“What if-” Jon paused. “Kit told me about pack hierarchy. I can’t shift into animal form. Guess that means I’ll never get a high rank, huh?”
Clay raised an eyebrow. “Ask Dorian.”
“He can’t shift?”
“No.”
“But he’s a sentinel, too!”
“Exactly.” He left the kid that information to chew on.
Talin had remained silent throughout the conversation, knowing the importance of what was going on. When Jon nodded and returned to his previous position, his head against her knee, she relaxed.
That was when Sascha and Lucas walked into the room. It had been decided the alpha pair needed to hear this, since by accepting Jon and Noor, they were allying themselves to Shine by default.
Clay stirred behind her, his hand sliding down to cup the side of her neck in a hold as protective as it was possessive. She swallowed, reached up to close her hand over his wrist. His fingers played over her skin. “I already input the code,” he told Lucas.
Nodding, Lucas pressed the Enter key and sat down in the other armchair. Sascha perched on the arm, leaning into her mate, who slipped an arm around her waist, his hand lying loosely on her hip. It was an easy pose, the pose of a couple that had been together long enough to have created their own patterns, their own secret language.
She wanted that with Clay, she thought, would do everything in her power to gain it. Pulling his hand away from her neck, she pressed a kiss to his palm. He leaned down until his lips were against her ear. “Behave, Tally. Or are you calling in your winnings?”
The husky reminder made her grin. Releasing his hand, she sighed in pleasure when he pushed aside the neckline of her V-necked sweater to close it over her bare shoulder. That was when the comm screen cleared to reveal Dev’s face.
“Sorry for the delay. Had a last-minute situation spring up in Kansas.”
Anger rolled through her like fire. “Not another abduction?”
“No.” His eyes looked over her head. “I think that problem has been permanently resolved.”
“No,” Clay disagreed. “We need to cut this off at the root-the Council. Long as they hold power, civilians will keep dying.”
Talin felt Sascha jerk, but the cardinal nodded. “Yes, they have to be stopped.”
“You won’t get any argument from me.” Dev shoved a hand through his hair and glanced at Jon. “I’ve organized a place for you at one of our prep schools. You’ve got more Psy blood than most-you need to learn about the Psy side of your lineage.”
Talin took the lead when Jon maintained an obstinate silence. “Send me the information and we’ll look it over.” At Dev’s nod, she took a deep breath, drawing the scent of Clay into her lungs. “Now, tell us everything we don’t know about the Forgotten.”
Dev’s handsome face shadowed over. “That’s a big ask.”
“But necessary,” Clay said from behind her.
“Yes.” He paused as if gathering his thoughts. “In short, a hundred or so years ago, when Silence was voted into being, people who disagreed began to search for a way out. It had to be done in secret because dissidents had already begun to disappear.”
When no one interrupted, he continued, “In the end, the only solution the rebels could come up with was to drop out en masse and attempt to link to each other in the seconds before psychic death. They hoped their gamble would lead to the spontaneous creation of a new psychic network. If it didn’t, the defectors were prepared to die.” The ruthless lines of Dev’s face lit from within. “But they didn’t. And the ShadowNet was born.”
“This is extraordinary,” Sascha said. “I was a Councilor’s daughter and I knew nothing of the Forgotten or their ShadowNet.”
“Not surprising. The Council would like to wipe us from the face of the planet.”
“Can you still accept renegades?” Sascha asked and Talin realized how important the answer was for those who remained imprisoned by Silence.
Dev shook his head. “We could for the first generation after defection. Some people dropped out later. Most had children they couldn’t bear to leave earlier.”
Sascha gave a slow nod, her hand gripping Lucas’s so tight that her dark gold skin had turned white over bone. “And now?”
“Everyone in the ShadowNet is of heavily mixed blood. Over time, the psychic pathways have shifted, become unique in a way that probably rules out the successful integration of a more ‘pure’ Psy and vice versa.”
“Did the Council realize what had happened to the defectors?” Talin asked, trying to wrap her head around the implications of Dev’s revelations.
“Yes. But since the ShadowNet was so small, and they were busy dealing with the aftermath of Silence, they didn’t pay much attention. They figured the defectors would intermarry with the other races and their Psy blood would eventually diminish.”
“That didn’t happen?”
“It did and it didn’t.” He leaned back in his chair, his skin gilded a rich bronze by the sun lancing in through the window behind him. “Every so often, the result of a pregnancy between two descendants of the Forgotten is a child with remarkable Psy powers. These powerful births are exceptionally rare, but like Jon, many children of the Forgotten carry some functional or latent power. And the Council doesn’t like anyone on the outside who might be able to challenge them on the psychic plane.”
Talin thought back to one of their earlier conversations. “You said the Council started hunting you a few generations back. Is that why?”
A sharp nod. “The murders began as soon as Silence took a solid hold. Those descendants who didn’t need the link to the ShadowNet-not all the kids did-were ordered to scatter and stay scattered.”
“But the Net was too small to allow those who needed the biofeedback to go far?” Sascha asked.
“Yes. It might have led to psychic starvation. Shine was formed by those who remained in the ShadowNet. It’s only in recent years that we’ve become powerful enough to chance tracing the others. We’ve focused our efforts on the marginalized children, those who need us most.”
“Why?” Jon’s tone was on the wrong side of insolent. “You might as well have pinned a target on our backs.”
Dev’s lips thinned. “We search because some of you need our help. Not all are ‘gifted.’ Some are cursed-we found one child dying because she needed the link to the ShadowNet, but her brain had lost the ability to search for it instinctively.” His jaw tensed, eyes dark with fury.
“Another, a teenage boy, is a midrange telepath, but he was diagnosed as schizophrenic because he kept hearing voices and, according to his family tree, he’s one hundred percent human. Those who scattered wiped their pasts so effectively that sometimes their own descendants don’t know who they are.”
It was too much information to process, but Talin had one further question. “What about changeling-Psy children? Why doesn’t Shine help them?”
Dev shot a wry look at Lucas. “The packs closed ranks and disappeared the known Psy families so well, we don’t have a hope in hell of tracing them. That secrecy probably saved their lives-then and now.” Pure anger threaded through his voice. “What we are, what we’ve become, it’s nothing like the Psy. We don’t want to grab their power, but the Psy Council sees only evil because it is only evil.”
CHAPTER 47
Hours later, Clay held Tally as they lay spooned on the futon they had made up on the first floor. The bed was taken-they’d brought Jon and Noor home with them. The boy hadn’t said anything, but it had been obvious he wanted to be near Talin. And Noor went where Jon did. “They’re asleep,” he said.
Tally put her arm over his. “You can hear them from down here?”
“Uh-huh.” Little Noor was snuggled up on a mattress on the second floor, while Jon had been given the bedroom, over his protests.
“Noor seemed happy with sleeping alone.” She ran her foot over his calf, the affectionate act making him purr. “I figured she’d be scared-that’s why I didn’t want her at the top of the aerie.”