Wolf Rain (Psy-Changeling Trinity #3)(60)

Fascinated by the idea of a little girl who shape-shifted into an equally little panther, Memory popped into the bedroom area first to see her hair in the mirror. Both her hands flew to her mouth. She looked like a picture from a magazine, all vibrant hair, glossy and perfect. Except that it wasn’t too perfect—Ashaya had left her curls to go where they would, and they erupted out of her head in a burst of wild joy.

Memory all but bounced back out to the kitchen area.

“You’re very smart,” Sascha was saying, a tone to her voice that made Memory’s heart hitch, it was so quintessentially maternal. The cardinal’s attention was on the small screen of her phone, but she lifted a hand in a wave as Memory passed.

Cold air kissed her cheeks outside, the bright sun no match for the fading edge of winter. Spotting a group of people seated on a rough circle of stones in the clearing to her left, she decided to go in the other direction. Only it was too late. Jaya had seen her; she motioned Memory over.

Heart thudding, Memory reminded herself to breathe—and to remember that invisible tattoo on her forehead.

“Break from shield training?” Jaya asked when Memory reached her.

Instead of wincing at the reference to her remedial shield lessons, Memory squared her shoulders and nodded. Shields were critical and hers needed to be impenetrable. No one would ever make her feel bad about prioritizing her protective barriers against evil.

“I had to train with Sascha, too,” one man groaned, while around him, his peers chuckled. “I felt as if my brain was soup after every session—but, damn, she knows her shields. You couldn’t have a better teacher.”

The next ten minutes passed by in startlingly easy conversation with people who weren’t so very different from Memory after all. She might’ve been the only one who’d been physically locked up, but they’d all experienced imprisonment—their abilities crushed and stifled, not one had known they were an empath until after the fall of Silence.

Each was in the infancy of exploring their powers, and Memory realized she was far from the only one with scars on her psyche. At one point, a quiet brunette E named Cordelia mentioned that she’d been denigrated in her family group as a “useless Gradient 1.7 psychometric.” Cordelia was actually a Gradient 7.9 empath.

“It’s hard getting my head around that,” Cordelia said in her soft voice. “I keep falling into the black hole of thinking myself worthless.”

Memory wanted to kick Cordelia’s family for her, bruising them black and blue. Only one thing made her hesitate in sharing her own similar stumbles into a lack of confidence. Jaya? she telepathed after warily requesting contact. Do they know I was a captive? It’d brand her as different, make it impossible for her to just be one of the group.

Dark eyes full of infinite gentleness held hers. That’s your story to share or not as you wish. To them, you’re just a fellow student.

Memory exhaled slowly . . . then caught Cordelia’s gaze. “Me, too,” she said simply.

And it was enough.

Buoyant in the aftermath of meeting the others, she decided to walk into the trees where she’d last seen Alexei. Annoyance simmered inside her as she passed beneath the dark green firs. Where was he? If he thought—

“Alexei.” Her heart kicked at his unexpected emergence.

Golden hair messy, he was dressed in blue jeans and a black T-shirt over which he’d thrown an old black sweater. The sleeves were shoved up to bare the muscled strength of his forearms. He was beautiful—and anger raged inside him in a scalding storm. So much that it burned her senses. This was no growl to keep her at bay, no snarl of temper. This anger reached down to the bone.

She strode to stand bare inches from him, the tips of her sparkly sneakers touching his boots. “What’s happened?”

A nerve ticked in his jaw. “Renault’s in the wind—murderous coward did a good job of disappearing, didn’t leave a trail. We found souvenirs of his kills in his home.”

Pushing a fisted hand against her gut, Memory fought down the bile that threatened to rise. “He used to show me sealed packets. He had one with my mother’s hair in it, and on my ninth birthday, he sat there and taunted me with what it felt like to take her life.” Long-ago screams echoed inside her. “I threw a screaming fit so bad that it put me out of commission for two weeks.” Days she’d spent disoriented and adrift in nightmares and grief. “He never did it again.”

Alexei thrust one hand into her hair to cup her skull, hauled her close to him. She went, pressing the side of her face against his chest and wrapping her arms around his body. The primal scent of him sank into her, as wild and untamed as Renault had been an oily smoothness. His heartbeat was strong and steady under her cheek, but claws sliced out of the fingers of his free hand.

“Fucker is going to die.” A flat tone rigid with fury. “We’ve blasted his face and details across the Trinity network and alerted Enforcement. Cops are trying to track down the identities of the other women from whom he kept souvenirs.” A harsh exhale against her hair, as if he’d bent his head to be closer, as if he needed the closeness as much as her. “We found a body, too.”

Memory squeezed her eyes shut as ice trickled down her spine. “After a transfer, he could become charming. He could talk women into going home with him. The victims won’t all be Psy.” It made her feel so ugly and dirty to know that she’d helped a monster thrive, that she was the reason many of those women had trusted him.