“I’ll need to realign my mind before I can make contact,” he said, banking on these changelings not being close enough to a Psy to know his words meant absolutely nothing. “The insertion of the implant disoriented my pathway to the PsyNet.”
Remi frowned but nodded. “It’ll be at least a day, maybe two before you can get out if your people can’t get in. Rain’s caused landslides lower down the mountain, blocked most of the roads, and last forecast we caught before the systems went down say this weather isn’t going to let up anytime soon.”
There was a massive boom just then, the thunder loud enough that both changelings visibly reacted, Finn with a grimace and Remi by going preternaturally still. Acute hearing, Aden realized, had to be a disadvantage in these circumstances.
“I have technical training,” he said. “I might be able to jerry-rig a transmitter.”
“You’re welcome to try.” Remi folded his arms. “But the conduit lower down the mountain has most likely been fried by lightning and my techs tell me the interference caused by the combination of the weather and our location makes it unlikely any lower-strength signal will get out.”
Aden wasn’t certain that was a drawback—because if this pack was friendly, then he and Zaira had a safe haven in which to recover from their physical and psychic wounds. Their psychic blindness could well be seen as an invitation for further violence in the outside world.
Aden, in particular, couldn’t afford to have his lack exposed. It would pin a target on the entire squad’s back if their leader was shown to be “human” in his vulnerability. Arrows survived not just because they were dangerous but because people saw them as dangerous. Else they were simply threats who needed to be put down.
As PsyMed had once wanted to put down Zaira.
Allowing himself to look toward her for the first time, he made certain to keep his tone neutral as he said, “I heard you note Zaira was stable.”
“She is, but she’ll only be out of the woods once she wakes up.” Finn shifted to give Aden an unobstructed view of the other bed.
Zaira’s body lay motionless in a way it never was in life. The rebellious, brilliant fire in her whispered its continued existence in the way she fought, so quick and smart, in the way she spoke with such rapid-fire intelligence, in the way she protected those who were her own with icy fierceness.
Aden made himself look away before he betrayed the depth of his concern for her.
“You aren’t fully Silent, Aden. You never have been.”
He’d thought it was his contact with Vasic and Ivy’s bond that had changed him, but maybe Zaira was right about his Silence. He cared, had always done so for the people he saw as his own. And Zaira . . . she’d never been just another Arrow in his squad. Always, he’d been drawn to the fire in her, that untamed wildness that was so unlike his own controlled nature.
Aden had been taught discipline from the cradle, been taught to never draw attention or be anything but unremarkable in the eyes of the world. Zaira was like the storm outside in comparison. She’d become the perfect Arrow, but even that, she’d done on her own terms. Since the day they met she’d been disagreeing with him about everything under the sun, never watching her words, never offering him anything but the searing truth and her absolute and unflinching loyalty.
The room suddenly flashed with a shocking brilliance of purple-white light.
“Given your unworried demeanor,” Aden said when neither Remi nor Finn made a comment on the closeness of the strike, “I assume this building is protected from lightning strikes?”
A teeth-baring grin that was very feline. “Careful, Arrow, or I might think you were insulting my ability to look after my pack.”
“No insult intended.” Aden fought his compulsion to hold the alpha’s gaze in a primal power struggle, the instinct one he’d learned to rein in over the years. Instead, he returned his attention to Finn. “Zaira’s condition?”
“She has less severe bruising at the implant site, but her internal injuries were significant.” At Aden’s request, the healer listed those injuries one by one. “I made damn sure I fixed each and every tiny shredded piece—that I can promise you.”
Aden believed him. There was a strong sense of competency about the other man, added to which, he’d picked up on injuries even Aden might have missed. Finn wasn’t just a doctor and a healer, he was a very good one.
Taking Aden’s pulse again after asking him to stand beside the bed, Finn said, “If she doesn’t regain consciousness, though, there’s nothing else I can do at this point except try the drugs I have. None are calibrated to Psy physiology.”