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scooting in between the various table and chairs and the numerous sets of legs that stretched out into the narrow pathways. Karissa didn’t say anything as Logan slipped into the chair beside her, but when he wrapped his arm around her narrow shoulders and he drew her close, she sighed and dropped her head against his shoulder.
    “Was that Alex I saw with you?” she asked.
    Logan nodded, his chin brushing the top of her head.
    “He’s a lawyer?”
    Logan felt his mouth drawing into a curve before he was able to straighten it. “A damn good one, too. But no one expects there to be a brain behind the big muscles and Irish smile. Yet you get him in the courtroom, and he’s as much of a warrior as he is on the streets.”
    She nodded, but he could tell she wasn’t really listening. She’d closed her eyes and was concentrating on breathing evenly through her slightly parted lips.
    “What’s wrong, Karissa?”
    “Their pain and misery. I can feel it.”
    He looked sharply around the room, taking in the drawn faces, the others blank with hopeless despair. “Even though you aren’t touching anyone?”
    She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter anymore. Just being near is enough.”
    He shifted, drawing her closer as if he could somehow shield her from the turbulent emotions of the room. Maybe if he were to shield her…but he didn’t dare. Not if Karissa was right and one of the cops here was sensitive.
    Of all the luck. Why did it seem like there were so many of them around recently? Pairing with humans for anything but a night or two of company had gone out of practice with the decline in the Paladin’s gifted lines. Logan figured the resulting years would have diluted the resultant offspring’s blood to the point that their Paladin heritage would be negligible. But lately the Paladin seemed to be running into sensitive humans everywhere.
    Maybe dear dad wasn’t the only one spreading his genes around.
    He rubbed his face, pushing thoughts of his father and the friction between them aside.
    “Tell me about the cop Roland thought was different.” He’d pretty much concluded the man wasn’t a merker—Roland wouldn’t have allowed them to take him otherwise, not when it meant leaving his bond mate alone and unprotected—but he wanted to hear Karissa’s take on the human. Besides, it kept Karissa occupied and not thinking about the other emotions in the room.
    Karissa seemed to cling to the distraction, her breathing easing as she spoke. “Detective Ward. About Roland’s height, brown hair, brown eyes, goatee. Pretty average looking, but in good shape. I couldn’t tell much about him other than I wasn’t getting a lot of feedback on the emotional scale but I could tell Roland’s gift was telling him something.”
    “Roland didn’t tell you what?”
    She shook her head slightly. “You know he’s not great with projective thought, and I don’t think he dared communicate through our bond for fear of alerting the detective.”
    Logan mulled that over. If Roland wouldn’t even use their bond mate link around the detective, then the man must be more than just a bit sensitive. Logan would love to get a good look at the guy, though he supposed the person best suited for measuring the man’s abilities was already in there.
    There really wasn’t a good term for what Alex’s gift did, but basically he was a power sink. When near, he could measure, utilize, and if he so wished, drain another’s energy—handy if your enemy didn’t have stellar shields, though evil energy did have the tendency to make the Paladin extremely sick. Regardless, if the cop had a measure of power, Alex would sense it, and furthermore, would be able to tell whether it was a lot or a little.
    Logan was so busy thinking that he hardly noticed Karissa shift away from him, her little foot slamming down on the peeling linoleum tiles as she swiveled in her seat. He shifted around to see what she sensed just as the doors opened and