Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3)(38)

When a large, warm hand closed gently over her nape from behind, she shivered inwardly at the sweep of . . . something that wasn’t simply a lack of pain. Her heart, it beat faster, her breath caught, and her skin, it grew hot. Her hand clenched on the edge of the doorjamb. “I should go,” she said, suddenly afraid of what she might bring to this beautiful green place full of wild creatures. “Renault won’t give up, will come here.”

Alexei brushed his thumb over her skin, the caress turning her breath shallow. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, lioness, but we’re predators with claws of our own.” Words spoken against her ear, his breath hot, intimate. “Stop insulting us by worrying about that coward.”

She felt his claws release, brush her skin—but though the hard tips lay against her carotid and jugular, Memory didn’t run, didn’t panic. Because deadly predator or not, this was the golden wolf who protected her as much as he infuriated her. “I don’t want to bring evil here, to this bright, green, clean place.”

Another brush of Alexei’s thumb over her skin before he retracted his claws. “Sascha darling probably has a story or two to tell you about that.”

“I’m going to smack you in a second.” Despite the dark threat, Sascha’s tone was exasperated rather than angry. “Or maybe I’ll just call you Sexy Lexie.”

Alexei’s growl made every tiny hair on Memory’s body quiver in attention. Turning without dislodging his hold on her nape, she saw that he was scowling at a grinning Sascha, and she wondered why he called the cardinal “darling.” Sascha was mated to another man, mother to a cub she adored enough to do violence.

Maybe she’d ask him . . . but first she had to make them understand. “I don’t know how to tell you what I do,” she said in a voice that broke at the end. “I have to show you.” It was hard to breathe, her chest painful. “I need a monster, a murderer who kills for the thrill of it.”

Alexei’s jaw was a brutal line, his thumb stroking her skin again. “You’re free now, Memory. You don’t have to consort with bastards like Renault.”

“Yes, I do,” she whispered, her chest so tight she wondered if it would crack. The ugly darkness was where she walked, nightmares her home ground. “I’m not meant to heal. I’m a monster, too.”

Sascha got to her feet and took Memory’s hand, as if she hadn’t heard anything Memory had just said, the warning she’d tried to give. “Most Es refuse to work with true psychopaths.” She made a face. “I feel awful about it, but I can’t even get myself to work with Amara and she’s not a serial killer. It’s just . . .”

The cardinal shivered. “She’s better than she was before, has developed a stunted kind of emotional intelligence, but there’s such emptiness at her core where emotion should be, an endless nothing that drags me under.”

“Nothing,” Memory whispered, astonished that Sascha had felt it, too. “That’s what’s inside Renault, too. Nothing.” She didn’t realize she’d moved closer to Alexei until she raised her free hand and fisted it in the back of his T-shirt. He didn’t object, his thumb continuing to stroke the side of her neck in rhythmic motions that made her toes curl.

Sascha dropped Memory’s hand—but only so she could cup the side of Memory’s face. “You’re an empath, Memory.” No room for discussion in the cardinal’s tone, Sascha’s lips soft when she pressed them to Memory’s forehead. “You appear to be a unique kind of empath, but you are one of us. I know—I see you as only another E can.”

Memory’s lower lip threatened to tremble at the kiss. It reminded her of her mother’s gentle hands on her as Diana Aven-Rose helped her put on her coat, or did her hair. “I have to show you,” she repeated; the fear of being repudiated would otherwise eat her up from the inside out. “The psychopath has to volunteer. I won’t force anyone, not even a monster.”

Sascha blew out a breath, her hand still on Memory’s cheek. “You’re certain you want to do this now?”

“Yes.” Her hip and shoulder brushed Alexei’s side, his body a furnace.

“Amara’s a scientist. She’ll probably volunteer out of curiosity—or does it have to be a murderer?” Sascha’s brow furrowed, care in the hand she ran over Memory’s hair. “I really don’t like this, but at least Amara is safe enough if handled correctly.”

Memory forced herself to think. “If she has the nothingness inside her, then yes, it should work.” The howling abyss was the key. “I’ve only ever done it with a murderer, so I don’t know for sure.”

Alexei’s chest rumbled. “Sascha, I’m not sure this is a good idea. Memory’s—”

“—right here!” Spinning out and away so she could face him, she folded her arms across her chest and glared; for some reason, while Sascha’s protectiveness made her feel warm and safe, Alexei’s made her feral. “Don’t talk about me as if I’m a dog you rescued!”

God, she was magnificent. “A dog would have more sense,” Alexei said in a snarl. “You want to go party with psychopaths when you’re so thin I could pick you up with my little finger.” Her neck had felt scarily delicate under his touch, the unruliness of her curls the biggest thing about her.