Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Those in favor of it say that this protocol of "Silence" will fix our problems, but it seeks to do that by erasing part of our very nature . More than that, don't people understand that empaths and psychometrics, even those of designation M won't fit under the proposed regime?

Where will they go? Will they be erased, too? What will be the end result of all this erasure? For surely a closed system like the PsyNet cannot maintain if it suffers amputation after amputation?

—Letter to the editor by JJ Balakrishnan, PsyNet Beacon (17 March 1974)

THE NIGHT BEFORE the tour of the RainFire facility, Auden dreamed of webs of translucent blue, floating streamers delicate and light that spread out into an infinite darkness.

Such a strange, lovely sight that had her waking with a soft sigh.

But the sense of wonder didn't last under the weight of the decision she was planning to carry out, and her mouth was dry and her back in knots as she got out of the car inside the closed RainFire loading bay. Remi, who'd opened her door, watched as she began to lever herself out. His jaw worked, tension stiff across his shoulders.

"Is it a breach of Psy protocols if I offer you a hand?" A gritty question.

Auden wanted nothing more than to accept, but she was conscious of Charisma's watchful gaze on the other side of the vehicle. "No, an offer is fine, but I'd rather do it on my own."

Hand gripping the top of the door, she maneuvered her body out with effort, her belly leading.

Charisma seemed about to come over, but Mliss Phan engaged her in conversation then began to lead her into the building.

Sir?

Go ahead. Our guards have secured the area. She'd had no problem authorizing those guards, since she knew Remi would ensure the facility passed any and all security inspections. I may as well talk to the alpha one to one, ensure he understands that I am the one with the final say.

Charisma's hesitation was slight, but Auden noted it. Her aide still didn't quite trust in her ability to lead.

Yes, sir.

"Thank you," she said to Remi after he shut the car door behind her.

He gave a small nod, then made eye contact with the driver, who was also a guard. "I have two people watching the front of the premises and two on the inside." He lifted a hand and two changelings in leopard form materialized out of literally nowhere.

Even as her own pulse jumped, Auden saw the driver's eyes flicker at the realization that maybe he wasn't the most dangerous creature in the area. His partner on the other side of the car was no doubt coming to the same realization.

"I also have two people at the back," Remi said, his voice polite and unthreatening. "Please don't engage with my pack unless necessary to sound an alert. They're working and need to be left alone."

It would, Auden realized, also stop any aggression from either side.

The driver looked at her and, at her nod, said, "Understood. We'll watch the bay gate from here. It's secured?"

"Yes."

The two of them began to walk toward the huge roller door that led into the facility proper, Charisma and Mliss already some distance ahead. "I need help," she said the instant she was out of hearing range of the guards, even as she fought the urge to get closer to Remi, draw in the scent of the wild that he carried in his skin. "There is something disturbing going on in my family home."

The brutal truth behind her decision to trust Remi was that she couldn't protect her baby on her own. She needed help. And of one thing she was certain: whatever this big, deadly leopard alpha thought of her, he wouldn't hurt her "cub." Trusting him was still the biggest gamble she'd ever taken.

Remi's chest rumbled. "Danger level?"

"High, but I can't figure out why or even what's going on." She exhaled, fighting the urge to rub at her belly as she would've done if alone. "They're monitoring the baby. Too much. I'm also under constant surveillance."

He pointed at something as they entered the main floor of the facility, as if he was telling her about the machinery. "Is your pregnancy high-risk?"

The warehouse roof rose high overhead, the open space crisscrossed with walkable girders that made no sense to her…until Remi glanced at her with eyes gone leopard, and she realized she was in a place built for and by changelings.

Her breath caught, the idea of seeing him prowling up there a fascination.

"Auden?"

Jerking her attention away from the girders, she thought back to his question about her pregnancy. "It might've been high-risk when I wasn't mentally competent," she said, because to lie about this could endanger her child. "But while I'm now fully cognizant of my surroundings and my physical state, they continue to hover."

She took a deep breath. "I do still suffer seizures, which is their explanation for the surveillance." Skin cold, she didn't look at him, not wanting to remember that morning at the cabin and the blank wall in her mind.

"But you don't believe them."

"No, because, most times, while they do a standard neural scan on me, they do multiple scans on my child. The tests they've run on her are extreme from a diagnostic angle—including full brain imaging."

No matter how well Dr.Verhoeven treated her, he seemed to be following a plan her mother had set when it came to her baby. "The doctor in charge of me has also informed me of the full psychic sweep to be done on my baby after her birth."

She pressed a hand flat against her lower back, arched it.

Remi's shoulders stiffened as he went to raise his own hand.

She knew what he was about to do, craved to know what it would feel like. " Don't. " Too many eyes. Too many watchers.

His fingers curled into a fist at his side. "What's the purpose of a psychic sweep? Will it hurt the cub?"

"No, it's more a fact-finding mission, same as the diagnostic imaging—but I've never heard it being used for babies. It's most often done during Gradient level tests. Part of the system to determine power levels. Babies are too young, their brains too unformed. There is no reason to do this to an infant."

Remi's anger was in the slight growl of his voice as he stopped by a piece of machinery and put his hand on it, as if he was explaining an important factor. Up ahead, Charisma had stopped and was looking at them while Mliss spoke, but she was still too far to hear their conversation.

"There's more," Auden said past the rock in her gut. "I had a seizure twenty-four hours ago." Fear closed its clammy hands around her throat and squeezed. "I haven't had one since my return from the cabin." And as with the others, she had no recall of the seizure itself. "I woke with a memory blank of eight full hours."

Remi's expression shifted, the corporate mask slipping to reveal the predator at his core. "You told me once you had a brain injury. Was that true?"

"Yes." Panic beat at Auden for how much she was revealing, but she had no other choice if he was to have the knowledge to protect her child. "It was significant. I still have lesions on my brain as a result."

"Could they be acting up?"

"It's possible," she admitted. "I have to rely on Dr.Verhoeven's reports, and I don't know if I can trust them." Sensing Charisma's gaze, she made a questioning face as she pointed to a machine. "But…and this could be paranoia caused by the same lesions, but I feel… wrong after a blackout. As if I've been doing things—or having things done to me—of which I'm unaware."

She couldn't stop her hand from curling into a tight fist. "I feel dirty and used, as if I have a film of stuff on me I can't get off, no matter how hard I scrub."

···

REMI'S blood boiled at the idea of such a violation. "Medical tests?"

"Possible." She rubbed the crook of her arm. "I'm sure I was injected here once, but that was back when my mind was still fuzzy. This time around…I went to sleep as myself, and I woke up in front of my computer, and when I looked through the computer's history, it had been wiped."

Her lips tightened. "Even worse, I was given access to an organizer with my medical records on it. The information was dense and complex—I was going through it with painstaking focus, looking up medical terms line by line, and hadn't gotten very far—but now that device is empty, too. Wiped using my own authorization codes."

"Why would you wipe your own computer's history, or erase your own medical files?"

"I don't know." Mingled rage and fear in those extraordinary eyes. "I don't understand any of this—what I do know is that I need to get out of that house."

Her cadence grew faster, more urgent. "It only ever happens at the house. I've never had an onset at the cabin, or when I was at a private medical facility at a different family home during the early stages of my pregnancy. But…" A hard swallow. "I do have brain damage. There is a minor chance that none of my information is reliable."

Remi's gut clenched, his mind flashing with images of another woman who'd lost piece after piece of herself as disease ate away at her. His mother's slow decline had devastated Remi. And she'd never lost any of her sharpness, her mind acute till the end.

"You need to be in a controlled environment to test it," he said through the heavy weight on his chest. "Somewhere safe, and away from your home."

"It's not my home," was the pointed response. "It's my mother's house. There's a difference."

No home. No safe place to land.

Remi understood that in a way few changelings ever would. After his alpha kicked him out, he'd had not a chance in hell of stopping his mother from joining him in exile. She was the one who'd found them a new home in the pack associated with her own lost mama—but by then, Remi had been too wounded in the heart to trust any alpha.

However, he'd always had his mother, always had one person who was home, who was trust, who was comfort and loyalty and strength when he might've been faltering.

Quite unlike Auden…but this same woman who didn't feel safe in her own mother's house was fighting like a leopardess for her cub. His pride at her courage and ferocity both was a growl within.

"I've barred myself from flying until I can be certain I won't have a seizure," she said now. "I can't get to the cabin on my own."

"Does teleporting affect pregnant women?" Remi knew the Arrows would do him this favor—not for Auden, but for the child growing in her womb. All the adult Arrows had been abused children once upon a time, and if they had a trigger point for rage, it was harm to a child.

"I don't know." Auden bit down on her lower lip. "I don't want to risk it, regardless, not now I have a choice. I've already almost lost my baby twice." Her hand threatened to creep to her belly. "Even a tiny fluctuation during teleportation could cause a stillbirth."

It took everything Remi had not to haul her close, just cuddle the worry and tension out of her. "I can fly a chopper." He'd learned to do so during his days as a race car driver—just another beautiful machine to control, as he couldn't control so many fucking things in his life.

Auden sucked in a breath. "After we sign the deal," she said. "Then I can swing your offer to fly me as a way to stay in our good graces. Stress," she murmured under her breath, "that's not good for the baby—and I can make sure something stresses me out enough that I need calm surroundings."

"Auden. Stop pandering to these people. You're the CEO." Remi hated the idea of her being controlled and made smaller. "You're also tougher than they'll ever be."

"You don't see," she said, low and quiet and potent. "I'm not playing their game. I'm playing mine ." A glint in her eye that was almost feral. "I'll do anything to protect my baby, and if that means lulling them into a false sense of security by appearing weak, then so be it."

His leopard's fur brushed the insides of his skin; the more he learned about Auden Scott, the more he wanted to have her to himself, know all of her…even if the idea of watching her lose pieces of herself until all that remained was a hollow shell was a howling terror in the back of his brain.

Never again, he'd promised himself after he buried his mother.

But how could the nineteen-year-old he'd been have predicted Auden? A woman he'd never even touched but whose existence had become a visceral part of his.

"Faking being lame to ease their suspicions while you prepare to rip out their fucking jugular?" he said, wishing he could brush his thumb over her lower lip, rub his jaw against her skin. "I approve." It came out a rumble heavy with the leopard's approbation.

Auden's pupils dilated, her breath catching. But the scent that made his nostrils flare wasn't fear. It was richer, tarter, more delicious.

"And you, Auden Scott, approve of the animal inside me," he said, using the word animal on purpose because that was part of him and he was proud of it.

She stilled, their eyes locked in contact intimate and naked.

"Sir!" Charisma's voice cut through the air. "Have you been told about this advanced new method?"

The spell broken, their time alone at an end, Remi let Auden take the lead in this dangerous game. All the while, the clock in his mind ticked down to when he could issue the invitation to fly her up to the cabin. Where they could be alone. Where they could talk without boundaries. Where they could plot to break Auden out of her fucking jail cell.

But when she sent him an assessing look not long after, he felt the hairs rise on the back of his nape. That look…it was of the woman who'd stood on the doorstep and looked at him as if he was a stranger. His Auden wasn't in there.

A blink and the impression was gone, Auden's the mind behind the gaze once more.

The chill inside him lingered.