Free The Awakening: Aidan by Abby Niles Page A

Think of nothing else but it. When you get that taste in your mouth, immediately tell yourself that you are feeling her, not you, and keep repeating that as the bond takes over.”
    Liam cleared his throat and stared forward. Aidan knew the moment his friend entered Bahrraj . Jaylin shot to her feet and grabbed his shoulder and snapped her fingers. “Liam!”
    He didn’t respond.
    “Outside! Now!” She pointed at him without taking her eyes off Liam.
    He didn’t question her demand and hurried out of the house. With the way his beast had thrashed around aggressively yesterday, he wanted as much distance between him and that device as possible. The flash filled the living room, spilling from the window. His beast’s reaction was instantaneous. Hissing, coiled tight in rage.
    Seconds later voices came from the house and he reentered. Jaylin still knelt beside Liam, listening to his chest through her stethoscope.
    “What the hell is that red flash thing you use?”
    Jaylin glanced up at him. With a resigned sigh, she tugged the stethoscope from her ears and stood. “It’s called a Splycer . During a Bahrraj episode, Liam loses all connection with his beast. The Splycer jolts the beast back into place, disrupts the episode, and brings Liam back to consciousness.”
    “Why does it piss off my beast?”
    “We’re not sure. All we know is the flash does something to a healthy shifter’s beast—makes it irate. Male therapists have to use trained half shifters to perform a shock. They can’t even go near it. It’s why I keep sending you from the room when I need to use it.”
    “I don’t think you’ve sent me far enough away. I still felt its fury.”
    She placed the stethoscope and device back in the briefcase. “Not like you would if you’d been in the room. I’m genuinely sorry for the discomfort. I know it had to be disturbing.”
    Discomfort? He’d take that in a heartbeat over the seething fury he’d felt from his beast. However, she had “disturbing” accurate. “Do you use it only on Dsershon patients?”
    She lifted a brow. “Curious, aren’t you, Mr. O’Connell?”
    Aidan ignored the use of his last name. “Call me crazy for wanting to know a little more about a device my beast gets all worked up around.”
    A small smile came to her lips, almost as if he had actually amused her with his response, before she put back on her professional face. “Remember Dsershon is extremely rare, so we don’t actually use it for that as much as you think. The Splycer is mostly used on half shifters.”
    Now that surprised him. “Half shifters? Why?”
    “The females of our race may not have a beast but we do have latent shifter DNA, which, as you know, gives some of us special abilities. Unfortunately, rapid healing isn’t one of them. During life-threatening injuries, we have effectively used the Splycer to boost the genes to speed up healing. It can save a half shifter’s life when conventional medicine can’t.” Jaylin lowered herself onto the couch beside Liam. “Now do you have any more questions or can I get back to work?”
    “No,” he said through clenched teeth and stalked back to the chair in the corner.
    Jaylin turned to Liam. “What did you feel?”
    “I did what you told me to do once I felt the taste and then I was in oblivion.” He rubbed his face. “She was pensive, agitated. Do fully Fewsed shifters go through this?”
    “No.”
    “Then why the hell do rejected shifters?”
    Jaylin grabbed a notebook from her briefcase and drew two semicircles on a piece of paper. She tapped the pad with the end of her pen. “Think of these two halves as the two parts of the Fewshon . The shifter is one half and his mate is the other. When the bonding ritual is completed on both ends,” she drew a circle around both halves, “they become one and the effects of the Fewshon are constantly flowing between the two as they equally share it.”
    “So what you’re saying is had Ava not rejected