VISIONS OF HEAT

She shook her head. “Serial killers are always human or changeling.”


“Why the hell would you be having visions about races you’ve never come into any real contact with?” He was the one who shook his head this time, a violent movement reminiscent of the jaguar, not the man. “Christ, baby, listen to yourself—this bastard is supposed to be a vision, but he holds you prisoner. No human or changeling would have that ability.”

The endearment was rough, almost a growl, and it broke her. Because he was making too much sense. “It can’t be true. Silence ended violence.”

“Yeah, and your sister’s still alive.”

She slapped him. Hard. The second it was done, her whole body began to tremble. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She stared at the white mark on his face, now filling with blood. “Oh, God.” This was her ultimate nightmare come to life. “I thought my inner protections were holding, but I must’ve been wrong—I must be close to a total psychic and mental breakdown.” Insanity by any other name.

“Shit.” He cupped her face, his hands gentle. “There’s nothing wrong with you. I went way over the line. You had a right to do more than slap me.”

She put her hands over his. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she repeated, frantically attempting to locate the fissures in her mind and coming up blank. “I’ve never hit anyone. I didn’t even know I could—why did I hit you?”

“Because Marine was your sister and I had no right to use that loss against you.” He dropped his head until their foreheads touched. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. Don’t look like that, Red. If you were a cat, you’d probably have gone for my face with your claws.”

She shook her head at the savage image. “That can’t be true.”

“We’re not human,” he said slowly. “We play by different rules and we’re never going to act civilized when in the grip of passion, good or bad. That’s when the animal is at its strongest, most powerful.”

Faith wondered if she was imagining the underlying warning . . . the underlying invitation. “But I’m not changeling. I don’t hit people.”

“Human women have been slapping men for being bastards for centuries. You were doing what comes naturally.”

“Not for a Psy.”

“Faith, Silence isn’t normal. It’s an imposition. What you are without it is normal.” His head snapped up. “Someone’s heading this way.”

She felt the brush of a guard’s mind hit her peripheral shields. “Go,” she whispered. “Go!” Her fear for him was greater than any other emotion.

“Tell me something first—are you going to accept the offer?”

She knew what he wanted her to say, but she couldn’t lie to him. “I don’t know.”

“Decide. You can’t live in both worlds.”

Then he was gone, a blur within the treetops. Rising, she headed toward the house and away from the approaching guard. She was afraid of what her eyes might reveal. Because for the first time in her life, the night sky within was starting to show something other than the endless Silence of a perfect cardinal; it was starting to show vulnerability.

She could still pass for normal, could still live in her world, but she was changing. That change had to be either embraced without reservation or irrevocably erased from her psyche. There was no middle ground. If she became Council, she couldn’t expect the changelings to remain her friends, couldn’t expect Vaughn to visit her, hold her, awaken her.

She had to choose.





Vaughn completed his watch rotation without speaking to a single packmate, then took off into the purple glow of day turning to night. He ran for hours, heading deeper and deeper into the Sierra Nevada, territory that had once belonged solely to the wolves. The chill mountain air ruffled his fur in a way that usually gave him the greatest of pleasure. But not tonight.

Tonight, the human half was very much in charge and it was beyond furious. He’d mated to a woman who might reject him and walk away. Forever. It made him want to shake her until she came to her senses and accepted the bond between them. How could she not see it? Yet she didn’t.

Powered by a chaotic mix of anger and pain, he ran so far that he left everything known behind. Only then did he take to the trees and find a perch from which to watch the night moods of the forest and think. But thinking wasn’t what he ended up doing, his emotions too violent for anything that rational. So he tried to wrap himself in the aloneness of the night, tried to teach himself the sound of silence, the sound he’d be living with if Faith renounced their bond.