Clay's hands clenched into fists. Damn her. His anger was a whole lot easier to hang on to when she didn't remind him of the girl she'd been. "How did you do?" he asked, giving in to the compulsion to know everything about her.

She took a breath to answer but someone chose to boot up the jukebox at that second. Loud music crashed into the room. It was modulated so as not to damage keen changeling hearing, but it wasn't exactly conducive to talk.

He ran his debit card over the reader built into the table and rose. "Let's go."

Nodding, she took a quick sip of water, then followed, staying close to him. They met Dorian just outside. The blond sentinel was in the process of getting off his sleek black motorcycle. "That your rabbit?" Hanging up his helmet, he smiled at Talin and it was a charming smile with a hint of the feral. Clay had seen women throw themselves at Dorian after being on the receiving end of that smile. "She's kind of bitesized for you. Why don't you give her to me?"

Clay waited to see what Talin would do, well aware the other sentinel was simply messing with her. According to Pack law, Talin was Clay's because she had come to him. Until and unless she wanted out - Clay's hands fisted again - no packmate would touch her.

"What do you say, little rabbit?"

"I'm sorry," Talin replied, sweet as honey. "I don't do pretty boys. In fact, I don't do boys at all."

Dorian choked on a laugh, then glanced at Clay's shocked face. "Well, shit. She's all yours, buddy."

Clay hustled Talin to her Jeep and pinned her to the passenger door with his hands on either side of her body. Her fear was a live thing between them, a slimy intruder that had no place being there. He fought to contain the leopard's corresponding rage and knew from the look in her eyes that he'd only been partially successful.

"You like girls?" he asked very, very quietly.

She shook her head, eyes big.

"I can still tell when you're lying and you weren't lying to Dorian."

"No, I wasn't." She bit her lower lip. "I was jerking his chain 'cause he was jerking mine. I said I don't like pretty boys."

The leopard was too wound up to see the logic. "What do you like?"

"Men."

Time stopped as he digested the knowledge in her eyes. "You've been with men." He felt as if she'd cut him off at the knees and he shouldn't have. Leopard changelings were sensual creatures - regular sexual contact was considered healthy and natural. He had never before judged a woman for who or how many others she'd been with.

"Yes." Her skin paled. "Lots of men. So many I can't remember their faces, much less their names. Too many for even my memory to handle."

Was she trying to hurt him on purpose? That she had the ability to do so enraged the leopard. Keeping that anger at bay only by dint of years of experience, he pushed off the car. "Why? You weren't like that."

"You knew me before puberty hit," she said, a tight bitterness to her tone. "Can we go now or would you like a blow-by-blow?"

"Get the hell in!"

Talin got in, conscious of a deep sense of self-loathing. She'd never intended for Clay to know the depths to which she had sunk, but it had been like someone else was controlling her mouth, as if some defiant part of her wanted him to know. Now he did. And whatever chance they had had, it was gone.

Talin couldn't blame him for his reaction. The counselor she had finally gone to for a short period after beginning her work for Shine, had assured her that her acting out as a teenager and as a young adult had been an understandable reaction, something often exhibited by victims of childhood abuse. The woman had classified it as a kind of self-harm, said there was no need for Talin to feel shame. But even after eight years of celibacy, except for -

No, she wouldn't think of those times. Her fists turned bloodless. It had been eight years since the final therapy session, eight years since she had begun to try to treat her body as something good, something worth holding precious, eight years...but Talin still wasn't sure she believed the counselor.

Maybe she was the slut Orrin had tried to make her. Maybe that defect was built into her genes. The clinic where she'd been abandoned as a baby had been a free one, utilized almost exclusively by prostitutes after all. Orrin had called her the daughter of a whore. Like mother, like daughter.

"Where's your apartment?"

Snapping upright at that cold question, she realized they had reached the outskirts of San Francisco. Lips dry, mouth full of cotton wool, she gave him directions to the small high-rise where Shine had leased her an apartment. "Thank you," she said when he parked on the street out front.

"Here." He threw her the key. A split second later, he had opened the door and was gone, a lethal shadow invisible against the rising fog. Eyes stinging, she shifted into the driver's seat and drove the Jeep down into the underground parking area.

Clay had been disgusted by her.

A sob caught in her throat as she sat in the dimly lit garage. Even when Clay had first discovered her grim childhood secret - only seconds before he'd killed Orrin - he had never looked at her with blame in his eyes. Instead, he had written her letters from juvie, telling her that she was still his Tally, still the best thing in his life. Those letters had gotten her through more years than Clay would ever know.

But now...now he blamed her for what she'd become. How could he not? He'd spent four years in a cage so she wouldn't have to live in a nightmare and what had she done? She'd spit on his gift, cheapened it to tawdriness. No wonder he hated her.

That she had been close to insane during those lost, tormented years didn't sound like a particularly good excuse.

Giving in, she pressed her head against the steering wheel and cried.

Chapter 5

Ashaya Aleine was an M-Psy with a Gradient rating of 9.9. The latter made her very unusual. Most Psy that powerful tended to make the 0.1 leap into cardinal status. There was no measuring cardinals. Some were more powerful than others but all had the same eyes - white stars on black velvet.

Distinctive. Memorable.

Ashaya was neither. Her eyes were an unremarkable blue gray, her hair a plain black. It was curly but once pinned into a severe knot, it became forgettable. Her dark brown skin, too, was nothing surprising among the genetically mixed population of the Psy. But Psy weren't the only ones she had to consider. For her plan to succeed, she had to learn to become invisible among the humans and changelings, a far harder task.

The clear panel of her computer screen flashed an incoming call. She answered it to find herself facing a woman with almond-shaped eyes and ruler-straight black hair. "Councilor Duncan. What can I do for you?"

Nikita Duncan put down what appeared to be an electronic pen. "I'd like a progress report. How far along are you?" Her face was a static wall, a testament to perfect Silence.

"Back at the start." She remained as unmoving as the Councilor. "The saboteurs' attack on the previous lab destroyed the majority of my research." And her little twist in the programming of the prototype implants had taken care of those few that had been liberated from the lab without her consent.

"Nothing can be salvaged?"

"It may be possible," she admitted. "However, in my opinion, it would be more effective to start from the very beginning. There were errors in the earlier prototypes I was unable to pinpoint. If I restart with those errors in mind, I may be able to eradicate them."

"Of course." Nikita's dark eyes were unblinking. Like a snake's. It was an apt comparison, given that Nikita was reputed to possess the deadly ability to infect other minds with mental viruses - an excellent, untraceable way of getting rid of competitors. "When can the Council expect a full update?"

"I'll send one this week, but it will simply be a detailed reiteration of what I've already indicated."

"Understood. I'll wait for that report." Nikita clicked off.

Ashaya found nothing unusual in the Councilor's ready agreement. As the head M-Psy on the team dedicated to the implementation of Protocol I - also known as the Implant Protocol - Ashaya had complete autonomy over research and development.

Their goal was simple: to develop an implant that could be fitted into all Psy brains - but with a focus on infants - in order to create a totally unified society. In other words, a hive mind.

Chapter 6

By the time Talin made it up to her apartment, having no idea how long she'd spent in the Jeep, her eyes were swollen, likely bloodshot. Tasting salt on her lips, she pressed her palm against the scanner beside her door, waited for the lock to disengage, then pushed the door open. The lights came on automatically - she hated being in an enclosed space in the dark. Being outside in the dark didn't scare her. It was the sense of being shut in that got to her - and she didn't need a degree in psychology to figure out why.

Closing the door behind her, she took a step forward. And froze. At first, she couldn't comprehend what it was that she was seeing. Then it hit her in a stomach-churning rush, a kaleidoscope of color and destruction perfumed with the smell of death.

The intruders were gone, that much was obvious. But they had left their mark. She slid down the back of the door to collapse into a sitting position, unable to take her eyes off the message dripping down the opposite wall in a dark red that screamed with the iron-richness of blood.

Stop. Or you're next.

What a stupid message, she thought, childish in its sniggering simplicity. But it worked. The chill of a visceral fear crawled up her body until it closed around her throat, making her want to gag. Still she didn't blink, didn't look away.

How dare they? How dare they!

She didn't care about the intrusion or the mess. Those things meant little to a woman who had never allowed any place to be home. But to do what they had done with the photos of her kids?

The holo-image frames had been crushed into the carpet, but they hadn't stopped there. The hard copies had been shredded, the pieces stuck into the blood creeping down the wall. That desecration she couldn't forgive. It made her want to scream and cry and crawl forward to gather up the broken pieces.