Suddenly, there was an arm around her shoulders, leading her toward a door, almost carrying her up a flight of steps and out onto a tiny balcony hardly big enough for two people. The piercing brightness of daylight stabbed into her irises with the ferocity of a thousand sharp knives.

"That was one hell of a surprise." He pressed her face to his chest, rubbing her back with a firm hand.

She should have pulled away, but she didn't. She knew herself, knew her weaknesses, knew that at this moment, she was incapable of standing without assistance. She also knew that she liked Dorian's heat around her. "It had to be done." For her people, for her son... and, despite everything, for Amara.

Dorian pulled out his cell phone with his free hand. "Nothing. They must've done something to the cell transmitters."

"I apologize - I knew the backlash would be severe, but I didn't think they'd be able to move so fast." Breaking away from him, she leaned back, her hands closing around the cold iron of the railing. Over his shoulder, she could see only a thick wall of green foliage. To her left was a closed door that led down into a basement she didn't yet have the strength to reenter - it had taken all her willpower the first time around. "They shut down power?"

He nodded.

"Hospitals," she began.

"Generators," he told her. "I'm guessing most of the power and comm lines are going to be back up in the next few minutes anyway - Psy businesses would lose too much revenue otherwise, and without their support, the Council falls."

She nodded. "Do you think my broadcast got through to any appreciable extent?"

His nod was immediate. "We had backup satellites ready to go."

"Oh?"

"We like to be prepared." Raising his hand, he traced the curve of her cheekbone.

She stood absolutely motionless. Though she had trained herself to appear exactly like her brethren, she wasn't averse to touch. And out here, no one would punish her for taking strength from this most simple of human contact. What held her frozen was that she didn't know the rules of touch in changeling society. In her time with them so far, she'd seen them touch easily... but only each other.

Except Dorian's touch was hot against her, as if every stroke left a permanent imprint.

"Sascha and Faith say Psy like to mix it up genetically," he commented, his fingers sliding down and off.

She didn't say anything, waiting, expectant.

"I can see why." He leaned against the railing opposite her, his arms folded. "So what's next for the infamous Ashaya Aleine?"

She wanted to move but there was nowhere to go. A single step and they would touch again. She could still feel the heat of his skin against hers, an impossibility that was somehow real. "The first part of my plan is complete." What a joke. She had no plan beyond getting both herself and Keenan out from under twenty-four-hour Council surveillance.

All it would've taken was one slipup, and she'd never have seen her son again. The ironic thing was that by holding him hostage, the Council had unknowingly protected him from another danger. However, that protection had come at a cost. They'd kept her baby like a rat in a cage, until she could see his very soul beginning to shrivel.

Now, he was free... and vulnerable to the pitiless menace that had stalked him his entire life.

"Hopefully," she said, trying not to crumble under the wrenching force of the need to hold her son, "I'm now too famous to die a quiet death." More importantly, too famous for Keenan to be made a target without severe political repercussions.

"Phase two?"

She started to make something up, but knew it would be a waste. He'd see right through it. "I don't know." Logic, sense, reason, it all told her to run, to draw the danger away from Keenan, but rational thought collided with raw maternal need and came away the loser. She couldn't leave him behind.

"What about Keenan?" Dorian asked, almost as if he'd read her mind. "You planning on seeing him anytime soon?"

Her palms tingled with the memory of her son's soft skin, his fragile bones. He was so small, and so easily hurt. But this cat, there was such strength in him, such purpose - he'd stand by Keenan if she fell. She met those eyes of icy blue. "He's safe as long as the Council thinks I have no interest in him." Not a lie, but not the whole truth either. She knew this was the right choice, the only choice while she tried to find an answer that wouldn't leave her with her twin's blood on her hands. But her heart still twisted - Keenan would think she'd lied, that she'd abandoned him.

Too much emotion, she thought. Her Silent shields, crucial protections against Amara, were beginning to erode. But she couldn't rebuild her buffers. Not with Dorian so close, the wild fury of his emotions evident in every breath.

"That's your justification for ignoring him?" His eyes had gone flat, no hint remaining of the man who'd held her with gentle protectiveness. "But then again, I suppose a child is simply a collection of genes to you, not a flesh-and-blood creature of spirit and soul. Do you even know anything about him? Do you care that he's probably waiting for his mom to come hold him and tell him everything's gonna be okay?"

She let the whip of his words draw blood, but stood firm. "If I go to him, I'll put him in harm's way." For Keenan, Amara was the true nightmare. But she couldn't tell Dorian that. Because then he'd want to know why. And to share that deadly secret, she'd have to trust him more than she'd trusted anyone her entire life.

I found you!

Ashaya tried to slam the mental door shut but it stuck. Too late. It was too late.

Dorian snorted, shattering her focus and making her fingers slip off the doorway. "You shook off excess baggage." He straightened. "Well, that's just too bad, Ms. Aleine. You're going to be a mother to your son. That kid deserves for you to fucking give a damn."

"No," she began to say, shoving back against Amara's insidious presence even as the primal energy of the changeling in front of her threatened to overwhelm her defenses. "I can't - "

"I don't care what you can or can't do." Dorian crowded her against the railing, his hands on either side of her. Pure heat. Pure muscle.

Trapping her.

Caging her.

Claustrophobia rose. And the door shoved wide open.

Oh, Ashaya, you've been very, very, bad.

Chapter 16

Kaleb watched a replay of the Aleine broadcast and knew that Protocol I was dead. There was no way for the Council to recover from this. Despite her statement about others being able to continue her work, Ashaya had been the linchpin of the entire operation, her expertise unique, her focus unparalleled.

Protocol I was finished. But Omega... that was a discussion that couldn't wait.

Not bothering to unfold the sleeves of his shirt, he walked out of his study and through to the balcony behind his home on the outskirts of Moscow. Night lay thick across this part of the world but he didn't turn on any of the external lights. Instead, he leaned against the outside wall and opened his mind to the dark skies of the PsyNet.

There was nothing else like it - an endless field of black, littered with the pure white of stars representing the minds of each and every Psy in the world, but for the recent renegades. And the Forgotten, of course. But those few lost ones took nothing away from the PsyNet. It was the largest mental construct in the world, the biggest information archive. Its pathways flowed with more data per second than even the most efficient computer highway.

However, today, Kaleb had no interest in mining the PsyNet for data - except for the one crucial piece of information that he searched for constantly, day and night, awake or asleep. That task hummed in the back of his head as usual, but his conscious mind was focused on reaching the dark core of the Net, home to the psychic vault of the Council chambers.

He was the first to arrive, followed by Shoshanna Scott, then Nikita Duncan. Ming LeBon and Anthony Kyriakus came together but from different directions. Henry Scott appeared an instant later. Tatiana Rika-Smythe was the last entry. The door to the vault slammed shut and the seven minds within it flared bright.

Nikita started the discussion. "I initiated emergency procedures since I was closest to the focal point. It worked as projected - we always knew there would be a high chance of failure in any worldwide shutdown. Aleine's message got through."

Tatiana spoke as soon as Nikita finished. "Then she's sunk the Implant Protocol."

"Isn't that a fatalistic approach?" Shoshanna queried. "We still have the relevant data - it was backed up in networks she couldn't access."

"Tatiana isn't talking about the technical aspects." Anthony's controlled mental voice. He was the newest member of the Council, but he'd ruled the influential NightStar clan for decades, was powerful enough that he'd defied the Council with impunity before his ascension. So when he spoke, everyone listened. Even Shoshanna.

Interesting.

"It's the political aspect," Anthony continued. "By associating Protocol I with Omega, and muddying the waters of what we have and have not told our allies, she's manufactured a political schism between the Council and the most powerful of those who support us."

"I don't agree," Shoshanna said. "We may not have stated it definitively, but our supporters have to know they would've been accorded preferential treatment under the Protocol."

"Yes," Anthony agreed. "But what use is having power over the masses if you have none over your own biology? Aleine has made it appear as if we were making fools of our allies, promising them supremacy, while planning to neuter them."

Kaleb made his move. "As to looking the fool, Anthony is correct - I'd like an explanation as to why there was nothing about Omega in the data files I was given at my ascension." He wondered if Anthony had known about the project. Likely. The NightStar clan was famous for the number of F-Psy in its gene pool. And foreseers saw many things when they looked into the future. Perhaps they had seen a tomorrow without progeny.