Shards of Hope

Chapter 20

MORE THAN ONE changeling ran closer, as if to catch her, but Aden stood exactly where he was, willing her to recover. She did. With a deliberate focus and an intelligent strength that had Theo shaking his head, eyes gone wolf in admiration. “Man, she’s got serious fucking balls.”

Aden made a note to repeat the comment to Zaira; she’d appreciate it.

“Just so you know,” Remi drawled from his other side, “a whole lot of the dominants in the pack are going to be trying their luck with her now.”

Aden was starting to become used to feline slyness, so he understood that Remi was needling him to find out if he and Zaira had a relationship. He answered regardless. “They’re too late.” She was his, had given herself to him long ago. He wasn’t planning on returning the gift, no matter if she believed herself too broken to walk with him.

“Yeah.” A grin in the alpha’s voice. “That’s what I figured.”

When Zaira’s feet finally hit the ground after several more risky moves, Jojo laughed and ran over to hug her legs. “Wow! Zai, cat climb!”

Aden’s heart thundered, his breath finally coming easier.

Sweating, and with her features giving nothing away, though he knew she had to be in pain, Zaira placed her hand gently on Jojo’s head. “A cat with no claws.”

Zaira’s eyes met his as the little girl laughed; her gaze was opaque, inscrutable. “I should head off to shower.”

“Not until you tell us how you did that.” Theo looked up at the wall, shook his head again. “It should’ve been impossible—that’s an elite-level climb with claws.”

Zaira tugged very carefully on one of Jojo’s pigtails to get the tiny girl’s attention. “May I lift you for a second?”

An unconcerned shrug. “Okay.”

Shifting her hands to under the child’s armpits, Zaira lifted her a few inches off the floor, then set her down again. “Thank you.”

Jojo leaned against her leg in answer.

Remi, meanwhile, had raised an eyebrow. “Theo should weight lift Jojo?”

“No. I was testing my hypothesis.” Zaira put her hand back on Jojo’s hair, the touch seeming to come more naturally this time. “To me, Jojo weighs more than she should for a child her size.”

Theo nodded. “Changelings have heavier bones. Yours are more fragile.”

“Yes. So even if a changeling woman who looked exactly my size stood next to me, the two of us indistinguishable to the naked eye, she would still be heavier than me in weight.”

Aden glanced up at the climbing wall while Remi nodded, his hands braced on his hips. “Your lightness gave you an advantage,” the alpha said.

“But,” Aden responded, “she also thought strategically.” That was what made Zaira such a good commander; her capacity to look at the bigger picture and plan accordingly. “If you trace her path, you’ll see she achieved maximum distance with each move.”

The four of them discussed the climb further for several minutes, during which a number of other packmates joined them, before Zaira left to have a shower. Aden wanted to order her to see Finn to make sure she hadn’t torn any of her newly healed injuries, but he held his silence since they had an audience. If, once they were alone, he discovered she hadn’t been to the healer, he’d rectify that immediately.

“I went out earlier to gauge the weather,” Remi said to him once everyone else had dispersed, but his eyes were on the climbing frame where Jojo played with several other cubs. “Storm’s looking like it’ll hold through tonight at least.” He didn’t interfere when a child tumbled off into a fall, but did stride over and wipe away the child’s tears as he lifted the boy to his feet again.

The child ran off to play again a bare minute after.

When Remi returned to Aden, Aden took a risk. “I need to learn how to do what you do.” If he was going to create a real family from the dangerous and the rejected and the scarred, he had to be more than a leader who understood politics and how to keep his people safe.

He had to be an alpha.

That there was a difference between the two, he’d only started to understand since being in RainFire. “I need to learn how to be alpha of a pack.”

Remi’s eyes turned yellow-green, a leopard watching him out of a human face. “Two things make an alpha—one is an inborn dominance and a primal drive to protect. You already have that.” His lips quirked slightly. “That’s why the leopard keeps trying to outstare you and why you have to force yourself to look away.”

Aden hadn’t realized Remi had picked up on the latter. “What’s the second thing?”

“Guidance that instills you with a bone-deep knowledge,” Remi told him. “When cubs have the scent of an alpha about them, we keep an eye on them and teach them how to be a good alpha by example and through gentle nudges, until by the time those cubs become aware of their alpha tendencies, they have the right skill set. Though,” he added dryly, “a refresher course is needed for those of us who figure things out a little later.”

“I know how to hold a group together. I also have the strength to do it.” He’d been created to be a tool of revolution, his DNA changed in ways that had had an unpredictable effect, the end result so unique that Marjorie and Naoshi still believed him to be only a low-level telepath.

Aden had never told them the truth; he’d told only five people, and those five people he’d trust at his back without question: Vasic, Zaira, coolheaded sniper and trainer Cristabel, rock-steady telepath Amin, and deadly Axl, who many in the squad had considered Ming’s right-hand man, but whose loyalty had always been Aden’s. Only one other person knew. Walker Lauren had figured it out while Aden had been a child in his classroom. The telepath, who must now be in his early-to-mid forties, was the only other person Aden had ever met whose base telepathic abilities worked anything similarly to his own.

“What I don’t understand,” he said to Remi, “is how to make the group into a family.” Given the violent abilities of those who became Arrows, the squad would always be a military unit that specialized in teaching its members how to harness their strength so that strength didn’t spin out of control, but it didn’t have to be only that.

Remi blew out a breath as the two of them walked to watch a juvenile attempt a less aggressive climbing wall. “Family is what connects us. I don’t know that I can break it down.” He rubbed at his jaw, his stubble scraping his fingers. “What ties you to your men and women?”

“Loyalty.”

“Good foundation.” The RainFire alpha folded his arms. “I guess family is about people knowing you’ll be there even when they can’t pull their weight because they’re sick or hurt or just plain tired. Family’s there even when you stuff up and do everything wrong.”

Remi glanced at a pair of cubs who were playing with a ball nearby. “Doesn’t mean everyone doesn’t have a place in the pack, or responsibility—that’s important, too, that everyone has a role to play. No one’s disposable.”

He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled sharply when one of the cubs swiped at the other, and the cubs immediately separated. “It just means that when you screw up,” Remi added, “you don’t lose your place in the family. You might get a reaming, might be punished, but you’ll always have a home where you’re loved and where you feel safe.”

That made sense to Aden. The problem, of course, was that he was dealing with people badly damaged on every level—the adults who had to become the families of the current generation of Arrow children had never had any kind of warmth or family in their own lives.

As for the children themselves, each knew he or she wasn’t wanted by his or her biological family. Many had been declared dead on their family trees, but Aden decided then and there that there was no rule that said Arrows couldn’t be placed on a new family tree. A created tree, within a family of Arrows who understood what it was to inadvertently hurt someone with their abilities.

“I may need further advice as I continue,” he said to Remi. “Will you offer it?”

“Yeah, what the hell. We can be remedial alphas together.” Grinning, the leopard changeling slapped him on the back. “Come on. You want to learn how to be a family, you can hang with me while I go read the riot act to some of the older juveniles. They fucking fried a generator doing an experiment with lightning.”

Confidential sources have confirmed that Arrow leader Aden Kai is not missing. He is taking part in a covert mission to unmask certain problematic insurgent elements within the PsyNet. The Ruling Coalition would not confirm or deny this fact when contacted, and the Arrow Squad remains unreachable as per its long-standing operating protocol.

What did I tell you? The Arrow leader is doing what Arrows do—being a shadow in the Net.

I. Erskine

(Iowa)

I’m disturbed by the implications of this report. It appears we are back to the ways of the old Council.

Anonymous

(Luzon)

The old Council kept a firm hand on things and that’s what we need now.

Anonymous

(Shiraz)

Kaleb dropped out of the Net after scanning the feeds. Things had gone as he’d predicted, as he’d wanted. With the news of Aden’s disappearance threatening to rock the fragile equilibrium of the Net, he’d immediately initiated damage control. Instead of making a direct statement, however, he’d used his more clandestine skills to initiate a useful rumor that was then confirmed off-the-record by one of his outwardly junior people who had deliberately cultivated herself as a source for news media.

The information took longer to hit the public news streams this way, but when it did, it held more veracity for having been “uncovered.” The populace would now spend their time worrying about the direction of the Ruling Coalition rather than speculating about what had happened to Aden. At present, that was the better option.

The subterfuge wouldn’t last if Aden remained missing for longer than a day or two, however. Especially if whoever had leaked the news of his abduction continued to leak further disturbing details. A single image of Aden unconscious or dead could throw the Net into chaos. Arrows might be the bogeyman of their race, but they were also a silent symbol of Psy power. And Aden represented the squad.

While Aden was the politically higher-value target since Zaira wasn’t known as an Arrow by the general population, seeing her caged or in a degrading position would also have a devastating impact. Because if someone could hurt the bogeyman, then no one was safe.

The PsyNet was so vast that even Kaleb couldn’t suppress all such data—there was no knowing when or how it might filter in. He could, however, prime the NetMind and DarkMind to alert him the instant anything related to Aden or Zaira hit the dataways so he could take quick and effective countermeasures.

He gave the order and the twin neosentience of the NetMind and DarkMind curled around him in agreement before disappearing into the Net. The situation was contained. At least until the shadowy enemy that had taken Aden and Zaira made their next move.

HIDDEN in a thick grouping of trees in the underground green space attached to Central Command, Blake read the new Beacon report about Aden and realized he may have made a mistake . . . or maybe not. Even if Aden was alive and around, the squad’s leader would have no reason to connect an “out-of-control blitz killer,” as Blake was being described by the media, to an Arrow who’d taken a little too much pleasure in his work but who had always disposed of his victims where no one would find them.

As long as Blake was careful not to choose a victim who was in Aden’s orbit, the leader of the squad would never know and Blake could continue being part of a group where he had the greatest chance of finding a like mind. Power often came paired with deviant urges. He’d have to be careful as he searched, but the chances of success were high.

Because while killing alone was a rush, killing with a partner would double that. All he had to do was find the right person, a person who was broken inside like him but who owned that brokenness, who accepted that there was nothing wrong with their psychopathic tendencies. They existed, and therefore, they must be right to exist.