Branded by Fire

"Hmm?" He stroked his hand over the sleek black fall of hair she’d inherited from her mother.

"Have you seen my daddy?"

Riley went over the roster in his head. "Elias should be coming back within half an hour."

"I’ll stay and wait."

"Did you tell your mom?" he asked, thinking that while the hair had come from Yuki, the eyes were indisputably Elias’s.

A nod. Tiny fingers braiding her doll’s silky hair. "Riley?"

"Sakura."

A giggle. "Did you see my tooth?" She tilted up her head. "See, I lost two."

"Where’d they go?" he teased.

Another giggle, innocent and bright. "Mom said you should come have coffee with her and Dad."

Riley raised an eyebrow. "She did?"

"Uh-huh. And she even made pecan pie."

Riley loved pecan pie, as Yuki well knew. "Your mom’s sneaky."

"That’s what Dad says." She snuggled closer and he tightened his arms, very aware of her fragility. He couldn’t believe one of his tough soldiers had produced this tiny creature, but it was true. Half the time, Elias didn’t seem to believe it either. The other half, he strutted around like the proud papa he was.

"How come she’s sneaky?"

"She wants to ask me questions, and she’s bribing me with pie." He had no doubts that Yuki wanted to grill him about Mercy. Damn nosy packmates.

"Oh." Her attention was on her doll. "Do you think she looks pretty?"

"Very. Just like you."

A sunny smile was his reward. "I like you, Riley."

Riley felt his heart tighten. He liked Sakura, too. Brenna had once asked him if he’d had enough of parenthood what with having to shoulder so much responsibility in raising her and Andrew, but Riley had never seen it that way. To protect and raise a child was a gift. "What’s your doll’s name?"

"Mimi." Putting the doll on her lap, she patted his chest. "Riley?" A whisper.

He bent his ear to her lips.

"I ate some of your pie when Mom wasn’t looking."

Riley burst out laughing, realizing she’d come to hide from the results of her misdemeanor. It amused the wolf in him, too. Because this pup was one of his own, part of a pack both man and wolf had vowed to protect. Now another loyalty was starting to rise, and it confused him on every level, making him question truths so integral to his life that they simply were.

Until her.

If this fire between them turned dark and exploded outward, it had the potential to devastate both SnowDancer and DarkRiver.

Still, he wondered how Mercy felt about kids . . . if a child was even possible between two such divergent changeling groups.

Chapter 22

Councilor Anthony Kyriakus looked at the husk that had been Samuel Rain and turned to the M-Psy standing next to him. "His chances of recovery?"

Laniea glanced reflexively at the electronic chart she likely knew back to front. "Small but not negligible. We were able to go in and remove the last threads of the compulsion, relieving the pressure on his brain."

"But?"

"But there was a lot of damage. We’re not going to know how much until he wakes . . . if he wakes."

Anthony knew Samuel Rain had been a brilliant robotics engineer. What would it do to him if he woke to a reality where he could never again create anything? "The signature on the compulsion was degraded. Did you find anything else during the scan?"

Laniea shook her head. "The compulsion was woven by a highly experienced telepath – the signature was the first part of the programming to go."

"Send me the details. I may have missed something in my initial scan."

The telepathic transfer was concluded in less than a second. Laniea put the chart on the end of the patient’s bed and shook her head. "There’s one thing I haven’t factored into his chances of survival and perhaps I should."

Anthony waited.

"His will." The M-Psy shook her head. "He shouldn’t have been able to fight the compulsion, but he did. Maybe he’ll fight death with that same strength."

It was a diagnosis that came perilously close to taking emotion into account. But Laniea knew Anthony would never betray her.

"Perhaps," Anthony said, "we lost more than our emotions when we embraced Silence. Perhaps we sacrificed the very thing that made us fight for our right to live."

"If it’s waking again," Laniea said, "it’s doing so with violence."

"But not in Samuel Rain." Anthony saw in this young man’s refusal to surrender, a beacon of hope for his entire race. "In him, it woke to avert violence." Faith, he thought, would be so happy to hear that. His daughter saw too much darkness, her foreseeing gift dragging her deep into the abyss.

And yet despite it all, she kept growing ever stronger. It was dangerous for a Councilor to feel pride, to feel anything, but deep in the recesses of his mind, hidden behind a thousand shields, Anthony was proud of the woman his daughter had become. Now, he nodded to Laniea and left to update Faith on Samuel’s condition.

Chapter 23

Mercy woke the next day to the clawing viciousness of her cat, a twisting, agonizing need that refused to let her rest. What worried her was that it wasn’t only sexual. She missed Riley. "Oh, God."

She’d have sublimated her need in work, but she’d been ordered to take time off by Lucas, given the "ridiculous number of extra shifts" she’d pulled over the past few months. Saying he needed all his sentinels fully functional when this calm broke, he’d gone so far as to cancel her rotation on the city surveillance, meaning she was utterly free.