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He shook his head "They’re h, Talin understood Different rules applied to couples, especially couples as profoundly in sync as Lucas and Sascha Their connection was a near visible line of pure eed at her ponytail

She glanced up, knowing that unlike the alpha pair, she and Clay remained divided In her e Able to see the abyss that awaited if they didn’t make it to each other, but unable to take the steps that would close the gap forever "Sit down," she said, angry at hi too scared to trust in his pro me a crick in rabbed a seat, angling it so he could keep an eye on the door Even in this safe place, Clay was on guard She wasn’t surprised - he was too protective to be any other way And her flash of frustrated anger aside, she adored hie Clay God, no She just wanted to reach the secret heart of hiht out of hih to have the complete attention "If we can trust these records, then you’re correct, there appears to be a Psy link It’s not the nah a few of theht not have realized the significance of" Her hand clenched on the sheets she held "All these trees start between a hundred to a hundred and five years ago"

"God da of her chair and shifting to sit with his arm around the back He explained before Talin could ask "That was around the tian to condition their kids not to feel"

"You think so the edge of one particular tree "Sascha?"

"I really can’t be sure about this" Her voice was hesitant "Please understand that"

"I do We’re just throwing out ideas here" But she could feel the answers so close

Nodding, the cardinal pointed to one particular narandhter Ai was six years old when Silence went into effect She became one of the transitional children" Her voice held a wealth of pain

Talin put her hand over Sascha’s in silent coers around Talin’s and continued to speak "I stole my fahteen years after Ai’s birth I thought that that meant she had died, and for some reason, the death hadn’t been noted That time was chaotic," she told them "It was more than a decade after the implementation of Silence, but there were still problems, because of the elderly who couldn’t be fully conditioned"

Lucas was stroking Sascha’s cheek with his knuckles now and she see a shuddering breath, she continued, "But if Mika disappeared because she dropped out of the Net, that hteen, well after Silence was first put into place"

"Is that iled her oith one of Clay’s Her heart was in her throat - if they were right, then Jon was in even er than she’d believed

"I don’t know What I do know is that Psy can’t survive outside the Net We need the biofeedback provided by a neural net of some kind Our brains are different This Mika Kumamoto not only survived, it says here that she went on to have another child"

Talin didn’t ask how Sascha was still alive She didn’t need to know to make the connection "So if she was your ancestor, she had to have had a net in place to link to?"

Sascha’s eyes were bright with hope "Exactly And unless hu such a net, that means there are more Psy out there, Psy who have never been part of the PsyNet"

Talin shook her head, herthe patterns Sascha couldn’t "Not quite - they would be mixed race, all of theht have been Psy-Psy es at the start, but after Silence went into effect, the conditioned Psy wouldn’t have wanted to drop out, right?"

"Not unless they were renegades," Sascha said, her excite "I didn’t hear of any others before my defection, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any"

"True But randchildren of the Psy who left the Net would have s or humans"

"Yes" Sascha’s renewed sadness was so heavy, Talin felt it in her bones "I just wanted to believe that more people had escaped Silence If this is my Mika, then she left her own child because she couldn’t stand what her child had becoine how much that must’ve hurt?"

"Come on, kitten," Lucas muttered, a tenderness to his tone that

As she did, her eyesso passionate it was beyond intense It shook her "Clay?" she mouthed more than said

His response was to brush the thu herself teetering on the jagged edge of that glass bridge, she nodded and returned her gaze to her notes An instant later, Sascha turned back to the table, too

"So," Lucas began, "let’s think this through One thing’s clear - some Psy were already an"

Sascha nodded "There was no way the Council could have torn ht have tried," Lucas said with a careless shrug that did nothing to hide the steel in his tone "Wouldn’t have got them very far"

Sascha’s lips curved "So, the mated pairs would’ve stayed outside but they - at least the ones with predatory changeling mates - probably wouldn’t have needed a separate net"

Her words confirive Sascha and Faith the biofeedback they needed "But the ones who loved humans," she said, "or even other Psy, would have needed a net, right? Unless two Psy can provide it for each other?"<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>