That’s when she noticed that Naya’s attention was riveted on the older cub.
She managed to contain her groan until the child who’d come over for a drink ran back to join his playmates. “Naya’s going to start jumping off high perches soon, isn’t she?”
Ashaya patted her hand. “She’ll survive. Keenan’s fine and he’s not a cat. In the interests of transparency, he did fracture his arm the first time his leopard friends tried to teach him the tree road, but it was a one-off.”
“That’s not very reassuring,” Sascha said darkly.
Laughing with a warmth that belied the years she’d spent trapped in chill Silence, the other woman pushed up the sleeves of her sweatshirt, the temperature in the forest relatively cool despite how close they were to summer. “I’m looking forward to seeing what tricks a Psy-Changeling child will come up with.”
A Psy-Changeling child.
Yes, Naya was that. Unique . . . and hunted because of it.
Chapter 2
HAVING BEEN CAUGHT in a sudden traffic jam caused by a delivery truck that had spilled its load across the road, Lucas and Clay were still ten minutes out from reaching the piers. It was frustrating when the point of taking the car had been to speed things up, but Jon and his friends had promised to stay exactly where they were until the two of them arrived.
“Can you talk to Teijan?” Lucas asked as he picked up the sharp scent of brine, the water close now. “Brief the Rats to keep their ear to the ground for any mentions of Naya outside DarkRiver and SnowDancer. Even things that seem benign.”
The Rats, only four of whom were actually changeling—three adults and one child—chose to live in the disused subway tunnels beneath San Francisco, but they had the ability to blend into the woodwork in every part of the city. It made them a highly effective spy network—and while that network didn’t work for DarkRiver, the pack had an agreement with the Rats that meant Teijan would pass on any important information.
In return for that loyalty, DarkRiver permitted the far less powerful pack to live in its territory without fear when, as the dominant predators in the region, DarkRiver would’ve been justified in forcing the Rats out. With brutal violence, if need be. A harsh law, but it kept peace between the predators.
As it was, Teijan and his Rats had pledged loyalty to DarkRiver, and the intelligence that flowed to DarkRiver from the smaller group was invaluable. If any of that intel resulted in business deals, DarkRiver passed on a percentage of the income. Over time, the businesslike arrangement had changed into something that wasn’t an alliance . . . but was perhaps as close to it as could happen between two groups with such a wide power differential.
Instead of cowering in their tunnels, the Rats had fought for the city when San Francisco was attacked.
Lucas would never forget that.
“Consider it done.” Clay slowed the car to permit a pedestrian who’d miscalculated the light change to cross safely onto the sidewalk. “You want to feel out some of your Trinity contacts, too? Ask them to keep an ear open?”
Lucas scowled, his arm braced on the window frame and his eyes taking in the vibrant life of San Francisco. “I’ll think about it, but right now, I only truly trust a tiny minority of those who’ve signed the accord.” All were people he’d known and trusted prior to the formation of the ambitious cooperation agreement.
Lucas wanted the Trinity Accord to succeed, probably more than any other individual in the world aside from Sascha, but at this point, it was far too new and untested. “Trinity has two major issues,” he said to Clay. “The first is how to confirm the sincerity of those who sign it and want to be part of any Trinity-wide discussions. Consortium plants as well as others who have their own reasons to want the accord to fail are a certainty.”
Peace wasn’t good for everyone, including those who manufactured weapons and made their money off the misery of others. Post-Trinity, people had stopped blowing one another up, and, inside the Net, the civil war was apparently at a truce that was holding. The pro-Silence faction hadn’t disappeared, but according to those who understood the complex political situation in the Net, the rise of the empaths had shaken it to its core.
Designation E had been crushed under Silence, their ability to sense emotions and heal wounds of the heart and the mind considered unnecessary in a race that had outlawed emotion and that punished any deviation from the status quo with vicious psychic brainwipes. Yet this past winter, the empaths had categorically proven that they were very much necessary.
Without the Es, the PsyNet would’ve collapsed—would still collapse should they be taken out of the equation.
And without the biofeedback provided by the PsyNet, those of the Psy race would die horrifically painful deaths in a matter of seconds.
It left the most well-known pro-Silence groups in a quandary: How could they re-create a society without emotion when a vast majority of the linchpin members of that society were empaths, emotion their lifeblood? As a result, they’d stopped their vocal protests while they debated the issue; even the unstable fringe elements had halted their spate of bombings and shootings, though no one could predict how long that would last.
Of course, the Trinity Accord wasn’t behind either of those outcomes, but it was currently the focus of the world’s attention. Including that of the malcontents from all three races—everyone was waiting to see what came next, whether Trinity would become a powerhouse or fall flat.