Hostage to Pleasure

It took Ashaya most of the next day to settle her thoughts enough that she could talk to Dorian about his latency. Even then she had to wait until Keenan was in bed and Dorian had returned from a meeting with Lucas; Hawke, the SnowDancer alpha; and several others.

“Can I talk to you?” she asked as he came out of the shower and collapsed facedown on the bed. Naked. This cat had no shame. Lucky for her, she thought with a smile.

“About the chips we found on the humans?” He all but purred as she straddled his back and began to knead his muscles.

“No. I’m still working on that. It’s a complicated piece of technology—some kind of a neuroinhibitor.”

“Mmm.”

She pressed a kiss to his nape. “Don’t go to sleep. This is important.”

“I’m awake.” He yawned. “Mostly.”

“I think I did it, Dorian.”

Something in her voice cut through the drowsiness, making Dorian turn onto his back to look up at her. “What, sugar?”

“I’ve figured out how to correct the mutation that makes you latent.”

He froze. “Shaya?”

“I’ve run and rerun simulations. I think . . . I think if it works, you’ll be able to shift. Gene therapy isn’t as rare as it once was—this one is a complex and very, very fine genetic change, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure of success.”

Not since his father had explained to him that he was different—at age two—had Dorian ever allowed himself to think about this. “Jesus, baby. How?”

“I don’t think I could’ve done it without being mated to you, not even with my abilities.” Her eyes filled with the devotion of a strong woman for her man. “It gives me a connection to you that’s so deep, the work’s intuitive. It’s like my gift recognizes you on a primal level. Once I stopped trying to think and let instinct guide me, it was almost easy.”

He blew out a breath, trying to make sense of the chaos in his brain.

“You don’t have to decide now.” She put a hand on his chest. “It’s okay if you don’t want to do it. I just wanted you to know the option was there.”

“Would it matter to you?”

“Of course not, Dorian.” A bright, beautiful smile that knocked out his heart. “I’d love you even if you were a damn wolf.”

“Now you’re learning.” But despite his teasing words, his mind was pure turbulence.





CHAPTER 52


In a large room in the sunken city of Venice, several people sat silently around a long table and considered the abysmal failure of their most recent operation.

“We wipe Aleine from the target list and go under,” the man at the head of the table said. “And we stay under until the furor dies down.”

A slow murmur of agreement. Some of them were grieving the loss of friends and colleagues. But not one, not one suggested that perhaps they’d taken the wrong path, that blood and death wasn’t the right way.

In truth, it was likely that the idea hadn’t even entered their minds. They were too blinded by the knowledge that the Psy Council was beginning to falter in its totalitarian rule, that the changelings were slowly gaining ground. Things were in flux, as they had not been for centuries. For a race that had spent eons in the shadows, it was a heady time, a time when empires might be felled . . . and power might be taken.





CHAPTER 53


Perhaps I shouldn’t have told him. But how could I lie to him, to my mate? His hurt is a bruise inside of him, his beast forever trapped. To me, he’s perfect, but I know that in his soul, he feels torn apart.



—From the encrypted personal files of Ashaya Aleine





Dorian was sitting outside the cabin in the middle of the night, drinking a beer and attempting to get his head around the gift Ashaya had offered him, when a black panther prowled out of the forest. Dorian had caught Lucas’s scent long before his alpha appeared before him, and now waited as Lucas shifted to human form.

Changelings weren’t particularly concerned with nudity, but since Dorian’s cat got snarly at the idea of Ashaya walking out and seeing Luc that way, he went back into the cabin on silent feet and found a pair of sweats. Lucas pulled them on with a nod of thanks, and took the beer Dorian threw him, continuing to stand while Dorian sat.

“Let me guess,” Dorian said. “Sascha sent you after me.” He adored Lucas’s mate, but Sascha’s empathy tended to make brooding difficult.

“Actually, I figured this one out all on my own.” Lucas took a drink. “I think my first clue was when Nate called you Boy Genius this afternoon and you didn’t threaten to throw Tally in a lake.”

Dorian grunted, staring out at the forest. “Where’s Sascha?”

“In the aerie.”

“You left her alone?”

“As my mate would say—she’s a cardinal, fully capable of protecting herself.”

“So you left at least two others on watch.”

“Of course I did.” Lucas took another swallow of beer. “Why am I here in the middle of the night?”

“I didn’t call you.”

Lucas just waited.

Dorian was a sniper. He could’ve outwaited his alpha, but the truth was, he needed to talk. “Shaya’s figured out how to fix the misfire in my body, so I can shift.”