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he said. “Madeline’s unconscious. Your link to her is stronger than mine. Bring your sister back. Wake up, so you can bring her over.”
    “Promise you’ll protect Maddie when the Watchers find out what I’ve done.”
    Sarah longed to close her eyes and let the ocean take her again. To quit, just as Maddie had said, so she didn’t have to face the reality of the commitment she’d just asked Richard to make. But that would mean sacrificing her sister and Trinity, and protecting her family was all Sarah had left.
    “Promise,” she said, “that you’ll bring us back to find Trinity.”
    “You have my word.” Richard’s raven panted as he fought the ocean’s pull. “Break your links with the dream, and we’ll figure out the next step together.”
    But she could no longer feel the safety of his strong wings wrapped around her, or the comfort of Maddie’s heart beatingclose by. Trinity’s cries were softer, too. Even farther away. It was becoming harder to hear anything at all, even her raven’s voice in her mind.
    “Let go,” the ocean chanted. “This is where you belong.”
    “
Stay with me, Sarah,” Richard called.
    Her dreaming reality dissolved to darkness
. . .

C HAPTER S EVEN
     
    “Sarah!”
Richard shouted inside the dream.
    She was unconscious. Without her awareness feeding their link, sustaining his identity, the ocean vision was rapidly draining his psychic reserves. The matrix began to waver. He closed his raven’s wings even tighter around the twins.
    The second she’d welcomed him into her nightmare, he’d felt another mind scanning his from somewhere in the sea. Something beyond Sarah’s awareness, most likely whoever was projecting the nightmare to her from the center. A consciousness he’d have to identify, for him to have any shot at protecting both Sarah and his brotherhood.
    He blinked her sleeping quarters into focus. Her head lolled beneath his chin, her body convulsing. Madeline still clung to her sister’s hand, but she’d collapsed, unconscious, against Jarred. The doctor was wiping at the blood trickling from her nose.
    “What the hell is going on?” Jarred demanded. “Why are they still dreaming?”
    “Maddie’s too weak to disengage. They’re both unconscious inside the dream.”
    “Then pull them out.”
    “I can’t risk it.”
    Richard told himself to reach for the comm unit beside the bed, but his arms wouldn’t obey. He couldn’t make himself let Sarah go.
    “I need at least one of them lucid,” he said. “The nightmare’s already disintegrating. If I force a break now, both twins’ minds could be lost.”
    “Maddie’s brought Sarah back before.”
    “The nightmare’s in control this time.”
    Richard stared at Sarah’s slack features. She was dying in his arms.
    “Disengage from the dream, Alpha,” he ordered.
Alpha
had been her clinical designation at the center. She hated the name. She’d be furious with him for using it now. He was banking on it.
    “Jarred.” He could barely force the words out. “Call for backup. I won’t be able to hold on to their minds much longer.”
    There was an angry pause.
    “Metting needs a dream-recovery team in Sarah Temple’s quarters,” Jarred finally shouted into the comm unit to an operator who wouldn’t miss the fear in the psychiatrist’s voice.
    Richard felt Sarah’s chest above the collar of her cotton nightgown. Delicate skin. Racing pulse. Too-weak heartbeat. He sent his consciousness deeper into her sleeping mind. There was nothing now where her thoughts had been.
    “Stay with me, damn it,”
he projected.
    The sisters were so close to the surface, lying limp and unresponsive, encircled by his raven’s wings. He’donly need a flicker of consciousness, one of them awake and willing, to bring them both back.
    “Do something to get through to Madeline,” he growled to Jarred, “before my team arrives and the situation is removed from my control.”
    “Maddie?” Jarred shook Madeline.