Last Guard

The PsyNet, the vast psychic network that holds the Psy race together, is failing. If it falls, every Psy mind connected to it falls too. The people who quietly hold it up are the anchors, a secretive designation few outsiders know exists, and two of the most gifted are about to be forced together. Payal Rao is a cardinal telekinetic and the head of a major conglomerate. Some call her merciless, others a robotic sociopath, and she looks like the model of what her people want to be: brilliant, beautiful, and without emotion. She also happens to be the strongest anchor there is. Canto Mercant is a cardinal telepath whose spinal injury led the Psy to label him imperfect, a judgment he mostly ignores. He cares about family and loyalty above all, and he guards the people he considers his with ruthless determination. As head of intelligence for the powerful Mercant family, he prefers to work unseen in the Net. But he is an anchor too, and he knows the collapse is coming. Saving the people he loves means asking for help from Payal, a woman tied to him by a painful shared history that neither of them has managed to put behind them. As the PsyNet edges toward catastrophe, they face a violent upheaval in the network and a dangerous, consuming pull toward each other. Last Guard is part of Nalini Singh's Psy-Changeling Trinity series.