Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
He stared back, the two of them locked in a battle invisible to the world.
Chapter 3
Given the previously noted circumstances, as certified by qualified counsel, I hereby remove Auden Jackson as my legal heir. She no longer has any claim on my estate beyond any specific bequests in this amended document.
To clarify, no penalty is to be paid by Shoshanna Scott for her family’s adoption of Auden into their bloodline. The matter has been negotiated satisfactorily between Shoshanna and I, and no debts remain.
—Amendment to the Last Will and Testament of Henry Ignatius Scott (9 March 2076)
AUDEN’S HEAD FELT heavy, her vision foggy, but she couldn’t stop staring at the trees. At the man who wore a comm thick with memories that hadn’t hurt her. The person who’d worn that watch before him…had been a good person. Auden had few parameters for what words like “good” meant, but she thought the lack of pain associated with her read of the device must be a link to goodness.
Her thoughts splintered without warning, the edges fraying until she couldn’t remember why she was looking at the soaring trees with their dark green limbs and thick trunks marked by natural patterns and textures she could almost sense against her palm. Just like she couldn’t remember why she’d woken with bruises on her hip and thigh today.
They ached.
“Auden.” Charisma’s crisp voice.
It took a second or two to penetrate, but once it did, Auden forced herself to look away from the trees and to the older woman who had been her mother’s right hand for so long that she was present in Auden’s earliest memories.
Charisma Wai was intelligent, rigid in her views on Psy perfection and the importance of bloodlines, and excellent at her job. She’d also been long enough in Auden’s life that Auden never forgot Charisma, even when the rest of her memories fractured.
“That was unexpected,” the other woman said while Auden fought the compulsion to stare once more into the shadowy green of this place so different from the pristine lawns and precise hedges of her childhood.
“Yes,” she said at last, because Charisma was waiting for her to reply. The truth was that Auden didn’t know what she was replying to, had already lost track of the conversation.
“The male was a changeling.” Curt words from Charisma, whose eyes were on her organizer. “He made an offer on this land.”
Auden stayed silent.
“Normally,” Charisma continued, “I’d advise against a sale. It can be useful to have a hidden location that can be utilized for more covert matters.”
Auden had retained the thread of the conversation this time around. “But?” she said, trying to read the face of this woman who had been a peripheral part of her existence since the day she was born. It hadn’t mattered that Auden had spent most of her time in her father’s household, among his people. She’d nonetheless always understood Charisma’s importance to her mother.
“I wasn’t aware until now that this parcel was so close to a pack.” Charisma’s lips tightened. “Many of the packs are intensely insular and keep to themselves, but given that the male approached us, I don’t think we can rely on that—whatever his animal is, it isn’t the kind to mind its own business.”
Auden’s brain fired, a fragment of memory crashing inside her temporal lobe: a man with eyes like the topaz stone she’d seen once, so clear and striated with light. His hair had been cut messily, countless shades of brown within it, his skin a gold that seemed warm and touchable.
No, his eyes had been yellow-green, argued another part of her mind.
“Both,” she whispered under her breath. “They were both.” Because he was changeling.
A cat of some kind.
It confused her that Charisma, with a mind that was undamaged and whole, hadn’t worked that out. It had been obvious in the slow prowl of his walk, the languid fluidity of his muscles.
“I think…” she said loud enough for Charisma to hear. “I think I’d like a house here. A quiet place. Like…Father used to have.”
I go to my quiet places to think, Auden. That’s why you can’t come. When I’m with you, I think only about you because you are my daughter and my heir.
Charisma’s gaze sharpened. “Can you solve this equation?” She flipped the organizer toward Auden.
The numbers blurred and swirled, but Auden found her hand lifting, found herself inputting numbers that formed in her head in a soft glow. Ghosts created by her fully functional visual cortex.
Charisma sucked in a quick breath.
“I do believe,” the older woman murmured, “it’s time we go back to Dr. Verhoeven. As for the land, I see your point. But think it over. I’m not fully aware of your father’s more private residences but your mother’s were in locations with no watchful neighbors. Furthermore, there is no road to this godforsaken place. You’d be reliant on air vehicles or teleports.”