Shield of Winter (Nalini Singh) Read Online Free PDF Page A

apart, he told her about 8-91’s final minutes. “If I’m right,” he said afterward, “the empaths hold the answer to the Net’s survival.”
    Sahara tilted back her head to look at him with eyes that spoke of her piercing intelligence. “But?”
    He gloried in the sensation that was the possessive warmth of her hands at his waist, in the feel of her vibrant and alive and with him. “If I’m wrong or if the empaths are too damaged to function as they should”—a vicious possibility—“there’ll come a time when I’ll have to excise the rotten and unstable sections of the Net.”
    Bleak understanding dulled the light in Sahara’s expression. “Like slicing away gangrenous flesh so the healthy segment can survive.”
    “It’s a worst-case scenario.” Millions would die during the excision, but to allow the infection to advance unchecked would mean the collapse of the PsyNet and the death of every single person linked to it.
    Including Sahara.
    That, Kaleb would never accept, never permit. The world had taken seven years from them. It would get nothing else.
    Now she lay her cheek against his chest, her arms sliding around his torso. “How did this happen to our people, Kaleb?” A kiss pressed to the beat of his heart, as if she needed the reminder that they were alive, unbroken. “We created heartbreaking art once, discovered star systems and new species of butterflies with equal joy. We were explorers and musicians and writers of great works. Now . . . how did the Psy become such a ruin?”
    Kaleb knew the answer wasn’t as simple as Silence, and yet Silence was the core. “We attempted to become a race without flaws.”
    Chapter 3
     
    E-Psy have never been rare, but not much is known about them, perhaps because we study that which we are afraid of. And no one is afraid of the empaths.Excerpted from The Mysterious E Designation: Empathic Gifts & Shadows by Alice Eldridge IVY WENT CAREFULLY over the bark of the slumbering apple tree. She was on alert for any signs of the fungus that had appeared two weeks earlier, but found nothing. “The treatment worked,” she said to Rabbit. “The other trees are safe.”
    Involved in sniffing the snow at the roots of the tree, tail wagging like a metronome, Rabbit gave a small “woof.”
    “Glad to see you agree this is a good thing.” Noting down the result on her datapad, she continued on through the trees, Rabbit scampering after her a second later, his paws soft and soundless on the carpet of white.
    For such a small dog, she thought as his furry white form streaked past, he could certainly go fast when he put his mind to it. Shaking her head, she left him to his adventures and went to check another apple tree she’d been worried about . . . when Rabbit began to bark. Hairs rising on the back of her neck, she fought her instinctive revulsion and reached into a pants pocket to retrieve the tiny laser weapon that fit neatly into the palm of her hand. Rabbit never barked, not like that. As if he’d scented a predator.
    Ten seconds later, she broke out of the trees and knew her dog was right.
    There was a man standing on the path between the snow-kissed trees. No, not a man. A soldier. Over six feet tall with broad shoulders, his posture was unyielding, his stillness absolute, his eyes a chill gray, and his hair black.
    His uniform, too, was black, stark against the backdrop: rugged pants, a long-sleeved T-shirt of some high-tech and likely bulletproof material that hugged the muscle of his arms, a lightweight armored vest that covered his chest and back as well as the lower part of his neck, heavy combat boots, what appeared to be an electronic gauntlet strapped to his left arm.
    They’d come for her again.
    A trickle of icy sweat ran down her spine. She’d always known this day was inevitable. Her emotions were too volatile, had no doubt leaked past the tightly woven network of interlinked shields that protected those who called this remote