Visions of Heat

link, much less entered the changeling world.

Vaughn's face underwent a subtle shift. 'Do you see this?' He lifted his right arm and she saw the tattoo on his biceps for the first time. Three jagged slashing lines, they were reminiscent of the markings on Lucas's face. 'I'm a sentinel. My loyalty is to Sascha and Lucas. And you might yet be a threat.'

She wondered why that caused an odd sensation in her chest. 'You really would kill me if necessary.'

'Yes.' Those cat eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. 'So play nice.'

'I don't know how to play.' She couldn't ever remember doing such a thing. 'I've been working since I could form any kind of understandable sentence.'

CHAPTER 6

Vaughn's beast scratched at the walls of his mind, wanting a closer sniff of Faith, as she walked past him and into the cabin. He leashed the cat this time. Faith was hanging on by the thinnest of threads. He had no desire to push her over the edge and snap that thread completely.

Because the truth was, he wasn't certain he could kill her without hesitation. And that made him wary. Psy weren't all gentle and empathic like Sascha. Some of them were coldblooded killers. DarkRiver knew that too well —they'd lost a young female named Kylie to a Psy serial killer less than a year ago and their blood allies, the SnowDancer wolves, had almost lost a female of their own.

Brenna, the SnowDancer who'd been kidnapped and tortured, remained deeply damaged despite everything Sascha and the healers had done to help her. Vaughn could guess why—as one of the hunters who had tracked down and executed the killer, he'd seen the face of the evil that had touched her, knew exactly what kind of atrocities the Psy were capable of committing.

Faith could turn out to be nothing like she seemed. Until they knew for sure, Vaughn had to distrust his reactions around her. While it was true that Psy generally had difficulty manipulating changeling minds, Sascha was proof that nothing was impossible. And notwithstanding the training he'd received from his alpha's mate, he wasn't Psy, while Faith was a cardinal.

Following his quarry into the house, he watched her and Sascha meet in the middle of the living room. His hand rose to rub over the tattoo on his arm—his loyalty to DarkRiver stemmed from an act of the most cruel betrayal and was set in stone.

It was the leopards who'd come to his aid at a time when he'd lost everyone and everything that mattered. And it was Lucas who'd extended the hand of friendship that had brought him back from the savage edge of an all- consuming rage. He'd lay his life down for his alpha and until this moment, nothing and no one had ever threatened to shift the intensity of that focus. That Faith was doing so after only a few hours made him more than suspicious of the reality of his response.

Faith fell asleep seconds after her head hit the pillow, body and mind both worn out. But that didn't stop the visions. Nothing ever stopped them when they were determined to find her.

Darkness brushed her consciousness. Her heartbeat accelerated. She recognized this darkness. It wasn't friendly, wasn't something she wanted to see. But it wanted her to watch. There was a twisted pleasure in it, pleasure she understood because it wasn't her own but generated by the darkness. During these visions, she was the darkness and if she'd felt fear, that fact would've terrified her. But of course she wasn't scared—she was a product of Silence.

It wasn't crushing yet, the darkness. It felt... satisfied. Its needs had been fulfilled for the time being and it was relishing the bloody rush. But then it showed her a glimpse of the future. A future she could no more not see than she could stop breathing.

Suffocation.

Torture.

Death.

Unable to bear the ugliness, she tried to draw back. It refused to let her. Her heart beat in a dangerous, jagged rhythm. This was impossible, her practical Psy mind tried to point out. But it was drowned out by the primitive core of her psyche. It screamed because it knew that this was possible.

Sometimes, visions didn't let go. Ever. The end result was insanity so deep and true that no more than twisted fragments of the mind remained. Faith clawed at the darkness, but there was nothing to hold on to, nothing to fight her way out of. It was everywhere and nowhere, an enclosing prison she couldn't break. Her racing heart began to go sluggish as her mind concentrated every ounce of energy on finding a way out. Only to slam up against a blank wall.

Touch intruded, a sensory alarm so shocking that it snapped the twining threads of the vision. She woke with a gasp, her eyes clashing with a pair that were not quite human. A ragged breath later, she became aware of hands holding on to her upper arms. Skin to skin. Her tank top was soaked with perspiration and, by rights, she should've begun to cascade because of the sensory overload, but she said, 'Don't let go.' Her voice was a rasp. 'Don't let go or I'll fall back in.'

Vaughn tightened his hold, worried by the look in Faith's eyes. There was something unfocused about them, as if she wasn't fully awake. 'Talk to me, Faith.'

She kept breathing those jerky ragged breaths and then, to his surprise, reached out to put her hands flat against his bare chest. Her touch was pure heat when he'd expected coolness. It burned and the jaguar wanted more. 'Don't let me fall back in. Please, Vaughn. Please.”

He didn't understand what she was so afraid of, but he was a sentinel—he knew how to protect. His senses had lit up in warning minutes ago, though Faith hadn't made a sound. He'd walked into her room on silent feet, expecting her to wake and tell him to get the hell out. Instead, he'd found her barely breathing, her skin sheened in sweat, her hands curled into fists so tight she'd been bleeding from tiny cuts made by her nails.

Now those same instincts had him locking his arms tight around her. Touch unsettled Faith; maybe it would unsettle her enough to bring her back from wherever it was that she'd gone.

Pure black.

He finally realized what it was about her eyes that had worried him—the complete lack of stars. He'd seen Sascha's eyes do that before, but there had been something different about Faith tonight, as if there were a deeper darkness behind the one he could see. He ran a hand up her back and under her hair to close over her nape. The woman he'd met hours earlier would've been shoving him away and threatening to go into seizures. This one was too still, too passive.

'Shall I kiss you, Red?' It was a dare. 'Never kissed a Psy before. Might be fun.'

Her breath hitched and she shook her head against him like a kitten shaking off wet. Then she shoved at his chest. The devil might've made him keep her with him for a second longer, but he was all too aware that her body had had an unexpected effect on his. He was used to his sexuality; what he wasn't used to was it reacting so completely against his wishes. Letting Faith pull free, he watched as she scrambled backward until her back pressed against the headboard. The eyes staring into his were wide and full of stars.

He made his smile a slow tease. 'So, you back?'

She nodded, continuing to stare at him as if he were some large wild animal who might see her as dessert. She wasn't far wrong. The cat definitely liked the smell of this Psy and the man found her disturbingly fascinating.

'I've never scared anyone by threatening to kiss them before,' he commented, checking her face for any lingering signs of whatever it was that had frightened her badly enough that he'd become safe.

'I don't feel fear.'

He tugged at her tank top. 'Lost control of your physiological responses again, huh?'

She pulled the damp fabric from his grasp. 'Even Psy can't control sweat in sleep.'

'You going to be okay?'

Faith didn't want him to go, an illogical reaction. Vaughn couldn't stop the visions if they were determined to come, but some irrational part of her was convinced that if he left, the darkness would return and this time, nothing would make it let go. 'Of course.'