He'd kept her safe.
Faith's smile was shy, startled, happy. "I'd like that . . . but not just yet. I'm still adjusting to the dark visions."
Those visions came without warning and could relate to anything from a major disaster to a murder to a small accident. "Today?"
"No." She leaned her head on his shoulder while continuing to pet Naya. "Before we try for a child, I want to be confident that if I have a dark vision while I'm alone with our baby, I'll be able to ride it out." A glance up, her cardinal gaze stripped bare. "I don't ever want to scare our child by reacting badly to a nightmare vision."
"No rush, Red." Vaughn nuzzled at her, let her know he was with her. Always. "We've got plenty of time yet." Plenty of years to play and grow together. "We'll know when we're ready."
Faith pressed a kiss over Naya's soft curls as Naya's eyes finally closed, thick, curling lashes throwing shadows over her cheeks. His mate had a gentle smile on her face when she looked up. Her lips parted as if she was about to speak, then snapped shut as her eyes widened.
"Red?" Vaughn sat upright from his lazy sprawl. "You having a vision?"
A shake of her head. "My brother is a Ps-Psy," she blurted out. "A strong one. Nine on the Gradient."
Blowing out a silent breath, he turned boneless again. "Yeah, I know." What Vaughn didn't fully understand was how Tanique's psychometric ability worked. The younger man could sense things when he touched physical objects, that much was clear. But what exactly he saw, if he even had a visual component to his ability or whether he simply heard the echoes of sounds, Vaughn wasn't certain.
"The message in the bottle." Faith's voice was taut, intense. "Can you get it back? It's really important."
Realization dawned. Swinging his feet off the highly polished stump that acted as their coffee table, Vaughn got up. "I don't know where BlackSea took it after we handed it over, but I know who to ask."
Chapter 14
VAUGHN LEFT THE room to make the call using the comm in Faith's workspace. As a DarkRiver sentinel, he had a contact number for BlackSea that was routed to whichever senior pack member was currently on shift as liaison. Today, that happened to be Malachai Rhys. The big male listened to Vaughn's proposal, then connected him to Miane Leveque after a minute-long delay.
Vaughn knew what Malachai had been doing in that minute when Miane appeared on the comm and began to speak without Vaughn having to explain anything. "The bottle's in a lab on one of our floating cities," the alpha said. "I can pledge a BlackSea favor to get it to you via a teleport, but you tell me if I can trust this Ps-Psy."
Vaughn was unsurprised by her wariness; Psy had long been the enemy of changelings and even now, Vaughn himself only trusted a rare few. "I can't give you an absolute guarantee," he responded. "Tanique is Faith's brother, loyal to NightStar. And NightStar is headed by Anthony Kyriakus, who has no love for the Consortium."
Wholesale chaos and violence was bad for the F-Psy who were a vital part of NightStar's power base, especially with so many of them now opening up to visions outside the antiseptic limits of business contracts. If there was one thing Vaughn knew about Anthony, it was that the other man protected his foreseers, including Faith, with a merciless will. "On the flip side," he added, "Tanique didn't grow up in NightStar but with the maternal side of his family, so he may have loyalties we don't know about."
"Faith NightStar was the one who suggested we ask her brother?"
Vaughn saw where Miane was going. "Not a vision," he clarified, "but she had a tone in her voice I've come to know. I'd never bet against her."
"I'd be a fool not to heed the advice of the best foreseer in the world." Miane put her hands on her hips, her cream-colored long-sleeved shirt moving with a fluidity that made Vaughn wonder if it was one of the experimental luxe fabrics BlackSea was famous for creating.
"We'll need the bottle within the next two to three hours," Vaughn reiterated.
Miane's curt nod was a silent promise they'd have it. "This is a massive risk on our part, cat."
"Sometimes even sharks have to take a leap of faith."
Miane's lips curved at the implied question about her changeling nature, but there was no humor in her eyes. "I'll kill Tanique Gray if he betrays us."
Vaughn knew that should Miane attempt to take such an action, he'd have to get in her way. His jaguar, too, would never forgive betrayal, but like him, Faith had already lost one sibling. Vaughn didn't think she could bear the loss of another. But he also had total conviction in his mate's abilities--even when she didn't have a vision, Faith "saw" things.
Like this morning, she'd insisted he wear his leather-synth jacket when he absolutely hadn't intended to go out on the jetcycle today. If he'd refused to listen, he'd have had to return home to get it barely an hour later, after one of his packmates asked him for a favor that necessitated a trip to the city. And three days earlier, she'd called Tamsyn to tell the healer about a deal she'd seen for good quality chocolate chips.
"I bought them," Tamsyn had said to Vaughn when they ran into each other yesterday. "Then today, Roman comes home and reminds me I promised to make chocolate chip cookies for his and Jules's entire class after they finished a big project. I totally forgot, would've had to scramble if Faith hadn't given me that tip."
Small things, miniscule even, but they added up. "I don't think you'll have to kill Tanique," he told Miane, but held her gaze so she'd know he was as big a predator as her, his dominance such that even Lucas couldn't make him do anything. Vaughn's jaguar chose to follow Lucas's panther because that panther had earned its respect and loyalty. "Understand, he's family."
Miane didn't blink. "I suspect you and Malachai would get on well," she said before ending the call.
Vaughn received a message five minutes later asking him to share teleport coordinates. "I'll be back soon," he told Faith and grabbed his dirty T-shirt, which he'd thrown into the laundry basket.
Running out of his lair, he went full tilt for twenty minutes, until he was surrounded by trees that all looked identical. He hung his tee, with its distinctive Celtic design on the front, from a branch. Then he took a photograph to send to Miane. It didn't surprise him in the least when the teleporter who appeared with a small storage box was a tall male dressed in Arrow black.
After his recent lifesaving actions in bombings and disasters, Vasic had become famous worldwide. But Vaughn knew him from well before that. He hadn't been there the day this man with his winter gray eyes brought in the medic who saved Dorian's life, but he'd heard the details from those who'd witnessed the incident. Without the help provided by the teleporter and that medic who the entire world now knew as a power, Vaughn's fellow sentinel and friend would be dead.
"Thanks," he said, taking the box Vasic held out. "What did Miane promise you?" Vasic wasn't a commercial teleporter, so it wasn't as if BlackSea could've hired him.
The other man's gaze was pure frost. "What has she promised you?"
Vaughn bared his teeth. "Not a thing."
He didn't think the Arrow would respond, but Vasic said, "Life isn't always a cost-reward ratio. It's something the Psy long forgot. Some things we do in the name of friendship--or because it's the right thing to do."
Vaughn had already liked this Arrow who didn't back down in the face of a predator's challenge, but right then, he had the sense he might one day come to call Vasic a friend.
*
NINETY minutes later, Faith and Vaughn dropped a sleeping Naya off at Tamsyn's place, where Sascha was having a meeting with the healer and a number of the pack's submissives. They then drove toward Tahoe in a high-speed vehicle. And now here Faith sat in a small conference room, her mate at her side, waiting for her father and her brother.
She'd become accustomed to keeping her face impassive when walking into meetings with her father. Anthony had made it clear the charade that theirs was, was nothing but a business relationship that had to continue post-Silence. PsyClan NightStar might be powerful, but it had
powerful enemies, too. Anthony was a highly visible target. He refused to make Faith one when she'd successfully settled into a non-public life.
"I've lost one child. No more."
Faith remained at some risk because killing or even badly injuring her would significantly affect NightStar's bottom line. However, that risk was nowhere near what it would be should NightStar's enemies realize Anthony would strike terrible bargains to keep her safe. No outsider could ever know that Anthony Kyriakus, head of PsyClan NightStar, former Psy Councilor, and current member of the Ruling Coalition, loved his children.
Her father entered at that instant, a tall man with patrician features and black hair silvered at the temples, his expression the epitome of cool Silence. "Vaughn. Faith."
Safe inside the windowless meeting room devoid of monitoring equipment, Faith hugged a man who had been too long in Silence to easily show emotion. But his arms came around her, his scent familiar, and his voice deep as he said, "You're well?" The simple, toneless question held such a weight of love that it made a knot form in her chest.
Swallowing, she drew back to look up into his face. "Yes, Father. I'm well."
Scanning her face, Anthony said, "I see signs of strain."
"I had a marathon session yesterday," she admitted. "Nothing dangerous. Vaughn was working nearby the whole time and he made me take regular breaks."
"I had to physically disrupt her trance," Vaughn muttered, his scowl in his voice.
"Everything was flowing so beautifully, I wanted to keep going. But"--she held up her hands when her father would've spoken--"I'm having a break today and tomorrow to recharge."
Psychic power burned energy, but in the case of the darker visions of violence and murder and natural disasters, it was also viscerally draining. Such visions haunted her for weeks afterward. Thankfully, she hadn't seen anything too distressing of late, only small warnings she'd been able to pass on so people could avoid bone-breaking accidents or personal catastrophes.
"Faith." Anthony held her eyes with the brown of his, the charisma in his gaze potent. "I know you disliked the Tec 3 uplinked chair you had in your cabin--"
"'Dislike' is too weak a word." The tiny hairs on her arms rising in cold warning, Faith shifted back to stand with Vaughn.
Her mate immediately wrapped one arm across the top of her chest to tug her against the muscled strength of his body. It was a silent promise. A deadly one, too, should it be necessary.
Air rushed back into her body, the painful tightness in her chest melting away. "I hate that chair." A full-length recliner shaped to her personal body contours, it had monitored and transmitted every breath she took while using it during the cold years she'd spent isolated in a one-person cabin.
"You hated the intrusion, the fact that the data was fed to the medics," her father countered. "The chair itself would be invaluable to anyone who needs to monitor your well-being." His eyes went to Vaughn.
The jaguar who belonged to Faith brushed his fingers over her collarbone, a DarkRiver cat calming his mate. "I don't need technology to make sure Faith is safe during her visions."
"He really doesn't," Faith reassured her father.
Despite her strong negative reaction to the idea of a Tec 3 uplinked recliner, she knew Anthony only wanted the best for her, that every action he'd ever taken in relation to his children had been to protect. Losing her half sister Marine to a psychopath had honed that protectiveness to a deadly edge.
"I'm safe," she said. "I promise." She couldn't control the dark or wild visions, but she never went into a controlled one unless Vaughn was nearby.
"I know the bond you two share is powerful," her father replied, "but Vaughn, you can't monitor every aspect of her health."
Faith realized her father had no framework for understanding the beauty and intensity of the mating bond. Deciding not to push the point, she said, "Do you need to get rid of my old chair?"
"No." Anthony's tone was so cool she felt chastened for her flip response. "We have three prototype next-generation recliners with top-of-the-line health-monitoring functions, including a direct emergency link to a medic if your vitals drop below a certain point. I want you to have one."
Faith's skin crawled at the idea of once again using a chair that spied on her. She opened her mouth to speak but Vaughn beat her to it. "Give us a minute, Anthony."
Her father left the room without further words, pulling the door shut behind himself.
"I don't want that chair." Arms folded, Faith glared at her mate.
"Red, you can turn off the monitoring functions, right?"
She stayed stubbornly silent until Vaughn brushed his fingers over her jaw in a caress that she knew came from the heart of his jaguar. "Yes," she admitted. "We can take out the chip, lobotomize it."
"So"--Vaughn cupped her cheek, ran his thumb over her cheekbone--"you accept your dad's gift. He's not the most warm and cuddly guy, but you're his little girl. He's just trying to look after you, same as Lucas does with Naya."
Her lower lip trembled. She'd been so locked up inside the memories of how much she'd hated that chair that she'd forgotten why it had been created in the first place. So she'd be safe. "I love you."
Vaughn's smile was pure feline smugness. "I know."
She mock-punched him before opening the door to let her father back in.
"I'll try the chair on a probationary basis." Too easy a capitulation would make Anthony suspicious. "We'll also be disabling all broadcast functions. Any data it collects"--which would be zero--"will be kept strictly local to our home."
"I don't want to monitor you, Faith. I just want you to have all possible safeguards."
Faith gave in and hugged her remote, dangerous, loving father again. "Thank you."
He touched the back of her head before looking toward the door. A light knock came seconds later. Though the two of them drew apart, Anthony didn't speak or go to the door. When it opened, Faith realized he must've answered telepathically. No one in NightStar would ever barge in on her father.
"Sir." The six-foot-tall young male who spoke was striking, with Anthony's patrician bones under mocha-colored skin, his hair black and tightly curled. He was a Ps-Psy, gifted in psychometry . . . and he was her younger brother.
"Tanique," Anthony said. "You know your half sibling Faith and her mate Vaughn D'Angelo."
Tanique greeted Vaughn with a polite nod, but his attention was on Faith. "I've wanted to speak properly with you for a long time."
"I feel the same." Faith reached out her hands before she remembered Tanique had been raised in Silence and, unlike her, hadn't left the Net to join a changeling pack where touch was an essential and everyday part of life.
Any post-Silence changes in her brother would be slow and hesitant.
Dropping her hands, she said, "You're permanently at NightStar now?" All adult Psy could choose the side of their family line with which they preferred to align themselves. Tanique had done it, not at eighteen but later. Regardless, Anthony would've paid a penalty to the family who had raised and educated him but would no longer have the benefit of his abilities.
Thirty was the point at which such considerations no longer applied.
Tanique was barely twenty-four and a half.
"Yes," he said. "NightStar is my home base, though I do travel." Her brother continued to look at her with beautiful eyes of a pale tawny brown that made his face even more striking. They were almost feline, her brother's eyes, with fine striations of darker brown and yellow in the irises.
Faith got the impression that he was as curious about her as she was about him.
"My skill set meshes far better with F-Psy than with the telepathic abilities prevalent in my maternal line," he added in a voice that reminded her of Anthony's, only younger. "They didn't know quite how to make use of me, but Father does. I do a little work for private collectors, but the bulk of what I do involves museums that wish to verify the provenance of exhibits or items the institutions wish to
purchase."
Faith shook her head, her pride in her brother a tidal wave of pressure against her heart. "That's not all you do," she corrected. "I know you've helped find more than one lost or kidnapped child."
Tanique didn't blink or shift position, but she caught a subtle change in his expression. "Father's taught me that we aren't only machines bound to our gifts." A glance at their shared father that held unhidden respect. "Yes, we need to support ourselves, but we can also choose to use our abilities in ways that are good for society . . . and for our spirits," he finished hesitantly.
At that instant, Faith saw only a younger brother still struggling to find his footing, not the gifted Ps-Psy who'd once carried a child a mile out of a dense jungle after picking up a lost backpack and catching a glimpse of where the child's abductor had taken him.
"Choosing to do the right thing can be hard at times," she said softly, "but it's worth it." The dark visions used to leave her crumpled in a fetal ball until she accepted them as part of her gift and took ownership. Now, sometimes, she saved a life. Against that, the intense psychic control, the pain of living a murderer's dreams, none of it mattered.
Tanique gave a nod so like Anthony's that Faith bit back a smile. For all his poise and training, her brother suddenly put her in mind of the youths in DarkRiver. Adorable. He'd probably hate that description had he embraced emotion, but she thought an older sister should have leave to think such things. "I was actually hoping to ask your help with something."
"I'd be happy to provide it." His reply came so quickly on the heels of her words that she realized he wanted to build a relationship with her as badly as she wanted to build one with him. "You have an object for me to look at?"
Faith gestured to the box on the table. "It's in there. Can you take a look, see what you sense?" It was a deliberately vague statement on her part; she didn't want to influence him in any way.
"Can you open the box?" Tanique's tone was more sure now that they were in his area of expertise. "It's so I don't get sidetracked by any impressions left on the box by those who've carried it."