Psy & Changelings 06 - Branded by Fire

“It’s about having a mate who adores you.”
    She didn’t know which one of them he was talking about, whether it was a promise or a declaration, but she did know that no woman could’ve resisted him at that moment. “Then we dance, wolf.” A slow, teasing smile as she raised her arms to wrap around his neck, even as something deep in her screamed in warning—there was a danger she wasn’t seeing, a shock she’d never be able to bear. But Mercy was too caught up in the lush hunger of the mating dance to listen. “Let’s see if you can catch me.”
    He skated his hand from her neck and down her body to close over her hip. “I already did, remember?”
    “New game.” She pressed a kiss to the base of his neck, a spot she was becoming very fond of. Especially since he always blew out a breath when she licked her tongue over it. Like now. “New rules.”
    “Tell me the rules.” He didn’t seem to realize he was holding her head against him.
    Hmm, she thought, Riley really liked having his neck kissed. She was so going to take him necking out in the woods. Smiling, she began to nibble on that strong column, feeling her cat purr as he shuddered and angled his head to give her better access. “The rules,” she whispered, drawing the warm, masculine scent of him into her lungs, “are that there aren’t any rules.”
    He froze for an instant, then groaned. “You’re going to drive me to the asylum.”
    She smiled. “That’s the point.” Riley liked rules. She didn’t. Let’s see if her wolf could drop his guard enough to tantalize a cat.
     
     
    Sascha sat in her home “office”—the balcony outside the aerie—and stared at the book her mother had sent her. She kept hoping for a distraction so she wouldn’t have to open the pages, wouldn’t have to consider why Nikita had done this, whether it was a trap or a peace offering.
    As if on cue, the comm panel chimed. Relief washing through her like a rainstorm, she answered using the handset she’d placed on the balcony table. “Sascha speaking.”
    “Sascha, it’s Nicki.”
    “Hiya, kitten.” Looking away from the book, she stared out at the trees. “What’s up?” Nicki was only eighteen, but had recently become apprenticed to the pack’s historian, Keely, after it became obvious she’d been born for the role.
    “Keely asked me to do some research—she said you were interested in Alice Eldridge?”
    The feeling of buoyancy deflated. “You found something already?”
    “I got super lucky with the first person I spoke to—one of Keely’s contacts.” The sound of rustling, as if she was settling papers. “Sorry,” Nicki said. “I never expected to be given something this cool so soon—it’s exciting.”
    Sascha made a murmur of agreement and waited.
    “Okay, so the deal is, Alice Eldridge was a Ph.D. student who was doing this big study on different kinds of Psy around 1968.”
    Nineteen sixty-eight—the year before the concept of Silence was first floated. “She got permission?”
    “Yeah, looks like it from the info I was able to hunt up. All the stuff about her is buried deep—I got most of my intel from a rare books dealer slash conspiracy theorist after I turned up in person this morning and convinced him I wasn’t Psy. I actually had to show him my claws, if you can believe it.”
    “He was that hesitant?”
    “Oh yeah, and once he told me the history behind Eldridge, I understood why.” A long inhale. “Okay, so it seems that midway through her study, Alice Eldridge decided to focus only on E-Psy, and her results were considered ground-breaking, the best work on E-Psy ever done.”
    “Her work was well-known?”
    “In academic circles, yes. The original 1972 print run—done through a university press—was small, around two thousand, but there were rumors she’d been approached by a bigger publisher. Her style was apparently one that would’ve translated well to the popular market.” Nicki paused to take a breath. “Unfortunately, Alice Eldridge died in a mountain-climbing accident in 1975, and that deal never eventuated.”
    A chill rippled down Sascha’s spine. So close to the implementation of total Silence, had it truly been an accident? “Why isn’t there any mention of her online?”
    “That’s the thing—the rare books guy told me that her work was destroyed in a massive purge around a hundred years ago.”
    Sascha’s hand fisted. Silence had been fully implemented in 1979, a hundred