SLAVE TO SENSATION

“Stupid,” she whispered, fighting tears. “I’m so stupid.” How was it possible that the rest of her race repelled him, but she didn’t? It wasn’t. Only her pitiful need to be accepted, to be valued, had let her believe something so improbable. She’d been guilty of participating in her own deception.

It was time she stopped letting him blind her with emotion and the dangling threads of false hope and started thinking like a Psy. Maybe it wasn’t too late to salvage her position, at least within the family. The first thing she had to do to ensure that was to tell Nikita everything she’d learned—she might never be a perfect cardinal, but she could be a perfect daughter. This was her chance to make a place for herself as something other than a mistake.

Humiliation and hurt combined to make a dangerous mixture. She wanted to make Lucas pay, wanted to wound him as he’d wounded her, shatter his dreams as he’d shattered hers. He’d taught her so much about his people. He shouldn’t have. In the end, she was Psy.

And he was the enemy.





CHAPTER 12





Lucas knew something was wrong the instant Sascha walked onto the building site where he and his team were taking some initial measurements. They had to make sure everything looked normal on the surface—there was no need to tip off the Psy unnecessarily. To foster that impression, he was out here when he’d rather be hunting murderous human prey.

He watched Sascha park her car some distance from the others and walk to the eastern edge of the site, far from where they were working. Getting up from a crouch, he handed over his notepad to the woman next to him. “Hold the fort, Zara.”

“What would you do without me?” The wildcat winked.

Smiling despite the fact that his gut was tight in anticipation of trouble, he headed after Sascha. It was a shock to come face-to-face with her only to realize that no trace remained of the woman who’d let him kiss her. Every nerve in him went stiff in rejection. Not of her. Of the mask she’d donned once again. She was hiding herself and that was unacceptable to both sides of his nature. He wanted nothing more than to force her to remove it . . . although he didn’t understand why it made him so wildly furious.

“How long till construction begins?” she asked before he could speak.

“The plans will be complete in about a month. If you sign off on them, construction begins.”

“Please keep me updated.” There was a darkness to her eyes that set every one of his instincts on edge.

The panther’s hackles rose. “What have you done?” he asked point-blank.

“I’m Psy, Lucas.”

“Damn you.” He grabbed her arm. She froze. “What the hell have you done?”

Her lips compressed to a fine white line. “I went to tell my mother everything.”

The flames of betrayal spread like acid in his blood. “You bitch.” He let go of her arm, disgusted.

“But I didn’t.” The words were so quiet he almost didn’t hear them.

“What?”

“I couldn’t tell her.” Turning from him, she stared out at the trees that edged the lot. “Why not, Lucas? I’m Psy. My loyalty is theirs but I couldn’t speak.”

Relief kicked him so hard it was almost pain. “What have they done to earn your loyalty?” Mixed in with the relief was anger. Anger that she should’ve even considered betraying him.

“What have you?” She glanced over her shoulder.

“I trusted you.” And he wasn’t a man who trusted easily. “I figure that evens us out.”

She averted her gaze. “I’m going to search the PsyNet for information. I’ll give you what I have.” There was something heartbreakingly lonely in the perfect tones of her voice, something that made him think she’d splinter into a thousand pieces if he spoke the wrong words.

“Sascha.” He went to touch her shoulder, unable, in spite of his anger, to watch her suffer that way. It didn’t occur to him to consider why it was so important that she not hurt. It just was.

“Don’t.” Moving away, she whispered, “I need to be something, even if that means I’m part of a race of killers. If I’m not Psy then what am I?”

Before he could respond, Zara called out his name. Giving her a wave, he said, “Who said the Psy can’t be anything else?”





Sascha didn’t speak again until Lucas was on the other side of the site. “Nature.” The ragged whisper revealed the best-kept secret of their race. Like the rest of the Psy, she was dependent on the PsyNet for every breath she took. Cut off from it for much longer than a minute or two, she’d die a miserable death. And if her flaw were discovered, she’d be sentenced to living death through rehabilitation. Her only hope of survival was to become more Psy than the Psy, to become . . . unbreakable.