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Advance Excerpt from COLD REDEMPTION
by Nalini Singh
“Pax.” Amara turned the corner into the reception area as the door closed behind him. “You’re on time. Excellent. I assume you’re ready for the first set of tests?”
Falling into step beside her under the sunlight that poured in through the massive bank of windows to his right, Pax nodded. “What do you intend?”
“I’ll draw blood first, then take any other relevant samples that can be procured without causing you damage. Ashaya has convinced me the brain biopsy would be an overreach at the present time.” She looked into an iris reader beside the polished black surface of an elevator door.
So, she’d been serious about the biopsy. “If this fails and I die, I’ll donate my brain to you so you can take as many samples as you like.”
Amara waited until they were both inside the elevator, and on their way down, before saying, “That’s not exactly a smart offer—I could engineer failure to ensure that access.”
“Except you don’t like to fail.”
He was looking at her profile, so he saw her lips kick up in a smile that appeared genuine. Only for it to vanish a heartbeat later. “How was that?” she asked, angling her head to lock those acutely intelligent eyes with his own. “My smile, I mean. Memory says I need to practice not ‘freaking people out.’”
Pax had the distinct feeling that she was attempting to unsettle him—unclear was whether it was because it amused her, or because she preferred being the power in any situation.
Pax didn’t allow so much as an eyelash to flicker. “I’ve heard rumors that you were never Silent in the first place.”
“I wasn’t,” she responded as the elevator came to a silent halt. “But that was because I was a psychopath.” She stepped out into a gray corridor that had no windows, but nonetheless didn’t feel akin to being buried in a bunker.
“Artificial sunlight?” SnowDancer was well known for that proprietary tech.
A clipped nod. “This floor is ours—mine and Ashaya’s, though she isn’t in today. Her lab is to the left, where the land slopes in such a way as to allow windows. I prefer no such distractions.” She turned right. “Here we are.”
Amara’s lab was a sterile white space stocked with equipment that was either neatly stored in the clear glass cupboards that lined half the back wall, or was in use on one of the two lab benches in the center of the room. Several larger devices stood out in the open against the unused section of the back wall.
Multiple wall screens lined the left wall, while her computronic workstation was set up against the right one—complete with dual screens and what appeared to be a separate data-processing unit designed to consume and categorize vast volumes of scientific information.
The lab wouldn’t have looked out of place in the most cutting-edge Marshall pharmaceutical facility. “Do you and your sister share your labs at all?”
“Yes, we each have certain pieces of equipment the other doesn’t—it doesn’t make rational sense to double up on rarely used items,” Amara answered easily enough. “I also venture upstairs to utilize certain machines—though then I have to avoid wolves who want to chat.” She indicated a chair. “Take a seat so I can draw your blood.”
Pax wondered if Ashaya Aleine was as clinical as her twin when it came to her workspace. He doubted it; as with Theo, Ashaya had escaped the stranglehold of Silence, had built a life full of color and family.
Theo’s workshop had a little corner with a tea, coffee, and nutrients station for visitors, and a large corkboard on which she’d pinned photos. Including several of her and Pax—her favorite was one Pax had dug out of the family archives. It was of the two of them at around five years of age, racing across the grounds of the family estate.
“Ready?” Amara’s question was cool.
At his nod, she began to draw his blood. After filling three vials and labeling each, she took one and walked over to one of the larger machines. She placed it in an internal chamber, then set the machine to run, after which she stored the remaining two vials in what he’d initially believed was another storage cupboard—it proved to be a medical-grade cooler instead.
“I’ve never been in the mind of a Scarab.” Rolling over her office chair, she sat down opposite him. “I need to slip inside your telepathic shields in order to evaluate the extent of the damage.”
Pax had permitted Dr. Maia Ndiaye beyond his shields multiple times, but Dr. Ndiaye wasn’t a self-professed psychopath. If anything, she was too empathic. She’d told him once that she’d passed her Silence evaluations by the skin of her teeth—“And even that only because I’m a fairly cerebral M. No one much worried about my potential to cause psychic chaos.”
The physician had permanent bags under her eyes these days, and staff at Echo had shared that she barely went home, her heart and soul with her patients.
Amara was no Dr. Ndiaye.
Yet he knew she wasn’t lying to him—she needed a baseline if she was to have any hope of judging his progress. “How far do you intend to dig?”
“I don’t have any prurient interest in your life.” She didn’t blink. “Then again, who knows? Once I’m in there, I might discover I enjoy rummaging around.”
“I’m a Gradient 9 telepath.” Pax injected his voice with a frigid cold—a reminder to Amara that she wasn’t the threat in the room. “Any rummaging and I’ll tear apart your shields and leave you a whimpering, bleeding ball on the floor.”
No fear. No flinch. “You’d damage your only hope?”
“I’d teach my only hope a lesson—that can be achieved without doing permanent damage.”
A flat, empty gaze holding his own, the standoff silent. And then . . . a sudden, shocking smile. “I like you, Pax Marshall. You’re interesting.”
Copyright © 2026 by Nalini Singh
For more information on Cold Redemption, including available pre-order links, click here.
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