Psy & Changelings 06 - Branded by Fire

today.”
    Mercy liked the changeling wildcat who’d been on contract to DarkRiver’s construction arm before heading back to her own pack. “Say hi to her for me. Tell her Sage still has a crush on her.”
    “Aw, cute. How come your brothers are single?”
    “They say I scare the women off.”
    “More likely they’re spoiled—they’re not going to settle for any woman who doesn’t match the standard you’ve set.”
    Buoyed by the compliment, Mercy shook off her odd mood and focused on the work. The rest of her day, including a security shift in the city, passed with surprisingly little drama—the Alliance had gone cold again, and Bowen and his crew were still behaving. Even Eduardo and Joaquin were nowhere to be seen, for which boon, she could only thank the heavens.
    And if she continued to find herself thinking about a certain wolf much too often, she was sentinel enough to keep her emotions from interfering with the job. But those feelings were fresh in her mind when she got a call as she was about to leave to change for the meeting.
    “Come up and meet me tonight.” That deep, now familiar voice soaked through her skin, rich, dark, and tempting.
    Her hand clenched on the receiver. “Can’t. Got something else.”
    “When’s it finish? I’ll meet you.”
    “No.”
    “That’s it—no?” The edge of a growl in his voice. “I thought we’d settled this.”
    The sheer arrogance of his commands —not requests, commands—made the cat snarl. “Doesn’t mean you have an entry into my pants anytime you please.”
    “Jesus, Mercy, I just wanted to talk to you.”
    She felt a little twinge. Of guilt. Of hunger. “Talk now.”
    “Fine.” He told her about the conversation he’d witnessed between Hawke and Sienna.
    Mercy’s antennae twanged. “Something’s seriously wrong.”
    “Yeah, that’s what I thought. I want you to tell Sascha. She’s the one Psy we know who might have a shot at getting to the bottom of this. Judd says Sienna’s stonewalling him.”
    “Why didn’t you call her yourself?”
    Not even a pause. “Because it’s you I want to talk to.” No lies. No subterfuge. No hiding his intent.
    “Damn it, Riley. This’ll leave us both broken in the end.” The naked emotional response pushed out past any logical rebuttal. She was starting to think of him as hers , but he wasn’t, might never be. Not when her leopard wouldn’t even accept the bonds of scent.
    “And is fighting it any less painful?”
    No. No, it hurts just as bad.

CHAPTER 29
    He was only twenty-two, a telekinetic with a Gradient rating of 7. Powerful, he was truly powerful. And he’d lost control.
    Trembling, he levitated the fallen bureau off his roommate’s body. The Tp-Psy lay crushed, his organs static, his brain destroyed. Dead. The Tk-Psy swallowed the word past the jagged glass of a parched throat. He’d never seen a dead person before. That wasn’t part of the Psy curriculum.
    But now his roommate was dead, and he was a murderer.
    He didn’t even try to hide it. Didn’t want to. He wanted to find an answer, something that would stop him from doing the same thing ever again. Enforcement processed him quickly, since there was no question of culpability.
    When a representative from the Center came to offer him mild rehabilitation in lieu of a sentence, the Tk-Psy didn’t hesitate. Even if they’d said he had to do the sentence, he still wouldn’t have balked. Because he never again wanted to feel his powers sliding out of his grip, never again wanted to see blood seep into the carpet.
    For the first time, he truly understood the salvation that was Silence.

CHAPTER 30
    Mercy sat in her car, staring out at the light show of a cloudy dusk. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel until she felt like she could break the damn thing. When the first flick of rain hit the windshield, she finally turned on the engine and headed to her cabin, wanting out of her work clothes before going over to Lucas and Sascha’s aerie.
    Turned out she was the first to arrive. Sascha was in the kitchen, looking mournful. “Lucas went to grab some take-out.”
    “You found a way to destroy tacos?” Mercy raised her eyebrows. “This, I have to see.”
    Sascha threw a tomato at her. “I dropped the box of taco shells and managed to break every single one into a million pieces.”
    Looking into the box, Mercy whistled and put down the abused tomato. “Wow, sure you didn’t throw this at his highness’s