"Ashaya." A warning.

"No," she said, raising her voice to be heard above the roaring silence of his anger. "I'm Psy and you swore to destroy the Psy. This... connection we have, it's not something you were ready for, not something you're comfortable with - "

"I'm more than fucking comfortable with you." The words were bullets. "You don't get to walk away from this using some self-serving psychological bullshit."

"I don't want to walk away!" He was inside her, this cat. And his hurt pulsed in her own heart. "I just want you to face up to the truth."

He snarled at her, a sound that raised every hair on her body. "What the fuck do you want me to say, Shaya? That I never expected to fall for a Psy? That it kills a part of me that keeping you safe is now more important to me than destroying the Council? That the guilt of the pleasure you give me is a dead weight in my chest? Is that what you want?" A vicious question. "There, I've said it. But you know what?" He backed her to the window, closing his hand around the side of her neck. "It doesn't matter shit. The leopard recognizes you, knows you were meant to be mine."

"What about the man?" she asked, refusing to let him silence her with the sheer force of his anger. "What does the man think?"

Chapter 40

"The man wishes this was easy." His finger rubbed at the ragged beat of her pulse. "He wishes you were changeling or human so he wouldn't have to question his need to hate the Psy, so he wouldn't have to look into his sister's accusing face every time he closes his eyes, so he damn well wouldn't have to feel a traitor to his own vows."

Pain, such pain tearing through her. "I'm sorry."

"No, Shaya, don't be sorry. Because even while the man is wishing that, he knows that he wouldn't trade you in for anything... even if that trade would bring his sister back from the grave." The incredible depth of his guilt was a shadow that turned the blue of his eyes to midnight. "I'll stand watch outside." He left her without another word.

Ashaya stared at the closed door, her heart filled with a turbulence of emotion she was far too inexperienced to fully comprehend. All she knew was that Dorian was hurting. Hurting so badly that it threatened to break his heart. She raised a hand, rubbing it unconsciously over her own chest. She was an M-Psy - she had no capacity to heal emotional hurts. She didn't even know how to begin.

The only thing she could do for Dorian, the only gift she could give him, was to enable his body to shift. That's what she would work on, she thought, clinging to the familiar, the easily understood. It was a good solution, a solution that utilized her skills... and yet she knew it was wrong. She couldn't sit here, willfully ignoring the truth - she had shoved Dorian to the edge of the abyss.

The only question was, was she ready to walk over the edge with him?

Ashaya had never considered herself a coward - she'd survived the Council with her mind intact, had put her life on the line to help others escape certain death. But tonight, this choice, it was the hardest of her life. She knew that if she went after Dorian, if she accepted his pain as her own, it would be an irrevocable step.

Keenan, she thought, her mother's heart clenching - he was already at home with these cats. This choice would take nothing away from him. But Amara... she didn't know what would happen to Amara. Her twin had been with her since birth, since before birth, their minds linked, their souls connected. A single tear streaked down her face as she cried for the loss of a relationship that had never stood a chance, but that held her prisoner.

Then she stood, wiped away the tear... and walked outside.

Dorian was standing with his back to the hidden wall of glass, his eyes focused on the shadowy bulk of the trees that faced his home. He didn't say anything when she opened the door and came out, as unmoving and unwelcoming as stone. But when she made a small movement toward him, he lifted his arm and dragged her close. "Don't cry." It was an order couched in a voice that still trembled with anger. But beneath the anger was a powerful, blinding emotion that threatened to wrench her from everything she'd ever known and throw her into the spinning darkness.

Burying her face in his chest, she wrapped her arms around him. "Then don't hurt." She felt something tug at her soul, inciting an odd kind of breathlessness.

Dorian went very quiet around her.

She fought the pull, knowing it would tear her from Amara. And while Amara was her jailer, Ashaya was also her keeper. Without Ashaya, Amara would kill, would murder, would become the very monster Ashaya had spent her life trying to prevent her from becoming. "I was born first," she whispered. "She's my responsibility."

Dorian's body stiffened for a moment. Then he shifted to drop a kiss on top of her head. "So was I."

"Will you tell me about her?"

He pulled her tighter against his warmth. "She was laughter," he said, a painful roughness in his tone. "Nothing seemed to make her sad. The only time I ever saw Kylie cry as a child was after someone taunted me for not being able to shift." His voice caught. "She was so mad. She said it didn't matter to her, that I was the brother she would've chosen if she'd been given the choice. God, she was a fighter."

Unbidden, an image formed in Ashaya's head, of a girl with Dorian's charm and mischief in her eyes. "Did she look like you?"

"Same hair, same eyes. But her smile - a knockout. She could talk anyone into anything." A husky laugh. "Even when she pissed me off, she could make me smile. She'd tell me stupid 'knock, knock' jokes until I broke. Then she'd hug me, call me her favorite brother, and smile because she knew she was forgiven."

Squeezing her eyes shut, Ashaya swallowed the knot in her throat. "She was precious to you."

"A piece of my heart died with her. I don't know if it will ever grow back."

"That's okay," she managed to whisper. "That piece was hers to take."

"I miss her." He buried his face in the curve of her neck as she rose on tiptoe to wrap her arms around him. "I miss her calling me up to pick her up from some club at one in the morning. I miss her telling me those stupid jokes. I miss her laugh. I miss her every damn minute of every day!" His body shuddered and damp heat bloomed against her neck.

Blinded by her own tears, she held this powerful leopard, this sentinel.

She held him as he cried... as he stole the last remaining pieces of her own heart.

Forty-five minutes later, Dorian watched dawn begin its stealthy creep across the sky and felt an odd kind of peace take hold in his heart. Perhaps it would last only a moment, perhaps longer. What mattered was that he knew the peace was a gift from the woman who moved so softly inside his home while he stood watch outside.

He'd tried to tell her to go back to sleep, but she'd shaken her head. Twice now, she'd come to tell him she could feel Amara getting closer. Once she'd worried that her twin was lost in the dark, a catch in her voice. When he heard her footsteps getting closer again, he expected another update.

But she exited with a cup of coffee in hand. "Here."

"Thanks." He looked intently at her, knowing he'd have to be careful with his mate - force of habit might make her hide what he needed to see. As he'd expected, her face bore no visible remnants of her sleepless night or the words spoken between them... until he looked into her eyes.

Those eyes, so fucking beautiful. Like one of the lakes up in the Sierra, before the snows. Silver-blue and so clear you could see the detail of every reflected leaf. "We'll do everything we can to take her alive."

A coolly Psy nod, but her hands had curled into fists.

"Lucas has her trail." His alpha had called ten minutes ago to confirm the sighting. "I asked him to let her reach us."

Her breath came out in a soft hush of sound. "Thank you."

"Luc and Dezi are hanging back. They don't want to chance being picked up by a telepathic scan."

"That's smart, but" - she shook her head - "I think she's so focused on me at this point, she's blind to anything else."

"Yeah, that's what Luc said." He took a sip of his coffee, letting his gaze linger on her. She was beautiful in the muted hues between dark and dawn, would be glorious when the sun's rays hit. "Apparently, she's not making even an amateurish attempt to hide her trail. From what he saw while tracking her, it looks like she lost her way a couple of times, but then that internal compass between the two of you seems to have put her back on the right path."

"I'm glad she's not lost." She took a hesitant step toward him. Exultation racing through his bloodstream, he shifted his coffee to his left hand and raised his right arm in welcome. It was another small surrender when she tucked her body against him.

But it wasn't enough. Neither was the physical surrender she'd given him in bed. His beast growled, wanting more, wanting everything.

I was born first. She's my responsibility.

The hell of it was that he understood. The leopard wasn't so civilized. "Can you feel this thing between us?"

A quiet nod. "What is it?"

"You know."

"I can't belong to you," she whispered. "I can't cut Amara free. Without me... she will become the creature Faith foresaw."

"You already belong to me." He wasn't human, wasn't Psy. And he wasn't particularly worried about the niceties of acceptable behavior. "At some point, the leopard is going to take over and I'll start hunting you."

Her hand clenched on his chest. "I'm a psychic being. I can block you for as long as it takes."

That was the real problem. The mating bond wasn't an automatic thing. For it to come into full effect, both halves of the pair had to accept it. That acceptance could happen a thousand different ways, but he knew that with Sascha and Lucas, it had required a conscious choice on Sascha's part. She'd had to decide to cut the life-giving PsyNet link and drop into Lucas's arms.