Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121389 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 607(@200wpm)___ 486(@250wpm)___ 405(@300wpm)
No, said the most stable part of her. We need this brain structure to do what we do. His brain is not designed to create a web, and we can’t manifest those pathways into existence, can’t make him more powerful. We will be limited by his limits.
She understood.
In so doing, she sacrificed first her upper limbs, then her lower extremities, then her stomach and digestive organs, and more, until all that was left was her brain, her heart to pump the blood around her system, and her lungs and autonomic system. She could breathe, her heart beat, and her brain was alive, but she’d never walk again.
The muscles and cells in the shut-down parts of her body were already atrophying and dying under the strength of the energy draw. There would be no coming back from that. But not even such drastic measures would’ve worked had she not hoarded so much power.
“Full … medical … emergency,” she gasped to this child of hers.
“I’ve alerted the team,” he said. “They’ll be here in thirty seconds. Just hold on, sir.” He turned her over onto her side so she wouldn’t choke on her own blood. A smart decision; she would utilize him often in the times to come.
“Twenty seconds! Sir!” His voice was fuzzy, difficult to hear. “Sir!”
No more extraneous energy left. Heart or lungs? Partial shutdown of both, so that enough remained for oxygen to get to her brain. If her brain was starved of oxygen, it would cause catastrophic damage.
“Just ten more seconds, sir! They’re coming!”
Her heart stopped, her lungs following.
Her brain began final shutdown procedures.
Chapter 51
Mercy, you’re the closest. Go.
—Lucas to Mercy
SHE WAS MADE of stars again, his Lei. His mate. And she stood in the center of his web, this web that had collected so many minds. He didn’t want her to see him, the bloated spider at the core, but she took his hand, and she led him to the very nucleus of the nightmare.
“Look, Ivan,” she said, and pointed.
He didn’t want to see, didn’t want to look. But she leaned up to press her lips to his cheek and whispered, “Please, for me.”
There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her. So he looked.
No spider hunched below, but the space wasn’t empty. At the center of the network was … “It’s a heart.” A huge silver heart that burned with flame-kissed silver fire and pumped in time with Ivan’s heartbeat.
He opened his eyes to find Soleil’s open, too, her cat looking at him through irises tawny gold and wild. Content in a way he’d never before been, he just looked back at her, the two of them face-to-face on their bed.
The security specialist part of his brain activated. “How are we in bed? We were outside.”
Even as Soleil’s gaze flared, he twisted to get out of bed … and groaned, his entire body feeling as if he’d been stomped on by a horse. An angry one. That was when he remembered all the nutrients he’d taken to artificially boost his psychic strength.
He should feel worse. It was a miracle he was awake and functional.
No, not a miracle, he realized looking back at Soleil. He wasn’t in worse shape because his mate had taken some of the backlash. She sat up slowly, sleep lines on one cheek and a wince in her expression. “Ouch,” she said, “everything aches. And I need to go be unladylike right now.”
She was in the sanitary facility part of the aerie before his brain computed what she’d meant. That alerted him to the realization he, too, needed to use those facilities. But it took him so long to get his creaky body upright that Soleil was out by then. Deciding that if they were under threat, those threats would’ve had plenty of time to stroll in while he was moving about as fast as a hundred-year-old tortoise, he went in to do what needed to be done.
Afterward, he washed his hands, then threw cold water on his face. He was moving a little better and feeling more awake by the time he wiped off the wet and walked back out. Soleil was standing in front of the mirror that hung on one wall of their bedroom, fixing her hair with slow hands. As he watched her, he did a telepathic scan.
That he hadn’t done that straight off the bat told him exactly how bad a hit the two of them had taken. The first mind he touched was changeling and opaque to him … except he identified it at once as belonging to Lucas Hunter. Because Soleil knew her alpha, the knowledge shared with him through their bond.
The next mind was Psy and “felt” like Arwen’s, but it wasn’t Arwen. After that, he found Grandmother, the resonance of her permanently embedded in his brain. That mind was followed by … Arwen’s. Yes, that was definitely his cousin. And neither his cousin nor his grand mother was far away. In point of fact, he thought they were right below the aerie.