Hostage to Pleasure

Sascha nodded. “The trouble is, we have no clue as to her motivation. I want to believe that she did it out of love for her son . . . but we both know mothers don’t always protect their own in the Net.”


Dorian couldn’t argue with that. Ashaya was Psy. Psy didn’t feel. So why had the Council been able to use Keenan as leverage to ensure his mother’s good behavior? It made her a mystery. Dorian had always liked mysteries. What he didn’t like were Psy in the Net, Psy who worshipped the cold, unfeeling God of Silence.

Psy like Ashaya Aleine.

His blood thundered with a tidal wave of black rage. It was a familiar feeling—one of the Silent, a cardinal telekinetic named Santano Enrique, had butchered Dorian’s sister, using her as a canvas on which to carve his sick fantasies. Dorian had torn the killer apart with his bare hands, but that hadn’t quieted the rage in his animal heart, the torment in his human soul.

Kylie’s body had still been warm when he reached her.

“Dorian.” Sascha’s voice cut through the miasma of pain and rage. “Don’t.”

Don’t punish yourself for a monster’s crime; don’t let him kill you, too. It was what she’d said to him in the months after Enrique’s execution, and Dorian had tried to listen. For a while, he’d thought he’d conquered the anger, but it had only been in hiding. Now, it came to pulsing life, triggered by the remembered sight of the blood on Keenan’s wrists . . . triggered, too, by the memory of Ashaya Aleine’s blue ice of a voice.

He got up. “I’m going for that run. Look after Keenan.” Even Sascha, with all her gifts, couldn’t erase his guilt. Because that anger, it wasn’t all directed at the Psy—he’d failed Kylie, failed his baby sister. If he could’ve split a vein, torn out his heart, given up his soul, and known it would bring her back, he’d have done so in a heartbeat.

But he couldn’t, so he’d learned to live with the grief, learned to live despite the guilt, had even fooled the pack into thinking he was getting better. Perhaps even fooled himself. Until her.

He’d almost shot Ashaya Aleine at first sight.

Not because she was evil. Or because he’d considered her a dangerous wildcard. No, the sole reason he had almost put a bullet through her was because the instant he’d caught her scent, his cock had gone as hard as fucking rock. The unexpected and unwanted reaction had ratcheted up the raw, angry fury of his guilt until it was an ever-tightening noose around his throat, a burning in his heart. All he’d wanted to do was destroy the cause of his shattering betrayal to Kylie’s memory.

Attracted to one of the Silent?

His mouth set in a grim line. He’d cut off his own balls before he accepted that.





CHAPTER 4


He haunts me. The sniper. In my dreams, he is a black shadow with his eye focused on the scope of a rifle. Sometimes, he puts down the weapon and walks toward me. Sometimes, he even touches me. But most times, he presses the trigger. And kills me.



—From the encrypted personal files of Ashaya Aleine





Ashaya returned to consciousness with the realization that something had gone very wrong. Her mind was functioning, but her body wasn’t. She was paralyzed. A human or changeling, creatures of emotion, might have panicked. Ashaya lay in silence and thought through the situation.

Unless she had gone blind, her eyes were closed, possibly taped shut, though she didn’t have the senses to verify that. Closed eyes meant a medical facility of some kind, either a clinic room or the morgue.

Her body wasn’t picking up the sensation of cold or warmth, so she couldn’t verify that either.

Her hearing wasn’t working.

Her nose wasn’t working.

Her mouth wasn’t working.

That was when claustrophobia nibbled at the edges of her consciousness. She was buried in the most final way—inside her own body. Her limbs were all completely useless, making escape impossible. No, she thought, dragging her thoughts back under control before they eroded the cold Silence that had kept her alive this long. She wasn’t human or changeling. She had another world open to her. Inside her mind, she felt for the link to the PsyNet. There it was, strong and unwavering. Whatever had gone wrong, it hadn’t affected her psychic abilities.

Following the link, she cautiously lowered her shields and swept her psychic eye across the area she now occupied. Familiar minds began to appear within seconds. She withdrew at once. That was the problem with the PsyNet. Though her initial position was based upon her physical location, because the PsyNet was a psychic construct, the instant she lowered her shields, it began to shift to accommodate her—as if each version of the Net was unique to the individual.