He continued to swim farther into the lake, pulling her along. “The others?”
The water hit her breasts, soaked into her chest, into her bones. “The web”—she kicked her legs in an attempt to help him—“will collapse without you.” He was the center, the key. Had her family been part of it longer, they could’ve built failsafe bonds, but as it was, the web was a wholly changeling construct, created by ties of blood . . . Hawke’s blood. “The changeling members won’t suffer any ill-effects.
“Walker and Judd”—she gasped past the cold that consumed her—“will be able to drag the children into a smaller LaurenNet.” She ’pathed Judd a warning. Her sweet Toby, and smart, funny Marlee remained unconscious, a small blessing.
“When you die—” The words wouldn’t come, and it had nothing to do with the fact that her body was in the coldest, deepest part of the lake. “When you die,” she forced herself to say, “the psychic shock will tear me from the web, regardless of the links to my family.” He’d become her anchor in every way and losing him would destroy her, ending her life and the threat of synergy. “We should dive just in case, but once separated from the web, I won’t be a danger anymore.”
Her wolf cupped her face, nothing but a wild devotion in his touch, in his voice. “Then what’s there to be scared about?”
It broke her heart, that he was hers. “I love you.” I’m sorry.
A caress down the mating bond, an untamed kiss that she knew was her wolf before he said, “Forever,” and dived with her in his arms, the water closing over their heads in a sheet of sparkling blue.
Cold. So, so cold.
It was the last thing she had physical awareness of before the crimson and gold collided to create an inferno that poured over and through her shields with a vicious strength she could never hope to control. Hawke! It was a telepathic cry as the flame seared down the mating bond, turning it into an incandescent ribbon.
His arms clenched around her, shocking her back to the world for a single instant before she was wrenched to the psychic plane once again. She watched in horror as the rapacious tempest of her power surged into Hawke. Instead of burning out his mind, it encased it . . . and continued to spread out on the bonds that tied him to his lieutenants, their mates, the healers.
It wanted all of them.
No! No!
Chapter 53
THE FIRE RACED along the familial bonds, too.
First it hit Judd. Then it hit Walker. And held. She knew both men had risen to consciousness, were shielding to the limit of their strength to save the children as well as Brenna, but she also knew they’d fail. The power continued to pour out of her, surge after surge after lethal surge.
For a blazing instant, the SnowDancer Web was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, a brilliant gold and crimson network lit with pure raw energy. It spoke not of death, but of life. But of course, that was a lie. Even as the minds of Hawke’s lieutenants blazed a terrible red, Walker and Judd finally broke.
WALKER knew the moment before Sienna’s strength overwhelmed him that he was going to break. Reaching out with his telepathy, he knocked both drowsy children back into unconsciousness. They wouldn’t feel any pain, have any awareness of going into the final goodnight.
Lara.
A single, painful thought before there was no more time. The brutal energy of an X shoved into his mind. For an instant, it was a thing of beauty, such unadulterated power that he was staggered by it. If only there was a way to harness this.
Then it rammed into his final telepathic shields, burning them to ash as the wave crashed. He had a moment to glimpse the web and think that the power was arrowing itself to him, as if he was some kind of lodestone. The flame—so cold, so violent—shoved into his psychic core a second later.
Death had never felt so exhilarating.
In the physical world, he went to his knees, his vision flame yellow and bloodred, but on the psychic plane, his telepathic reach was magnified a thousand times over for a gleaming instant, and he had time to be grateful that he hadn’t been born that way, for a man was not meant to know the world’s secrets.