Every single death haunted Dev. Because Shine was about safety, about locating those Forgotten who’d been lost, cut off from the group when the Council first began hunting their ancestors. But instead of safe harbor, it was only death the children had found . . . while the old Shine board sat by, their heads in the sand.

Dev had been ready to kill them for their blindness, their refusal to see that the culling had begun again—and according to some, he’d almost succeeded. One board member had had a heart attack after Dev threw pictures of the children’s broken bodies in front of him. Several others had come close to nervous breakdowns.

But no one had stopped him when he took over, when he went after the mole with single-minded focus. “This way,” he said, leading them down a silent corridor.

“Tally said you shut down the recruitment process last time.” Dorian looked over, his eyes a brilliant blue even more vivid against his distinctive white-blond hair. “You going to do that this time, too?”

“They need a mole to find those kids,” Dev said, his tone flat. “And the mole is dead.”

Ashaya blinked, glancing from him to Dorian, but didn’t say a word. Her mate nodded. “Good.”

Dev used his palm print to scan them in through a security door. “I can’t justify shutting down the program again so soon without solid proof of trouble—we spend so much time and effort on finding descendants of the original rebels for a reason. There are kids out there going insane because they think they’re human.”

After a hundred years of Silence, of the Psy remaining locked within their own culture, no one bothered to test for psychic abilities. No one realized that some of those crazy kids actually were hearing voices in their heads. Some were latent telepaths whose gifts had broken through during puberty. Some were weak empaths, overwhelmed by the emotions of others. And some. . . some were secret treasures, gifts rising up out of a century of genetic drift.