—it was a cracked and blackened remnant. If he did good, it was for her. He’d told her that countless times. As many times, she’d smiled and said she had faith in him. He was beginning to believe they would be having this argument into eternity and he looked forward to each and every encounter. “You realize the vast majority of women are terrified of me?”

“Hah!” A wicked grin. “Guess who’s featured in the ‘Scary but Sexy’ column in this month’s edition of Wild Woman magazine?” Sauntering over on bare feet while he attempted to process that unanticipated piece of information, she put her drink aside on a dresser and picked up his jacket.

She went behind him, held it open. “I’m going to frame that feature and put it on our wall of memories.”

Mind flashing to that wall of photographs and the bonds it represented, he slipped his arms into the jacket. “Why are you reading a magazine aimed at changeling women?”

“It’s amazing, that’s why.” Coming around to his front, she smoothed her hands down the lapels of the jacket. “Are you doing the tie thing today?” Not waiting for an answer, she went into the walk-in closet and picked out a tie in pure black. He bent his head so she could slip it around his neck, then watched as she knotted it with expert hands.

She’d learned how to knot a tie just so she could do it for him.

“There.” Hands on his chest, she rose on tiptoe to claim his mouth in a kiss that reached all the way down to the twisted dark inside him, the broken and scarred boy who would forever be a part of his psyche.

“Any plans for world domination today?” A question asked against his lips, the intimacy quiet and domestic and what they needed after the terror and the separation that had threatened to turn Kaleb into a monster.

“That’s after lunch,” he said, and drank in her laugh. “First I have a meeting with Bowen Knight.” He and the security chief of the Human Alliance had a difficult problem to solve. “I also have to investigate a disruption in the PsyNet.”

Sahara’s smile faded, shadows whispering across the dark blue of her eyes. “Is the disintegration speeding up?”

“No, it’s stable enough.” The PsyNet was in dire straits; over a century of Silence had weakened its foundations, torn holes in the psychic fabric that kept millions upon millions of Psy alive. Cut the biofeedback provided by the sprawling psychic network and they’d die in a matter of minutes.

The PsyNet would’ve already failed if not for Designation E. The empaths were literally holding it together using the bonds of emotion, but even the Es’ heroic effort was teetering on the edge of failure. The PsyNet was too badly damaged—it needed human mental input to stabilize, and humans hated the Psy too much to enter their network.

The current forecast was Net failure in twelve months, max.

Kaleb would survive. So would Sahara. He was strong enough to slice them out of the PsyNet with enough other minds to create a stable standalone network held together by his sheer power. The only reason he hadn’t already done so was that Sahara expected him to be a good man and fight to save the rest of their people.

So he would. For her. Only for her.

If the world dared take her from him again, he’d annihilate it without hesitation.

Today, however, he had to deal with a different issue. “I’m getting the sense of another significant power in the PsyNet.” His mind had brushed up against the wake left by that power at least twice now. “The problem is that both the DarkMind and NetMind are losing coherence.” The twin neosentience was the “brain” of the Net, and as the PsyNet failed, so did it. “It’s why I don’t already have more information on this individual.”

Sahara reached up to straighten his shirt collar, which he knew was perfectly straight. But he bent his neck so she could reach. “When you say significant power, do you mean an emergent Psy? A child who was stifled by Silence?”

“No, the energy I’ve detected is adult. Strong and aggressive, not an awakening empath or a gifted child.” What Kaleb needed to know was if they were friend or foe and if they had the power under control. “The PsyNet can’t handle rogue power. Not now.” It could collapse in critical sections, cutting the biofeedback link to tens of thousands of minds.