"I know." A childish smile, but the eyes remained those of an old man. "Dorian?"
"Yeah, kiddo?" He took the hand Keenan held out. It was warm, fragile, a precious indication of trust.
The boy fought the wings of sleep to say, "Don't let her hurt my mommy."
"I won't." His heart a knot in his throat, he held that tiny hand as Ashaya stroked Keenan back into an easy sleep. "So what aren't you telling me?" he said when he was certain Keenan was well and truly out for the count. Her fear had been too piercing for this to have been a mere dream.
Ashaya's face was stark with dread when she looked up. "He called her his mother, Dorian."
"You're identical twins and he's not even five."
"He shouldn't know that she's his mother." Ashaya's breath grew choppy. "I've raised him from the day, the hour, he was born. Me, always me."
She might as well have slammed a brick into his chest. He couldn't speak.
"That means she isn't just poking at his mind, Dorian. It means she's talking to him." Her voice rose. "Who knows how long it's been going on? She could've been telling him anything, influencing him - "
Having regained control, he pressed a finger to her lips. "Shh, don't wake him." He saw her struggle to master her panic as he dropped his hand. "I think you've been keeping more secrets." He was furious, but attempting to come across as calm. "But we'll talk about that later. Right now, you need to tell me if we should move Keenan."
"I don't want to be separated from him." Her voice trembled. "But you're right, we can't be together, not until Amara's been... contained. Even if she has a lock on him, she'll come to me first - the farther away he is from me, the safer he'll be."
Dorian had figured as much. "I'll have - "
"Don't tell me where he'll be." A tight order. "I could still be compromised."
"You can leave the Net." She damn well was going to leave it, even if he had to drag her out kicking and screaming. "There's a way."
Her eyes locked into his. "No, there isn't. I need to stay." A resolute answer, but the need in her eyes was a wild, angry thing. "Amara will spin completely out of control if I don't."
His eyes narrowed, but her stubbornness wasn't something they could deal with right then. He spent the next few minutes with Nate and Tammy, making arrangements for Keenan to be taken up to the SnowDancer den, the most logical hiding place. Not only was it almost impossible to find if you didn't already know where it was, but Judd and his brother, Walker, would be able to keep a psychic eye on Keenan. "I'll drive him up - " he began, knowing Ashaya would be safe under Nate's watch. And since the other man was already mated, Dorian's leopard didn't snarl at the idea.
"No," Tammy interrupted. "Sascha needs to go up with Keenan. I've already called her and Lucas - we need to monitor if the Web is elastic enough to cover him at that distance, despite the fact that he's connected directly to you."
"I promised him I'd take care of him." And Dorian kept his promises.
Nate scowled. "He's Pack now. You don't think we have rights over him?"
Man and leopard both calmed at the mention of the solid strength of Pack. "Yeah, you do." He thrust a hand through his hair. "Kid's got a grip on my heart, Nate."
"They have a way of doing that." The other sentinel slapped him on the back. "You'll get over it sometime in the next hundred years or so."
Strangely, that made him feel better. Because there was no way he was letting his mate, and the boy he already considered his own, go.
Lucas and Sascha arrived less than an hour later, and Dorian ran upstairs to fetch Keenan - he'd reawakened on his own twenty minutes earlier, stomach rumbling. It had given Dorian the opportunity to make sure Ashaya ate as well before she headed up to prepare Keenan for the change in location.
"Keep your mind quiet," she was saying now as she zipped up Keenan's insulated jacket. "Don't listen to her."
"I won't." Keenan shifted from foot to foot. "It's getting fuzzy anyway. Her voice."
"That's good. Don't be scared, baby. This is only for a little while."
Keenan threw his arms around Ashaya. "I'm not scared, Mommy. I can feel you inside my head. If I need you, I'll call. I know you'll come."
Ashaya's face was a study in wonder as she hugged her son. "Yes, I will."
Walking over, Dorian picked up the little knapsack she'd packed for Keenan. "We'll keep him safe, Shaya. I give you my word."
She glanced up, a silent trust in her eyes that the leopard accepted as its due. Nodding, she kissed Keenan and rose. "Come on, little man. You're going for a ride."
Instead of following her, Keenan turned and pulled on Dorian's pant leg with a confidence that clearly startled Ashaya. What appeared to startle her even more was that Dorian simply bent down and picked the boy up. "Go on, Shaya. I need to chat with Keenan."
Her forehead wrinkled. "He's - "
Dorian shook his head slightly, gratified when she left the room. "You have to trust me with your mom," he said to the boy in his arms.
"She's mean." A ferocious protectiveness filled that small face. "She wants to hurt my mommy."
"I know. But I'm pretty mean myself." He let Keenan see the lethal edge in his eyes, something most children wouldn't have understood. But Keenan Aleine was no more a child than Dorian had been at his age. "No one will get close to her."
A small nod. "Dorian?"
"Yeah?"
"I want my mommy in our web."
Dorian's heart kicked in his chest. "She will be." It was the one thing he wouldn't compromise on. And if that made him animal in his possessiveness, so be it.
After Keenan left, Ashaya went back upstairs and began to pack her stuff. "I have to move as well. Nate and Tammy's cubs returned tonight, didn't they?"
"Yeah." He'd already made the same decision, but the leopard was proud of her instinctive need to protect the pack's young. "We definitely need to get out of here if Amara's hunting."
Ashaya halted in the act of closing up her bag. "You're angry."
Angry didn't even come close. "Tell me about Amara being Keenan's mother."
"I don't know if I want to with you growling at me."
His hands clenched. "Sugar, I'm this close to tearing off your clothes and teaching you exactly how badly I take you keeping secrets from me. Your choice. Talk or get naked."
Ashaya felt her throat dry up. "You won't hurt me."
"No. But I bet I can make you whimper."
Her thighs pressed together and she knew he was right. Part of her, the part that had been fascinated with Dorian since the moment she first heard his voice, was tempted to taunt him until he made good on his promise. However, right now she needed to keep her wits about her. "Amara is Keenan's biological mother. Both the level of his intelligence and his lack of a fail-safe switch come from her. But I'm his mother in every way that counts."
"I'm not arguing." His tone had smoothed out a little, but the growl was still there, under the surface. "What I don't get is - you were both in the Council substructure. How could anyone not know which one of you was pregnant?"
"We're so identical that people - and even Psy are prone to this failing - often mixed us up. Not only that, but we worked in the same lab, on the same projects. We made the decision early, and it wasn't hard to imitate one another once the pregnancy began showing. Those months, I allowed Amara to shadow my mind and vice versa." It had been worth every painful second. "We did get lucky once - when they tied my tubes. Since physical injury wasn't the point, the medics used noninvasive keyhole surgery." If they had opened Ashaya up, there was a good chance her body would've given her away.
Dorian grabbed the bag as she closed the last flap. "Come on - you can tell me the rest on the way." He headed downstairs and out to the car.
Nate and Tammy watched them drive off, the senior sentinel standing with his mate in the circle of his arms. I want that, Dorian thought. A family. His mate safe with him. His child sleeping within hearing distance.
But at this precise second, he was well beyond annoyed with said mate. "What was the trigger for the swap?" he said as he pulled out onto the main road.
"Don't. Growl. At. Me."
He hadn't even realized he was making the angry sound. "Talk."
Her back stiffened but she answered, speaking so fast he could barely separate out the words. "Amara used her own eggs and donor sperm to create an embryo, which she then infected with a disease. She intended to kill the fetus when it was born and dissect sections of its brain to study the progress of that infection."
The horror of it stunned Dorian. It took him several minutes to fight past the clawing protectiveness of the cat. "She intended to kill her own child?" Kill Keenan.
"I told you," Ashaya said, voice trembling with a mix of anger and anguish, "Amara doesn't really see people as people. The only person she's ever seen as human is me - and until Keenan, I was able to keep her from crossing the line into murder."
He tried to wrap his mind around the sheer weight of that responsibility and couldn't. How the hell had Ashaya survived? "Can't have been easy."
"Actually, it was," she said to his surprise. "She's a sociopath, but she has no desire to kill for the sake of it. She is, in fact, the perfect scientist in her capacity to be completely impartial, and science is her life. All I had to do was keep an eye out to make sure she was being given work that challenged her." A shaky breath. "But this time, the science was going to lead to death. I knew I'd kill her before I allowed her to harm the baby. Except..."
