Psy & Changelings 06 - Branded by Fire

don’t want to stick out either, so I’ve been working with our techs to develop a new type of contact lens. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s good enough—you can wear it up to a month before it needs replacing.”
    Hope lit Sienna’s face. “I could be free. I mean, not leave or anything, but I could go out into the city, move about.”
    “Yes.” Sascha touched her hands again. “But not until you can control yourself.”
    A shaky nod. “I don’t know who can help me—Judd’s done a lot, but there’s no one else like me.”
    Sascha felt a flash of worry. What if . . . ? No. Cardinal X-Psy were a myth. Even midrange Xs were rare, their gift turning on them during childhood. None but the very weak survived to adulthood. “Sienna, what’s your combat ability?”
    “I can’t tell you.” Sienna’s jaw set in a way most would’ve read as stubbornness. They would’ve been wrong. It was desperation. “I can’t . No one can ever know.”
    Sascha stroked her hand over the teenager’s hair again. “Don’t worry—I’m not going to withdraw my offer. But I need to know this—will you be safe around my pack?”
    Sienna took long moments to think about it, strengthening Sascha’s faith in the girl. “I was cold in the Net, Sascha,” she said at last. “Really cold—maybe even colder than Judd. It’s being here, in this den, that breaks me. If you get me out of here, my conditioning should spring back.”
    Sascha knew precisely what Hawke would think of that, but if Silence would keep Sienna functional, then she’d fight tooth and nail for the girl. “Did the Council know about your abilities?”
    “Yes.” She swallowed. “Ming wanted me to join his Arrows, become his protégée. Then he found out I was stronger than him. And that’s when my family got the order for rehabilitation.”
    “It’s not on you,” Sascha said firmly. “It’s on the Council—they made the decision to destroy their own people.”
    “Sascha . . . I might have to go back.”
    Both of them knew exactly what Sienna was talking about—the dark skies of the PsyNet, Silent and cold, might be the girl’s only hope.

CHAPTER 34
    Riley knew he’d fucked up. Even his wolf knew he’d fucked up. What he didn’t know was how to fix things. That was what he did—he fixed things. For his family, for his pack, for everyone who mattered to him. But he had no idea in hell how to fix something so crucially important to him. Mercy had been so angry .
    “Riley?”
    He looked up to find Elias running toward him, sweat rolling down his temples. “How’d it go?” Eli was one of their best trackers, his nose fine-tuned in either human or wolf form.
    But this time the SnowDancer soldier shook his head. “They’re smart—went straight from here to Pier 39, far as I can tell.”
    “Shit.” Pier 39 was always jam-packed with people, and with the blue skies they’d had today, it was doubtless worse than usual. “The trail dead-ended?”
    Eli nodded. “I didn’t say anything to the others, didn’t want to influence them in case they caught something I missed.” Said with a soldier’s calm acceptance that he was part of a team. “That cat—Kit—he’s really good. He might be able to pick up the trail again.”
    But half an hour later, when Mercy called him, it was to say that Kit had only been able to get two piers farther down. “He thinks they might’ve had water transport. But we’ve got their scent now,” she said, her voice terse, businesslike. “I’m sending everyone who knows that scent to do sweeps of the city.”
    “I’m doing the same.”
    “Teijan’s coming over to take a sniff. Don’t shoot him.”
    Teijan, Riley knew, was the Rat alpha. “Fine.”
    He wanted to say something else, anything else, but she’d already hung up. Gritting his teeth, he put the phone in his pocket and—after Teijan had come and gone—decided to join in the sweeps. If the bomb makers had acted smart and gone to ground, then they wouldn’t find a fresh trail, but that didn’t mean they had to be careless.
     
     
    Sascha waited until she and Lucas were almost ready to leave to pull the lid on a powderkeg of trouble. She’d already broken the rules and spoken to Sienna’s uncles—Walker and Judd had both agreed that something needed to be done. Their worry for the daughter of their lost sister was an ache beneath their skin, though neither man showed much on the surface.
    “Sienna needs a break from the