Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3)(37)

It was bad enough that Sascha was seeing her this way.

Warmth emanated from the other woman, the sense of her as deeply kind and unthreatening as Lucy, but Memory was glad Alexei was leaning up against the wall next to her all the same. He was far deadlier than Sascha, a provoking wolf on top of it . . . yet she couldn’t help but remember how he’d held her hand, lent her his strength as she walked into an unknown situation.

“Did you really hurt people who came after your cub?” The question burst out of her.

Sascha’s facial muscles tightened. “Yes,” she said. “I’d do it again in the same circumstances, but it’s difficult to know that about myself—that I have the capacity for such violence.”

That was the fundamental difference between the two of them. Memory took great pleasure in imagining tearing Renault limb from limb. All at once, she knew she was being foolish in attempting to delay the inevitable—there was no way she could ever dupe Sascha. The cardinal’s power was a hum in the air, an electric sensation against her skin.

Her shoulders slumped. “I’m not an empath,” she whispered, speaking as much to the golden wolf who’d rescued her as to Sascha. “I’m sorry.”

“Sure, lioness,” drawled the aggravating wolf. “I must’ve imagined the ferocity of your roar.”

Memory gripped the edge of the table. “Four,” she said very precisely.

And the wolf laughed, filling the air with a wild humor that made her want to turn, watch him. Alexei was beautiful when he laughed, his eyes bright with light and his entire body a thing of passionate life.

Lips curving, Sascha tilted her head to the side. “My friends in the PsyNet tell me your mind expresses itself in a unique way, but there is no doubt you’re one of us.”

Memory shook her head. “I’m not.” It came out hard and rough, she wanted so desperately for what Sascha said to be true. “Empaths heal. I . . . I can’t do that.” Her gut churned. “I’m not like you.”

Not responding in words, Sascha held out her hand, palm up. Another invitation. Except that making contact with an empath was a dangerous risk—catastrophically so when the empath was Sascha Duncan. The cardinal would no doubt discover the heavy darkness that lived at the core of Memory’s nature, the abyss she could never escape.

But what was her other choice? Memory couldn’t go after Renault with her mind wide open. She needed to learn how to shield, how to re-create the protective shell he’d systematically destroyed. Perhaps, if she cooperated, Sascha would teach her the basics before the Empathic Collective kicked her out of this compound.

“It’s all right.” Alexei’s hand brushing her nape. “Sascha doesn’t bite.”

Wishing he’d maintain the contact but not knowing how to ask, Memory placed her palm over Sascha’s. She was braced for a psychic intrusion, but Sascha simply closed her fingers over Memory’s and said, “Who told you that you weren’t an E?” Lines flared out from the corners of her eyes, her voice firm.

“Renault.” Memory tried to quiet her racing heart, failed. “But I learned long ago to never take anything he said at face value. He lies so smoothly it’s like breathing to him.” Her captor also felt nothing as he did it; the only time he came close to experiencing emotion was when he killed, and even that emotion was twisted and wrong and made her feel dirty.

“Yet you believe he was right to deny you the label of empath.”

“On the comm,” Memory said, her throat dry, “the professors and Psy experts talk about empaths being psychic healers. I don’t do that.” Her belief was backed up by the rare opportunities she’d had to test her psychic muscles—mostly when Renault had allowed her to be “free,” his psychic grip a hovering warning.

Each time, she’d seen a person in distress and reacted without thought, reaching out to try to help them. Each time, she’d failed. As she had with Alexei yesterday, when she’d caught the raw depth of the pain he carried in his powerful body. All she’d succeeded in doing was having him accuse her of trying to pet him.

“Not every E is suitable to be a healer.” Sascha’s voice was soothing in a way Memory couldn’t explain. “Some of our kind work in large corporations, help read the other side in a negotiation.” A faint smile. “We have an ongoing ethical discussion about the topic and it can get heated.”

Memory wanted to grip on to the lifeline, to lie, discovered that she couldn’t. Alexei, Sascha, even the lethal alpha wolf, had made the decision to help her. For no reason but that they were good people. If she kept on lying to them, what did that make her?

A shadow of Renault.

Her neck stiffened, her gut tensing. Never would she be Renault’s reflection. “I—” She bit her lower lip, trying and failing to find the words to explain what she did. Everything felt too much, her head too full, the scream building again.

Shoving back her chair, she strode to the cabin door and wrenched it open. The wind whistled in, but not the rain, the overhang over the porch a protective barrier. Alexei had told her this cabin was hers for the duration of her training, that she could decorate it how she liked.

The wonder of having a door that she controlled, a place where others had to ask for entry, it was the most incredible gift she could imagine. But even as she basked in the joy of it, she’d known she’d be stealing it.