Six hours after their early morning call, Dev found himself leading Ashaya Aleine down to the medical floor. Her mate, Dorian, walked by her side, his mouth grim. “If Ekaterina was taken from the lab when it was destroyed, she’s likely been in Council hands for over five months.”

Ashaya uttered a choked-off sound of pain, making Dorian swear under his breath. Dragging his mate to his side, he nuzzled the electric curls of her hair. “Sorry, Shaya.”

“No.” She sucked in a breath. “You’re right.”

“And if that’s true,” Dev said, “they now know everything she did.”

Ashaya nodded. “Ming LeBon would’ve torn her mind open. He was behind the destruction of the lab—it had to be him that took her.”

The mental violation, Dev thought with a burst of cold anger, would’ve been all consuming. A psychic assault left the victim with not even the slimmest avenue of escape, no place where she could even pretend that everything was okay.

“Why leave her on your doorstep?” Ashaya said, voice shaken. “A warning?”

“A taunt, more like it.” Dev had made it his business to study the enemy. “Psychological warfare.”

Dorian nodded. “Could be Ming wants to spook you into doing something rash.”

“All the Shine kids are safe and accounted for,” Dev said, having spent the past few hours verifying that. “Unfortunately, we’ve still got the gray area where we’ve tracked them down, but they haven’t yet agreed to accept our help.” The last Council mole had taken advantage of that gray area, fingering children for experimentation after they came into the field offices but before they’d been brought safely under the Shine umbrella.