Silver Silence

The Human Alpha

BO WAS RUNNING late for the early morning meeting with Krychek. The Psy telekinetic had messaged him only minutes earlier to ask if they could talk at a nearby building where he had another meeting; he’d asked Bo to bring Lily along, as he wanted to discuss a forthcoming Ruling Coalition media announcement.

Bo had tried to call him to see if they could reschedule for a little later in the day, but it had gone straight to voice mail. Given the importance of what Krychek probably wanted to discuss, he’d sent through a message that he was on his way. Halfway there, he got a confirmation message from the telekinetic: In meeting. Will be done by the time you arrive. I appreciate your time.

Odd that Krychek hadn’t just teleported to him, but perhaps the other man was trying to be extra polite. Bo snorted. Yeah, right. Likely Krychek was trying to tread softly in an effort to keep Bowen and the humans of the Alliance talking.

Sliding away his paper-thin but highly resilient phone that had survived water, fire, small children, and dogs, he smiled at spotting his sister. Lily had been meant to come in late to the office today, had been in the opposite part of the city from him, so they’d agreed to meet midway.

She was standing on the bridge where they’d arranged to connect, but instead of her usual serene sweetness, she was leaning over the side of the bridge and having an enthusiastic conversation with the gondolier below. The two had to shout to be heard over the music of a busker on this side of the canal, so he could hear her voice, though not what she was saying.

Whatever it was, it had her laughing before she waved good-bye to the gondolier; the man poled away to pick up a couple of excited tourists. “Flirting with Piero?” he teased on reaching her. “What will your tattooed doctor say?”

“Ha ha. You know Piero’s wife would brain me with her hockey stick if I dared make eyes at him.” Stepping forward, she hugged Bo.

He squeezed her back. They weren’t talking about the degrading chip in his brain, the one that was likely to lead to his death in a matter of weeks, but that bleak reality was there every time he looked into his sister’s face. As was his own knowledge that Lily’s death would follow his if they didn’t find a solution. She’d been implanted after him but was now well outside the safe removal period.

Their parents didn’t know—that was something the two of them had to decide soon. Whether to warn them . . . or to let them enjoy this time with Bo and Lily without that dark shadow hanging over every moment.

“Have you eaten?” He flicked her hair back from her face after they broke the embrace. “Your favorite bakers have just put out a fresh batch of pastries.” The place was a few minutes’ walk from the other side of the bridge, on their way to the meeting with Krychek.

“Are you Psy now?” She poked at his abdomen. “How can you have seen that on the walk from the office?”

“Social media,” he said with a straight face. “They post a picture every time a fresh batch comes out of the oven.”

Her lips twitched. “Who told you?”

“Niall.” He grinned. “He passed me as I was walking here. He was stuffing his face with a hot-from-the-oven croissant at the time.”

“Done. Let’s go.” Turning on her heel, she began to stride away, her black coat sleek and her feet clad in little red boots. “Hurry up, slowpoke!” She threw him a laughing look over her shoulder . . . and that was when he saw it.

The red dot centered on her forehead.

Ice crashed through his system, but Bo didn’t freeze. He ran. “Get down!” The words were barely out of his mouth when he slammed into his sister, intending to take her to the ground.

They didn’t make it.

The bullet hit his back, smashing through his body in a blast of searing pain that seemed everywhere at once; the momentum crashed them through the old bridge wall and into the canal below. He took Lily with him, her body held tight in his arms. She’d be safer in the water, where she could use the light and shadows to disorient the shooter.

The water closed over their heads, bubbles everywhere.

He kicked up, released her. He didn’t think the bullet had gone through his flesh to hers, but he searched for damage nonetheless. “You hit?” he asked, finding it a little hard to breathe.

Shaking her head, Lily gasped for air. “How did you know?”

“I saw—” Bo began when his heart gave a jerking thud and the world blurred.

Lily screamed at the same moment. “Bo!” He felt his body sliding down into the water, felt Lily clutch at him to keep him afloat. Other hands joined hers soon after, hauling him up, but he couldn’t speak, his vision nearly all black.

“Bo! Hold on! Help is coming!” Desperate hands searching for the cause of the pain shredding his flesh.

In the back of his mind, a mind that had a deep knowledge of weapons, Bo knew the bullet had been designed to fragment inside the body, causing maximum damage. “Lily.” It was nearly soundless but she heard.

“I’m here, Bo.” Her voice shook. “Just hold on.”

“My brain,” he managed to say. “Use it.”

His vision collapsed. He felt his heart give one more beat.

Then . . . nothing.

Chapter 41

A WEEK AFTER her release from the hospital—a full month following the operation—Silver knew intellectually that she’d lost a part of herself both she and others had valued, but she didn’t experience any sense of loss. She felt nothing even when she went through memories tagged as powerful by her previous self, the concept of emotions just that: a concept. Foreign, difficult to grasp.

Her mind was cool clarity, devoid of anything extraneous. At least when she was awake. It was only when she was asleep that things went awry.

She dreamed.

She’d always dreamed, even in Silence. Arwen’s impact. The truly Silent didn’t dream. Or that was what the populace had always been told. If that were true, Silver shouldn’t be dreaming. It wasn’t as if she had any intention of willing the biofusion filaments to create a new, safe pathway to her emotional core. Silver saw no reason to feel when she was so much more efficient in her current state.

Her decisions during her emotional period were difficult for her to comprehend.

Why, for example, had she found the bear alpha so intriguing? Genetically, he wasn’t a male she should consider for reproductive purposes—the children were unlikely to be high-Gradient Psy . . . though they would also have the ability to shift. Having a Psy-changeling child would be to her advantage as someone who worked with the other races, but it wasn’t a big enough advantage for her to attach herself to a bear clan for life.

Look at how laissez-faire the bears were in how they lived life. It simply did not mesh with her measured, calculated approach. She found it impossible to understand why she’d been happy living in an enormous cave system. Happiness itself, of course, was a concept she no longer understood. She had the words for it, but not the internal comprehension she’d once had. It was a lack she was willing to live with given the myriad advantages.

Her logic was sound.

Yet, night after night, she dreamed of Alpha Nikolaev—and in those dreams, she sensed his hair-roughened skin sliding against hers, drew his earthy scent into her lungs, woke feeling as if she’d been entwined with a big, warm male body. Her sleep was deep and calm. It was only when she woke that confusion caught her in its grip.

“It’s apt to be an echo of emotion,” her grandmother had told her when Silver mentioned her dreams two days earlier. “The brain often fights losing pieces of itself.”

It made perfect sense. Ena’s next statement, however, hadn’t been as rational. “Are you certain you don’t wish to attempt to reactivate your emotional center?”

“Of course I’m certain. I’m far more efficient this way.”

“Efficiency isn’t everything, Silver. I learned that when Arwen was born.”

Silver was still attempting to process her grandmother’s statement as she dressed to return to work. She’d overseen her team remotely to this point, but had decided it was time to go into the office. It was too early according to Dr. Bashir, who continued to oversee her healing, but Silver felt capable—though she would maintain a close eye on her stress levels to ensure she didn’t sabotage her return to health.

It was also why she was still home at nine forty-five.

A slightly less intensive schedule wouldn’t be problematic, since it had become clear to her that she could achieve even more now than she had prior to the operation. She hadn’t realized how much energy caging her Tp-A abilities sucked up until the act was no longer necessary.

Ready, she walked into the kitchen area of her apartment to mix up a nutrient drink. The kitchen was large, full of sunlight, the build optimized for the changelings who were the main tenants of this complex. The latter was how Valentin must’ve got in to slip a card under her apartment door two days earlier.

That card sat on her small dining table.

The picture on the front was from a children’s story: a laughing blonde girl riding on the back of a huge bear. She knew the memory it represented, and that memory haunted her in her dreams. But it was the words inside that she found the most incomprehensible.

Silver Fucking Mercant. I told you nothing would keep you down. Happy twenty-ninth birthday.—V

It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the words; it was the impact those words had on her. She should’ve thrown the card in the trash as soon as she’d finished reading it, but instead, she kept it in a place where she’d look at it every single morning.

“Throw it away,” she ordered herself.

But when she left for the office fifteen minutes later, the card was still exactly where it had been since she received it.

Her reaction had to be part of the emotional “echo” effect. It’d wear off.

Once outside her third-floor apartment, she walked carefully along a path that rose up above the lush grass of the huge central green area. The path had no railings or other handholds and was challenging in heels. Which was why Silver had made it a point to master the task, until her changeling neighbors gave her a thumbs-up when they passed her.

“Yo, Miss Silver!” The call came from a teenager whose family was living temporarily in the city while his mother undertook a lucrative short-term contract. The children would’ve usually been left with their pack, but as both teenagers had wanted to experience city life, they’d been permitted to enroll in a local school for the duration.

Silver knew all that because the changelings insisted on treating her as one of their own. Not because of who she was, but because of the relationship she’d had with Valentin Nikolaev. Uncertain what effect a denial of that relationship would have on Valentin’s status, she’d said nothing.

He was no longer her mate, but she owed him and StoneWater a certain loyalty. More, she’d given her word that she would protect the clan to her dying day.

Silver did not break her promises.

As a result, people continued to treat her as his mate. The reaction held true regardless of whether it was a bear or wolf or nonpredatory changeling with whom she was interacting.

“Christof. Why aren’t you readying yourself for school?” She had a vague memory of hearing that they were starting at ten thirty today because of a teachers’ meeting.

The wolf male jumped up onto the path from the grass below, his grace that of a predator’s, though his landing was shaky. “I got plenty of time,” he said with a covert glance at his timepiece after shoving his long black bangs out of his eyes. “I figured I’d get in some jumps.”

Silver had no need to ask what he was talking about—she’d seen him jumping down from a number of the high pathways. She’d also seen him fall badly, and had rendered first aid. “You do realize you’re a wolf not a cat?”

The teenage boy made a face, his eyes deep blue against skin of wintery white. “Yeah, yeah, that’s what Dad said when I fractured my ankle that time, but I hate those smarmy cats at school, always jumping off shit and trying to scare us.”

“I didn’t realize there were any big cats in this region.” The question came from the part of her that had once been mate to an alpha bear.

“They’re not big,” he said derisively. “Just wildcats—transferred because the dad’s some fancy-deal professor. They got permission to be here. But they’re so smug.” Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he slumped his shoulders forward and curled his lip. “They called me a ‘feral wolf.’ Can you believe that?”

“I see. Did you respond?”

“Of course I did.” A growl that was nothing like Valentin Nikolaev’s deep rumble, the sudden amber of Christof’s eyes a much darker shade. “I couldn’t let that insult stand. I put kitty litter in their lockers.” His laughter was bright, but it didn’t fill the air, didn’t steal her breath. “You should’ve seen their faces.”

Disturbed by the direction of her thoughts, Silver took a firm mental step off that unproductive path. “Your action may escalate the conflict.”

“No. I got detention, but so did they because they threw the kitty litter at me.” A distinctly self-satisfied look. “Second strike means an automatic expulsion, and I’m not done with the city. Neither are the kitties, so we’ve agreed on a truce.” Having reached the end of the path, the teen lifted a hand. “Mom’s calling. I better boost.”

She turned to ensure he landed safely after his jump, but at the same time, she listened. She picked up no hint of his mother’s call—clearly, whatever the teething problems with her operation, her Tp-A abilities were well under control.

. . . assassination attempt.

The fragment of breaking news came through her preset telepathic filters just as she reached the curb outside the complex. Before she could follow up on the news a familiar rugged all-wheel drive stopped in front of her.

The driver, a heavily muscled man with impressively broad shoulders, reached across to push open the passenger side door. “Hop in. I’ll give you a ride.”

Silver entered the vehicle without hesitation—one thing she’d learned from the memories of her time with Alpha Nikolaev was that he’d never harm her. Since getting to the office earlier would allow her to complete more work, it was a good decision to accept the ride rather than taking the skytrain. “Thank you.”

He swung smoothly into the traffic. The fresh scent of his aftershave drifted across to her, layered over the natural scent of his skin.

That scent triggered a highly tactile memory of his hands skimming over her body, his muscled thigh pushing between hers, his hair falling forward and his smile an invitation. He’d been so warm, his weight heavy on her but not crushing, his chest hair rasping against her nipples.

She considered the memory with detached focus, every detail clear in her mind from the way his smile caused grooves to form in his cheeks, to how his breath whispered over her before his lips took her own, to the firmness of his mouth and the aggressiveness of his tongue.

Despite the richness of the sensory detail, she was still in control, her pulse normal, her breathing even. She remained stable.

“You still doing okay?” A gruff question.

Silver thought of the card she hadn’t thrown away, the one that sat in the center of her dining table in a silent taunt. “I’ve had no unwanted auditory input since the surgery.”

“The apartment? Everyone leaving you be?”

“For changelings, yes.” Had they been Psy, she’d have considered their behavior incredibly intrusive, but she’d successfully adapted to changeling norms. “As there are only a few bears, it’s relatively calm. Only one window broken in the past three days.”

Valentin chuckled and the sound wasn’t quite right, wasn’t what she remembered. As if he were muting himself. Valentin never muted himself. “And you?” she asked. “You lost a mate.”

His hands, big and powerful, clenched on the steering wheel. “Right now, my mate is sitting next to me, alive and breathing and with that brilliant brain going a hundred miles an hour. So yeah, I’m doing okay.”

Silver looked at the traffic he was dodging with such ease. “Turn right here. It’s a shorter distance to EmNet HQ.” The words didn’t seem right, either, didn’t seem to be what she should be saying.

“So, now that you’re pure Silence,” Valentin said after making the turn, “you ever think about rerunning the sex experiment?”

“Whatever compelled me to do that, it’s been shut off by the operation.”

“What about the scientific benefits? Regular sexual contact with a willing partner is meant to improve health and general well-being.”

Ignoring that deliberately provocative statement, Silver gave him another direction choice. This time, he ignored it. “If we go this way,” he said, “I can show you something.”

“I have a schedule to keep,” she said. “There’s just been an assassination attempt on Bowen Knight. He was shot.”

Valentin’s muscles bunched, all playfulness erased. “How bad?”

Silver knew he considered the other man part of his extended family, but she had no good news to give him. “Early reports say it may be fatal.”

“You need to mobilize EmNet?”

It was a good excuse, but Silver couldn’t lie to this bear. “No. It’s a political situation, not a humanitarian emergency.” If Bowen Knight did die, it could plunge the world into chaos, but for now, the peace was holding. “I’m sorry for the impact this may have on your sister.”

Valentin’s hands flexed on the steering wheel. “Nika is tough—she’ll be there for her mate. But I’m going to give Stasya a heads-up.” A glance at her, their eyes colliding. “I might be alpha, but Stasya’s the big sister who can bully Nika into telling her if she needs clan help.”

Silver didn’t interrupt while he used the vehicle’s system to make contact with Anastasia Nikolaev. “Make sure Nika’s mate and his family know StoneWater will offer any assistance we can,” he told his second.

“I’ll call her now,” Anastasia said before hanging up.

Silver spoke into the quiet. “How is the situation with Sergey and the clanmates who returned with him?”

Valentin shrugged. “We’re growing stronger together as a clan. They’re loyal, just scared.”

Silver found herself turning to look at his profile, taking in the harsh angles of his face. He’d never be called beautiful, but Valentin Nikolaev had a presence that demanded attention. “You have a deep ability to forgive.”

“Prerequisite of the job. You’ve seen the shit bears pull—imagine how crazy I’d be if I held grudges.” He brought the vehicle to a stop in front of a shop with a pink awning.

She stared through the car window. “I’ve had my nutrition for the morning.”

“Yeah, but have you had waffles with maple syrup and strawberries?” He was out of the vehicle before she could respond.

Opening her door, he said, “It’s looking like the world might soon go to hell again, but today there’s time for waffles.” Deep, dark eyes locked with hers once more, his big body blocking out the light.

“Remember your promise,” he said, and though she’d lost her emotional core, she had memories to draw from, knew it was a profound hurt he was trying but failing to hide.

The bear inside him was badly wounded. And she was the cause.

“I remember,” she said. “Ten dates. That was the promise.”

A ring of amber around his irises, his body a muscled wall.

She took a breath and his scent washed over her. Wildness and soap and warmth. So much warmth. Like that which kept her safe in her dreams. “I can’t get out of the car if you block my way.” He was so close, she could count each individual eyelash. “Why is your bear rising to the surface?”

“It wants to lick you up like honey,” he said, his voice a rumble and his attention that of a predator’s. “It’s missed you.”

Silver knew that, despite the memories between them, there was only one answer she could give. “It needs to get over that.” Because she wasn’t his mate any longer, couldn’t ease his hurt.

A smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Come on then, Starlight. Let’s go eat waffles.”

Starlight.

The address clicked into place inside her. Unable to process the sensation or to explain it, she waited for Valentin to step back. He took his time, until she wanted to lift her hand and shove at his chest. Her palm tingled, remembering all the times she’d done exactly that—not just to Valentin but also to other bears who’d tumbled into her. It hadn’t been done in anger. That was simply how bears interacted, tactile and a little rough.

Never too rough with her, however. As they were never too rough with the cubs.

Stepping back at last, Valentin said, “After you.”

Silver was expecting Valentin’s steadying hand on her waist, knew it was a stabilizing gesture done out of habit. “I can exit on my own.”

He severed contact at once. “Whatever you say.”

Suspicious of his quick agreement, Silver had her guard up when they entered the waffle restaurant. The maître d’ looked Valentin up and down with a jaundiced eye. “Break it and you pay for it.”

Valentin’s response was startling. Grinning, he grabbed the stern and well-built brunette up into his arms and off her feet, pressing a kiss to her lush red lips. “Nice to see you, too,” he said after setting her down.

Smile wide, she slapped at his chest. “I mean it. I’ll send you an invoice if you so much as bend a spoon.”

“I only did that once.” Valentin released her with that scowling statement. “You got a table for us?”

The brunette tilted her head, the smile she bestowed on Silver blindingly warm. “It’s good to finally meet you. I’m Victoria.”

“Thank you for fitting us in,” Silver said, waiting until she and Valentin were seated and alone to ask her question. “Do you kiss all maître d’s?”

“Sure, why not?” His eyes were bear again, amber and challenging, his voice bad-tempered. “It’s not like my mate’s kissing me.”

Chapter 42

“YOU DON’T HAVE a mate.”

“Semantics.”

Silver stared pointedly at her organizer. “How long will this take?”

Reaching over, he grabbed her organizer, switched it off. “Confiscated for the duration.” He placed it beside his cutlery. “You promised to go on ten dates with me. No fair if you spend it with your nose in your organizer.”

Silver knew he was playing a dominance game. And she knew never to let an alpha bear win. “I can have my nose in my telepathic senses. How will you confiscate that?”

He leaned back in his seat, sprawling to take over all available space, his booted feet on either side of her chair. Shoving his hand through the windblown strands of his hair, he said, “Starlichka. You know I’d never take away part of what makes you, you.”

“Alpha Nikolaev—”

“Valentin.” A firm word. “You know you’ve been calling me Valentin since the day we met.” In his eyes, she saw the more intimate name he didn’t say: Valyusha.

“Things have changed.”

“My name hasn’t.” Primal amber eyes held hers.

Silver refused to blink. “You’re being difficult.”

“That’s my other middle name. Valentin Mikhailovich Difficult Nikolaev.” Stubborn words, but the hurt he was trying so hard to hide, it remained.

“Valentin then,” she said, deciding this small capitulation didn’t send the wrong signal when he was wearing his heart on his sleeve. “You must understand that I’m not the Silver you once knew.” While she didn’t feel emotion, it was important to her that Valentin didn’t have his pride crushed.

He was alpha; he needed that pride.

“I know,” he said with a slow smile. “You’re Silver Mercant point two. Even sleeker and sexier.”

“Alpha Nikolaev.”

“Valentin,” he said in a mock-stern voice accompanied with a wink. “Here are the waffles.”

The male server put a large plate in the center of the table. It was piled high with waffles doused in what appeared to be a sweet syrup, as well as sliced strawberries and cream. He then placed a single smaller plate in front of Valentin.

Silver went to state she had no plate and only then realized they’d forgotten to give her cutlery, too. Before she could point that out, however, the server was gone—moving so fast that it had to have been planned. “I thought you brought me here to eat waffles.”

Valentin cut off a corner that was relatively clean of syrup and cream. “I did.” He held out the piece on his fork. “I know what you can handle. Trust me.”

“We’re in a public location.”

“Changelings know you’re my mate—”

“I’m not.”

“—and the rest of the world already thinks we’re having a hot and heavy affair.” His lashes shadowed the amber glow of his gaze. “Run with it, solnyshko moyo. It’s good for your image.”

That he was right didn’t alter the fact he was once again playing dominance games with her. After taking a second to consider the situation, Silver moved without warning to grab the fork right out of his hand. She then fed the piece into her mouth. “Interesting.” She no longer had trouble with most foods, a holdover of her experiences in StoneWater.

Valentin held out his hand. “My fork?”

“I think not.” Using the edge of the utensil, she cut off a piece that was thick with syrup, before picking it up along with two slices of strawberry. “Here.”

Valentin’s eyes sparkled. Leaning in, he ate the offering. “Good,” he said. “But that was a girly bite. I’m a bear.”

Silver thrust the tines into the top waffle and held up the entire thing to him, syrup and strawberry slices dripping off it onto the plate. “Better?”

Throwing back his head, Valentin laughed. And the sound, it filled the air, filled the room, filled her up. Disturbed by the powerful intensity of her reaction, she went to lower her hand, but Valentin moved with that unexpected speed to grab her wrist. Tugging her forward, he took a huge bite out of the waffle she’d speared.

His throat moved as he swallowed. Then he was back to take another bite. And another.

He’d demolished it in under a minute. “That’s more like it.”

Applause erupted into the air. When Silver glanced around, she saw they were the center of attention. Each and every face wore a smile. As if taking Silver’s glance for permission, the red-lipped maître d’ came over. “I have to admit, I wondered how it would work when I heard Valya had mated a Psy, but you can clearly handle a big hardheaded bear.”

Silver didn’t respond except to incline her head; her and Valentin’s relationship—or lack of one—was their business. Waiting until the woman had left, she lifted an eyebrow in a deliberate action. “I think we’ve eaten enough waffles.”

“Hell no. Try this.” Picking up a whole strawberry, he held it out.

Silver could have ignored it, but doing so would once again call their relationship into question. She bit into the fruit, allowed the burst of flavor to explode onto her tongue before lowering her voice to a level only he’d pick up. “I’m not her.” Not the woman he’d fallen in love with, not the woman he’d mated, not the woman who’d ridden on his bear form through the forest. “I’ll never be her again.”

Shifting forward, Valentin grazed her cheek with his knuckles. “I know,” he said, his voice gritty and that huge heart of his in his eyes. “You’re alive, Starlight. Everything else is secondary.”

She felt the truth of that in every syllable; for her life, Valentin Nikolaev would do anything.

“But,” he added, “I can’t just let go. Give me the nine more dates you promised me. After that, I’ll only bother you once in a long while when the urge to see you, scent you, becomes overwhelming.” A faint smile, too faint for a man as brash and as wild as Valentin. “You can get security to kick me out.”

Silver knew she’d never do that. Not to this man who had given her sanctuary and who’d helped save her life. “You ordered enough waffles for a herd of bears.”

Appearing mortally insulted, he picked up the fork she’d dropped onto the plate. “Bears are never in a herd, Starlight,” he said censoriously. “That’s for the four-legged leaf eaters.” He shuddered. “Have another bite.”

Silver acquiesced. By the time they left the café, she was receiving a steady stream of telepathic alerts on pieces in the human/changeling media about her and Valentin’s “adorable breakfast date.” The PsyNet Beacon had printed a curter description but had given it more space than she’d expected, especially in light of the news on Bowen Knight.

When she mentioned that to Valentin, he shrugged. “We’re the bright, sunny life-interest story to balance out the dark.” Amber retreating from his eyes, his next words were harder. “Stasya messaged me while you were in the restroom. It’s touch-and-go with Bo.”

“That’s not good news for world stability.” Keeping an eye on the PsyNet for further news on the topic, she said, “How have you explained why I’m no longer living in Denhome?”

Valentin touched his hand to her lower back as she got into his monster of a vehicle. She should’ve reminded him of her earlier comment, but it seemed a petty response to what she was certain had been an unconscious act on his part. Valentin touched the people he loved; it was part of his nature.

Asking him to stop was like asking a tree to stop giving shade under its branches. Impossible.

“Our clanmates think you’re staying in the city because you need to work on a big EmNet project that makes it hard for you to be at Denhome,” he said. “They just assumed and I didn’t correct them.” He closed the door and came around to get into the driver’s side. “We’ll keep that going for a while, then I guess . . . I’ll have to tell everyone we’ve separated because you’re really mad at me.”

Silver blinked. Changeling mates didn’t separate. “No.”

“No?”

“To effectively say you were unable to court your mate back to you, it’ll damage your standing in the eyes of not only your clan but other changelings. StoneWater doesn’t need that.” It was the stability of the region, she told herself, that was driving her decision. “We’ll think of something else.”

“Silver Fucking Mercant.” Valentin began to drive on those admiring words. “I’ll leave the solution up to that beautiful brain of yours.” Even as Valentin said that, even as he played with her as the puppy inside him wanted to do, he was scared.

It wasn’t an emotion with which he was familiar. He was an alpha bear, had been born that way, confidence flowing through his veins. Even when Silver had been in the operating theatre, he’d been grimly hopeful, not afraid. He’d flat-out refused to feel fear.

But this Silver, she was different in ways he’d never expected. She blazed as bright, her intelligence cutting, but she wasn’t the woman who’d kissed him, who’d been so patient with Dima’s tendency to cling to her, who’d admitted she loved her brother and that she’d lay down her life for her grandmother.

Neither was she the woman he’d courted and teased at the start. That woman had been ice, but he’d felt the warmth of the fire beneath, his bear drawn to the heat. This Silver was endless ice, no hint of the fire. Even when she’d reacted to his challenge with the waffles, he hadn’t been able to feel her.

It was a staggering blow.

Part of him—a huge part of him—had been convinced the strange dormant mating bond between them would speak through the massive changes in her brain. Not once had he allowed himself to so much as consider that he’d have to let her go after their ten promised dates.

He swallowed the tearing hurt that wanted to grab him by the throat, permitting himself to feel only a fierce pride and relief. Everything he’d said to her was true: for her life, he’d accept any pain. In the years and decades to come, she would change the world, and she’d do it without being crippled by an unwanted ability that had caused her so much pain it had driven his tough Starlight to cry.

For that outcome, man and bear both would accept a lifetime of the most intense loneliness if that was what awaited at the end of this road.

“Am I allowed to suggest one of the nine remaining dates?”

“As long as it’s not staring at matching organizers while drinking tasteless concoctions.” In truth, he’d do exactly that if she asked; both parts of him just wanted to be close to her. Some of the dates he planned would be for the bear, so it could sit next to her, drink her in. Later. Not yet. The bear was still too hurt to act rationally in her presence.

Silver didn’t reply for two long minutes. “My apologies,” she said afterward.

“Telepathic call?”

“A developing situation in Bahrain. A landslide that may have done major damage.” She checked something on her organizer. “Ripples are also beginning to develop from the attack on Bowen Knight.”

Anger boiled in his blood once again at the fact a good man had been taken down by a mudak who couldn’t even look him in the eye. Bears did not have any time for those who murdered from a distance. “I’ll get you to your office.” Moscow traffic wasn’t bad, with the majority of commuters choosing to use the sleek skytrains that crisscrossed the air high above the streets—it was the drivers who were insane.

Like the man who’d just stopped his vehicle in the middle of the street to exchange insults with a pedestrian. Creative insults, too. Someone’s mother was apparently a goat. No, a goat who ate shit.

Normally, Valentin would’ve found it funny. Not today.

Getting out of his vehicle, he went to lean one arm on the roof of the insult-spewing driver’s car. “My mate needs to get to work, and you’re in the way,” he said in a very reasonable tone of voice.

The bearded driver gulped. “Alpha Nikolaev.” It came out a squeak. “I’ll move.”

“Spasibo.”

Silver shot him a thankful glance once he got back in the vehicle and they continued on their way. “I’ll be liaising with my team about the situation in Bahrain for most of the journey.”

Saving hundreds, possibly thousands of lives in the process. Being Silver Fucking Mercant. His mate, and the most incredible woman he’d ever known.

Bringing the vehicle to a stop by her office, the area in front a strip of green planted with evergreens that spoke of the city’s changeling influence, he went to open her door. She swiveled around and stepped out. “Spasibo.” A pause. “The date I intended to suggest? It was to go out for ice cream.” Eyes of clear silver held his. “It seems only right.”

His bear rubbed against his skin, wanting out, wanting to wrap itself around her. “We’ll save that for last.”

Silver nodded. “I have to go—it looks like there’s been a second slip in a more remote region.” With that, she was striding into her office in those ridiculous heels she wore as if they were boots—so stable on them that he wanted to pounce on her just to see if she’d wobble.

He didn’t think she would, not his mate.

The Unknown Architect

THE ARCHITECT OF the Consortium looked at the reports feeding out through the media. Bowen Knight had been shot. Some of the articles said he’d died at the scene. Others, that he was critically wounded. No official confirmation either way from the Human Alliance. A grainy video taken by a tourist was the only available visual.

It showed a knot of people around what must be Knight’s body. His sister, Lily, was the most recognizable, her hands on her brother’s chest and her wet hair hanging around her face as she either did CPR or tried to stem bleeding. Reports said Knight had been shot in the back, however, so that’d be the exit wound. Unless, of course, the latest report out of Venice was true and the bullet had been designed to fragment inside him, causing catastrophic damage.

Chances of survival in the latter scenario: close to zero.

Knight’s violent death hadn’t been in the Architect’s plans. Yes, Knight had to die, but it was meant to be a stealthy elimination that could be put down to an accident or natural causes. The Consortium wasn’t a radical organization out for notoriety. It was a shadow organization designed to secure maximum gains for those in the group. Had the Architect’s plans gone as intended, no one would even be aware of their existence.

However, that was done. What was important now was keeping as low a profile as possible while they brought the rest of their plans to fruition.

Did one of us order the recent high-profile hit?

The Architect sent out the message via the anonymized chat room they currently used to communicate. It was clunky and old-fashioned, but it was also close to impossible to hack.

Each of the members would’ve received a phone alert of the Architect’s posting.

No confirmations.

That didn’t mean it hadn’t been masterminded by one of the group. The Architect had made an excellent decision in bringing together the world’s most ruthless and power-hungry people, people who cared nothing for morality or peace when those things didn’t serve their bottom line, but there was an inherent weakness in any such group: these individuals could not be trusted. They were also fully capable of taking an action that went against the better interests of the group if such an action would help them on a personal level.

The Architect was particularly interested in the possible motives of one member of the Consortium. He’d been approached to join the group not simply because of his position of power, but also because of his vocal dislike of racial integration on any level. He wanted Psy, humans, and changelings in their separate worlds.

It was only during Silence, he’d said, that humans had come to any kind of power.

However, the outspoken male was by no means the only possible suspect. Others believed Bowen Knight was dangerous and should be removed from the playing board. He’d proven too effective at uniting the human race into an ever-bigger financial juggernaut.

More and more family groups and businesses were adding the Human Alliance logo to their own. Bowen Knight had also managed to build strong relationships with a growing number of powerful changeling packs—and, crucially, he’d begun to meet with Psy family groups to see if business cooperation was possible between the two disparate races.

The Alliance called him its security chief, but he was its effective CEO. The ostensible leader was seventy years old, a man who was respected for his advice, but who turned up only on those occasions when the Alliance needed a media-friendly talking head to represent them. Apparently the older male was very happy with this arrangement—the Architect knew because Consortium spies had subtly sounded him out with the intention of flipping him with promises of power.

Every single spy had reached the same conclusion: Giovanni Somme is unshakably loyal to Bowen Knight. He understands he’s a figurehead, but Bowen speaks to him often and has taken his advice on more than one occasion. Before being raised to his current position, he was consigned to an obscure desk job despite his experience and decades of service to the Alliance. There is nothing we can give him that will make him turn against his leader.

Somme, however, could not step into Knight’s shoes. Knight’s loss would cripple the Alliance, but it would most probably also turn the spotlight firmly back on the Consortium, wrecking the Architect’s plans. Because, unlike the others in the Consortium, the Architect didn’t just want money or a certain level of political influence. The Architect wanted power.

If that meant cleaning house and eliminating some of the looser cannons in the Consortium, so be it.

Chapter 43

SILVER RETURNED TO the apartment complex at eleven thirty that night. She was psychically and mentally exhausted, the dual natural disasters having had a far worse impact than anyone had predicted. Evacuations were still in progress, notwithstanding that every single group and individual she’d contacted had pitched in to assist.

At this point, there was nothing EmNet or Silver could do. As always, their job was to coordinate resources in the immediate aftermath and get the correct people in position, then back off unless further assistance was requested. EmNet would remain on call, of course, but now that all necessary parties had been connected, the local coordinators held the reins.

Despite Silver’s immediate action in initiating a disaster plan, casualties were forecast to be in the hundreds.

Silver knew the result EmNet had achieved was far better than any possible outcome prior to the creation of the worldwide emergency network. Rescue had been underway in a matter of minutes, with more help coming in from across the region. None of that made the outcome a good one in her personal ledger. Losing even a single individual went against her perfectionist tendencies.

She had to learn to manage that. Today, her fierce concentration in attempting to do the impossible, save every life, had led to a pulsing headache behind her eyes. It had no doubt been exacerbated by the fact she hadn’t stopped to intake any nutrition. That wasn’t about to change—she’d forgotten to order a delivery of nutrition bars and drinks after finishing the final items in her pantry this morning.

That food had come in a hamper courtesy of StoneWater.

Silver wasn’t used to forgetting such essentials, but she wasn’t concerned, aware she was still regaining her equilibrium after life-altering surgery. The thought had just passed through her mind when she entered her home to the soft glow of a light she’d turned on via her organizer.

Placing her workbag on a nearby chair, she removed her heels and walked toward the kitchen to get a glass of water. She went motionless at first sight of her dining table. Sitting on it was a large jar of nutrient mix, beside it an even larger box of protein bars. A bowl of glowing gold glass veined with bronze sat next to that—it held a number of shiny red apples.

The variant Valentin had fed her slices from as they discussed her conditioning.

All I’m saying is, how can you possibly have all the data if you’ve never let go of your Silence to see what happens?

Deep and a little rough, his voice echoed in Silver’s head.

She took a breath when her lungs began to protest, walked on quiet feet to the table. The note was propped up beside the card she hadn’t thrown away. Picking it up, she read words written in a strong and messy black scrawl that was deeply familiar: I heard you haven’t had a food delivery. I stocked you up. All seals initialed so you know they haven’t been tampered with. Eat.—V.

Silver didn’t even bother wondering how he’d gotten in. This was a changeling complex, and he was an alpha bear. After mixing up a tall glass of the nutrient drink, she picked up a protein bar and an apple, then went to sit in the padded window seat that looked out onto the green space that was the heart of the complex.

Despite the late hour, a group of adults lingered below. They had beers in hand but weren’t really drinking, the interaction more about socializing than alcohol. At this time of night, even the usual bear-wolf animosity was dropped in favor of a quiet drink to round off the day.

Silver knew she’d be welcomed with open arms should she wander down, but she wasn’t in the correct frame of mind for casual social interaction. She’d learned to do it as a teenager to put those of the emotional races at ease . . . and she’d come to like it during her stay with StoneWater, but her memories of that time were blurred outlines, distant echoes viewed through a thick pane of glass.

She stared at her meal.

And found herself choosing to pick up her phone. The number was preprogrammed. Valentin answered within seconds, his voice a deep rumble that sank into her veins.

“Spasibo for the food,” she said. “I needed it tonight.”

“You never need to thank me for feeding you,” was the gruff response.

“Have you eaten?”

A pause, a harsh inhale. “I had a burger an hour ago, before I came out for my patrol shift—Chaos made the kids’ favorites today. Burgers and fries and pizza.”

“A healthy spread.”

Laughter, loud and unrestrained. As Valentin should always laugh. His next words, however, were in no way light. “You must’ve had a brutal day. I saw the extent of the disaster on the news bulletins.”

“Too many people died.”

“A lot more people lived.”

Silver realized she’d drunk more than half the nutrient drink. Setting it aside, she unwrapped the protein bar without hanging up on a conversation that should’ve been over in thirty seconds at most. She’d thanked the alpha for his courtesy, achieved the purpose of her call. “Are you running the patrol alone?”

“Yes. Didn’t want to inflict my mood on anyone else.”

Silver knew there were many layers to that statement. Part of it had to do with her, but not all. “Is there a problem in Denhome?”

“Nothing major. Normal idiocy.”

“Tell me.” It was a command.

A grumbling sound came over the line. “I’m the alpha here.”

Silver knew how to hold her own against him by now. “I’m an alpha-in-waiting.”

“Yes, you are.” Was that pride she heard? “Sergey’s having a difficult time accepting he’s no longer part of the command structure. He’s dominant enough that his position as a senior isn’t in doubt, but—”

“You can’t trust him like you do the men and women who supported you from day one,” Silver completed. “He must understand that.”

“He’s a bear, Starlichka.” An exasperated tone. “Why are you expecting him to be reasonable?”

“I’ll explain it to him if you wish.”

“What? By killing him?”

“I’ve gained control over my murderous impulses.”

“Hmm,” he said suspiciously. “I won’t take you up on the offer just yet. This is about union not division—I’ll give him chances to prove himself, regain his place at his alpha’s side.”

“You’re an excellent alpha.” Silver didn’t know why she said that. Valentin knew his own worth.

“I’m an excellent mate, too.” Words that held more than a little of the bear’s possessive wildness. “Never forget who you are to me. You say the word and I’ll be at your side, no matter the battle.”

Silver put down the empty protein-bar wrapper. “Even though I can give you nothing that changelings value? Not companionship, not touch, not children?”

“No. Matter. What.” A heavy pause, followed by, “Though I wouldn’t say no to a couple of pint-size Silver-Valentin hybrids. Psy do genetic matches, right? We’d make seriously tough, seriously smart kids together. Think about it.”

Silver didn’t tell him she’d already thought about it. “You’re right.”

“I am?” She could almost see his mouth drop open. “I think I’m hearing things. Give me a minute to thump sense into my skull.”

Ignoring his playful words, she told him the rational reason for her response. “The child of an alpha bear and beta Mercant is apt to be a threat on multiple levels. Also, I’ve concluded that despite those who would stop the tide, the future will be shaped by individuals who are the embodiment of Trinity.”

“You’re beta nothing.”

“As long as my grandmother lives, she is our alpha.” It was a matter of respect and of a position earned.

“Okay, I’ll give you that—I’m too scared of Ena to argue.”

Silver knew full well that Valentin Nikolaev was scared of no one.

“So,” he said, “you’re up for mingling supersmart Mercant genes with supertough, slightly aggravating bear genes?”

She rubbed her fingers over the shiny red flesh of the apple. “As long as you understand it will always be a full co-parenting agreement.”

“Huh.” A rasping sound that told her he was scratching his jaw, her mind filling with countless other times she’d seen him do the same. “I figured a Mercant—my Mercant—would be possessive and ask for full custody.”

“Attempting to take an alpha bear’s child from him would be a recipe for certain disaster.” Valentin would never give up rights to his child. “And a child with you and me as committed parents, and my family plus the clan as interested parties, would be safer than if we put that child in a vault.”

Valentin took too long to reply, so long that she thought he was about to reject her offer. She began to think up counterarguments because now that she’d decided on the clear advantages of this course of action, she refused to be thwarted.

“Sorry.” Valentin’s deep voice in her ear. “Had to pick up and relocate a wild bear cub that decided to go exploring and nearly fell into a small crevasse.”

The image reminded her of Dima and of how Valentin would throw the child high up in the air, then catch his screaming, laughing body in arms so safe, no child was ever scared when he was in the vicinity. “How is Dima? Has he recovered from his twisted ankle?” It was Nova who’d told her that bit of information during one of Silver’s calls to check on the clan.

StoneWater still considered her their alpha’s mate; it was her responsibility to live up to that status. If she didn’t, it would reflect badly on Valentin.

“He’s running around attacking unsuspecting clanmates like a champ,” Valentin confirmed. “And anytime you’re ready to create that hybrid of ours, just say the word.”

“I’ll consider the optimum timing.” Silver’s eyes fell on her timepiece. It was well past midnight. She needed to sleep so she could function at her best the next day, but she was having difficulty ending the conversation. The words “stay safe tonight” exited her mouth without her conscious volition.

“You get to bed. Dream beary dreams.”

She hung up before she could make any more inexplicable statements. When she slipped into bed not long afterward, the apple on her bedside table, it was to the realization that her headache was gone.

HUMANS Against Psy Manipulation mounted another series of attacks the following day, beginning at five a.m. Moscow time. None in the city itself, but Silver and her team were kept busy coordinating the massive emergency response that strained resources in several corners of the world.

Rapidly considering their options, she contacted BlackSea using the code she had for them under the Trinity Accord. While the water-based changelings were nominally part of the Accord, they were openly wary of it. To date, she’d only requested their help on rare occasions, because most of their people were out at sea.

At least two of today’s attacks, however, had taken place near large bodies of water, so BlackSea might have people who could assist.

The voice that answered was curt and male. “Malachai Rhys.”

“Silver Mercant on EmNet business,” she said before laying out her request.

“We’ll assist anywhere we have people,” Rhys responded at once. “What do you need?”

Silver read out her list.

Rhys told her which ones were doable before saying, “The first location is impossible. Too inland for any of our people to call it home—but there’s a small owl wing within a half hour’s flight. Not officially part of Trinity, but they’ll respond to a call for humanitarian aid.”

“Do you have their contact details?” After noting them down, she said, “If your people need resources on the ground, contact EmNet.”

“We can take care of ourselves.”

“EmNet has supply lines across all three races. Don’t be foolish because of pride or isolationist tendencies.”

A short pause, the next words Rhys spoke holding what might’ve been bemusement. “When I heard Valentin Nikolaev mated you, I thought it must be a mistake. Now I see you’re more than capable of handling an alpha bear. As you said, Ms. Mercant, we won’t be foolish, and we will access resources as needed.”

He hung up.

Silver continued to work.

“Silver?” Devi stuck her head around the corner of Silver’s office, the StoneWater clanmate having asked if she could intern at EmNet. Silver had cleared it on the understanding that the internship wouldn’t lead to a permanent position. Devi had to put in her time, gain the same level of experience as others on the team before she could apply for any such position.

“You’ve completed the phone contacts I asked you to make?” she asked the younger woman.

“Yes, but I have a call for you from Lily Knight. She says she can’t get through to you on your direct line.”

Silver glanced at the small mobile comm on her desk. Every single line was running hot, the calls going to her team while she dealt with the most critical matters. “Put her through on my private phone.”

The call came in on visual.

“Lily,” she said, taking in the gray-eyed woman of Asian descent who was the Human Alliance’s highly photogenic communications liaison.

Over their acquaintance, Silver had come to appreciate that Lily Knight wasn’t only a pretty face; the other woman had a titanium spine and an unflinching work ethic that Silver had relied on more than once already—but even the expert makeup on Lily’s face couldn’t hide the deep purple shadows under her eyes. “Is it Bowen?”

Chapter 44

LILY SHOOK HER head. “No change.” Her cheeks were hollow, her skin devoid of its usual health. “I wanted to let you know we’re hearing rumors that the anti-Trinity human group might have been funded by the Patel Conglomerate.”

Silver did a quick PsyNet search, found the data. “The Patel Conglomerate’s major assets are in energy resources—they’ll suffer no negative effects should Trinity succeed.” United or divided, the world needed energy.

Lily ran a hand through her hair, the silky black strands falling back perfectly in place around her face afterward. “I don’t think this had anything to do with economic factors—not like with the Consortium.”

Silver ignored the messages flashing up on her organizer and lighting up her telepathic senses. “Why?” she asked Lily, just as her search brought up another Patel asset: a small pharmaceutical company that specialized in the development of cutting-edge drugs.

An easy source of a unique poison.

“Akshay Patel,” Lily told her, “the CEO, has consistently opposed integration when we’ve raised it within the Alliance. He believes humans can only thrive if we shut out the other groups and grow strong behind impenetrable walls.”

“Do you want me to pass on this information to Kaleb?” From where it would go to the Ruling Coalition of the Psy.

“No. The situation is being handled.” Lily’s eyes flicked left and down. “I wanted you to know in case you run into roadblocks where the Patel Conglomerate controls the workforce. They employ a lot of people in certain areas.”

“Thank you.”

“But,” Lily added, “you can tell your mate—it’ll save me looping him in. According to my brother, the bears have claimed us as family and can be trusted to look out for our interests.” Lily’s voice hitched. “Until Bo wakes to say any different, I’m going with his judgment calls.”

After rubbing at her face, the drawn woman glanced at her watch. “I have to go. Press conference in two minutes. Anything you want me to put out there?”

“If you could drop in a mention of EmNet’s work dealing with the current emergencies, it would help increase our standing in the eyes of the world.” The less red tape and intransigence Silver had to deal with, the better.

“Consider it done.” Lily signed off.

Making a note to tell Valentin about Akshay Patel, Silver began to check the backlog of messages and data. She wasn’t the least surprised when she looked up some time later to find an alpha bear seated in the large chair on the other side of her desk. It was as if some part of her had known he was coming.

“Here.” He pushed across a disposable cup. “Got it at the Psy place down the road.”

The experimental Psy café, Silver knew, had been created by Sahara Kyriakus as a place for Psy to learn to socialize with those of all races, hopefully leading to more interracial pairings, particularly between Psy and humans. The PsyNet needed humans, but their compliance couldn’t be forced. Sahara was of the opinion that love would win the day. The menu had everything from tasteless protein bars to triple-chocolate mochas with whipped cream and sugared almonds on top.

From what Silver had seen, it was a thriving success among college-age adults. Curiosity was a powerful force. At least for Psy and changelings. In humans, it was tempered by more than a century of distrust when it came to the Psy. Sahara hadn’t yet worked out how to ease human minds so they’d patronize the café.

Valentin, however, clearly had no compunctions about walking into it.

Picking up the disposable cup, she took a cautious sip: hot nutrient drink lightly flavored with what might’ve been peach. “Spasibo.”

“What did I say about thanking me for feeding you?” His smile took the sting out of the rumbling chastisement. “Can you break for a minute?”

“Yes.” A pause to intake the drink and loosen her tense muscles was only sensible. “I’ll have to stay connected to the Net and take any urgent calls that come in.”

“No problem. I just have someone with me who was missing you.” Turning back, he whistled.

A little body ran pell-mell into the office. Dima’s face lit up at first sight of her. “Siva!” Running around her desk, he lifted up his arms.

It would’ve been honest and rational to tell the cub that she was no longer interested in such tactile contact, but she’d never been cruel. Not under Silence and not outside of it. This child didn’t understand the change in her, saw her only as the woman who’d treated him with care during their acquaintance.

“Dima.” Easily lifting him up despite his dense changeling build, she placed him on her lap. “Have you been behaving?”

An enthusiastic shake of his head. “I climbed up the side of Denhome until Mama said if I didn’t come down, I’d be in time-out for a week.”

“I see.” She redirected a telepathic contact to one of her team who was also telepathic. “Did you obey her instructions?”

A gleeful grin. “I fell down and Mama caught me.” Curling up into her lap, he said, “Wanna see my bear?”

Used to the bear desire to show off, Silver nodded. And the neatly dressed little boy in her lap turned into a shower of light that formed itself into the shape of a small white bear who stood up and growled at her—as if saying “boo!”

“He’s a polar bear.” Silver had not been expecting that.

“Chaos’s genes,” Valentin said with a smile.

Her comm rang at that instant with a call she had to answer. Instead of being impatient, Dima lay quietly in Silver’s lap, her hand on the pristine white of his fur. Valentin, meanwhile, sat across from her doing something on his own phone, a scowl on his face. Halfway through, Dima shifted into a naked little boy who started to draw on the blotter on her desk while she made sure his small body didn’t slip off her lap.

“Thank you, I appreciate the promptness of your response,” Silver said, finishing off the call.

Dima turned to face her the instant she was done.

“Did you come to the city to visit me,” she asked, “or do you have other plans?”

“Just to see you!” An exuberance of smiles before he whispered, “I hid in Uncle Mishka’s truck, but he smelled me.” Wriggling up after that breathless recitation, he wrapped his arms around her neck. “I miss you, Siva. Are you gonna come back to Denhome soon?”

Silver’s gaze met Valentin’s over the top of the little boy’s head. And that huge heart, it was right there. “Come on, Dima,” he said. “We’d better let Silver finish her work.”

The child known for being a barnacle immediately let go, the tone in Valentin’s voice clearly that of an alpha speaking to one of his clan. “Bye, Siva.” A big kiss pressed to her cheek. “Did you drink your food? Uncle Mishka says it’ll make you strong.”

Releasing the boy’s weight as he scrambled off her lap, Silver picked up the cup and took a long drink. “I’ll finish it,” she promised. “Try not to fall off any more walls. You’re only a small bear.”

“I’m going to be big like my papa!” Running around to Valentin on that determined declaration, he said, “I got no clothes now.”

“What’re you going to do?” Valentin asked. “We are in Moscow—you might be busted for public nakedness.”

Dima shifted again.

Laughing, Valentin picked him up, holding the cub against his chest. “You think you’ll be free tonight?” he asked Silver.

She shook her head. “I’m likely to be here all through the night.” She’d have to send her assistant home for a change of clothes at some point.

Valentin just nodded and left holding Dima, who was waving madly with one paw over his shoulder. Her office felt strangely empty after they were gone, as if all the air had been sucked out of it. Silver tried to shake off the odd sensation, but she found herself getting up and standing by the large window behind her desk, the drink in hand.

Valentin and Dima exited the building a few minutes later. Valentin paused, looked up. So did the small white bear. They both smiled and waved. Silver lifted her cup in a silent salute, her free hand rising to press against the glass. Seconds later, they were gone, swallowed up in the flow of traffic around the building—or they should’ve been. She saw them every step of the way, irrespective of how many others walked around them.

When they finally disappeared into the bullet-train station in the distance, Valentin likely having left his vehicle in the parking garage below the station, she felt the loss like a cut inside her. The wrench was startling and it had her listening. But there was nothing she wouldn’t normally hear. Her audio telepathy was dead.

Her comm began to beep. A telepathic alert sounded in her brain.

Turning away from the window, she got back to work. But she made sure to finish the drink. Right when she would’ve begun to run out of energy again, a delivery was made to the office from the same café. Sandwiches and drinks for the entire office.

“Signed for by Alpha Nikolaev,” the Psy deliveryman said. “All prepared under the watch of a StoneWater employee.”

Devi took care to scent all the food regardless. “Valentin told me to make sure,” she said to Silver. “It’s sooooo cute how he looks after you. I hope my mate feeds me, too.”

Silver ate the sandwich marked with her name—the spread was the same one she’d enjoyed in Denhome—and she drank the accompanying nutrients.

When Valentin messaged her two hours later to check how events were developing, she removed her earpiece and took the call on her personal phone. “The humanitarian situation is under control,” she told him. “The death toll currently stands at five hundred and seven.” That was five hundred and seven too many for Silver. “The majority died in the initial blasts, but we’ve lost at least a hundred people as a result of the injuries they sustained during the attacks.”

“You doing okay, Starlight?”

“Given my tiredness, my efficiency is no longer at its peak, but I haven’t made any errors.” Silver’s eye fell on the empty drink container on her desk. “The food was appreciated.”

“You’re being sneaky, thanking me by using fancy words.”

Silver toed off her heels, flexed her feet. “I was brought up to be polite.”

“Hang around with me long enough, and we’ll change that.”

Hearing a horn in the background, she said, “Are you in the city?”

“Ran in some of the young clan soldiers for a party. One of us will be coming back in to pick them up in a few hours.”

“If you’d rather just stay in the city, you can use my apartment.” Her offer had nothing to do with emotion; she was just repaying the favor StoneWater had done her.

“You know what, Starlight? I’m going to take you up on that. I need to crash anyway—did a double shift yesterday.”

“I’ll call complex security, clear you in. Not that you need it.”

A deep chuckle. “Hopefully my bigfoot-sized body won’t break your couch.”

“Take the bed. You’ll be uncomfortable on the couch.” Not thinking too hard about what that would mean for her when she went to bed, she said, “I have some information I need to give you. It’s from Lily Knight.”

Another urgent call lit up her comm screen just as she finished briefing him about the Patel Conglomerate. “I have to go.” It was ten minutes later that she contacted complex security to let them know Valentin was cleared.

They laughed, delight in their tone.

“Of course he is,” the woman on the other end said. “He’s your mate. Your scent imprint is all over him.”

Silver was still thinking about the latter when she finally left her office. It was now five in the morning, and she’d sent her local staff home three hours earlier. They’d return to the office at eight, while she’d come in at nine—and she’d be on call to her human deputy her entire rest period.

Her phone rang just as she reached the complex. “Sergeant,” she said. “A problem?”

“No. I saw you’d logged off and wanted to let you know I appreciate the vote of confidence. I know this incident is way beyond anything else I’ve handled.”

Silver wasn’t used to delegating, but her team wouldn’t function at peak efficiency if she insisted on doing everything herself. “I trust your readiness for the task,” she told the human male. “But don’t hesitate to call me if it’s something that needs my input.”

“Will do.”

“I’ll speak to you after I wake, so please make sure you’re ready to deliver a concise briefing to bring me up to speed.”

“Consider it done, Chief.” He signed off before she could remind him her actual title was Director of EmNet—not that she expected her team to use that. She’d learned from watching Valentin lead, understood that informality did not mean a lack of respect and that it could form deeper bonds over time.

Clearing herself into the complex using the retinal scanner, she didn’t jump when a wolf prowled up off the grass inside and, loping up to the pathway, padded beside her all the way to her apartment. She recognized that black coat with its fine threads of bronze as Margo Lucenko, head of complex security and senior member of BlackEdge. “Spasibo,” she said once she reached her apartment.

The wolf didn’t leave until Silver had opened her door and it had padded inside to check out the scents. Only after Margo was satisfied the area was safe did she step back and give Silver a nod before heading out. Silver shut the door, kicked off her shoes, and, going into the bedroom, placed her organizer and purse on the bedside table.

Her bed was made, with no visible signs of Valentin’s presence. But when she slipped into bed after completing her nightly routine, the warm, earthy scent of him seeped into every cell of her body. Silver slipped into sleep in a heartbeat, Valentin wrapped around her like a blanket.

The Human Alliance

LILY HAD BEEN asked to take over the communications officer role in the Alliance because she had a natural ability to put people at ease in any given situation. She was also very good at judging the media currents and had the technical skills to ensure the Alliance’s message got through without disruption.

The work suited her, but she’d always understood that she was the conduit, and that was fine with her. She didn’t want to be the person who made the decisions. That was Bo’s role and he’d been born for it.

“We need you,” she said to her brother, her hand locked tight with his where it lay against the white sheet of the hospital bed. “The others want to bring Akshay Patel in, torture the truth out of him, even though all we have are rumors.” She swallowed. “They’re angry and hurting, and it’s pushing them into unconscionable decisions. I’ve managed to pull them back for now by reminding them you wouldn’t green-light something like that.”

Once, he might have. Her brother wasn’t perfect—he’d made mistakes, many of them. But he’d learned, become a true leader, one who understood that a society couldn’t be built on shadows and lies. “We’re watching the Patels and their associates very closely. I’ve done some hacking, gotten a line into their communications systems.” Beyond her being the face of the Alliance, that was her greatest skill.

“I don’t think Akshay Patel is connected with the Consortium. From everything we know, the Consortium is made up of the power-hungry from all three races, and HAPMA wants humans to stay separate.” She paused. “Of course, he could be a part of the Consortium for his own ends. They do both want Trinity to fail, after all.”

And Akshay Patel was ruthless enough to work with his enemies and to use HAPMA so long as their goals aligned with his. “This isn’t what I’m good at, Bo.” She could see those facts, but she didn’t know how to use them to get the answers they needed. “The others on your team are so angry that they’re blinded by their rage. You’re our center and our compass.”

Her brother had single-handedly brought humans out of obscurity. He was the Human Alliance. Lose him and they’d lose everything. “I need you.” A raspy whisper. “Wake up, Bo. Please.”

But her strong, powerful brother remained silent, his body quiet, when Bo was all tightly controlled energy, vividly alive even when he wasn’t in motion. The doctors had told her there was a high chance he might never wake—and if that ended up being their final conclusion, she’d follow Bo’s wishes and pull the plug. Her brother had made it clear that if he was ever in this position, they were to harvest his brain and find out what was happening with the telepath-blocking chip.

“Not yet,” Lily whispered. “I know you’re too tough to die. We’ll wait.”

Chapter 45

VALENTIN THREW PAVEL against one wall, his twin against the other. They both took the impact with audible “oofs” of sound, shook themselves off. Pavel was the one to speak. “What the hell, Valya?”

“The baby is sleeping.” He pinned them to the spot with his gaze. “Keep it down.”

The other man settled his abused shoulders, a scowl on his face. “Yasha and I were just wrestling. Not being loud.”

“Your audience was being loud.” He glared at the sheepish-appearing group of bears now looking anywhere but at him; most were still in their pajamas as they geared up for an early start. “Did I hear bets being placed?”

Yakov rubbed the back of his neck, a blush of color across his cheekbones. “Sorry.” He and Pavel came to join Valentin. “How’s Silver?”

Of all Valentin’s clan, only his seconds and Nova knew exactly what had happened. “She’s driving herself hard.” It infuriated him that she wasn’t taking care of herself as she should, but he was more than capable of picking up the slack—hell, he’d pet and cosset her if she wouldn’t strike him dead where he stood for daring.

Damn but he loved her. “She’s agreed to have kids with me.”

Yakov blinked. “Huh. Really? Even after they rewired her brain?”

“Yes.”

Pavel’s dimpled smile was pure joy. “That’s great news, Valya.”

Valentin nodded, the puppy inside him a little bruised but not broken. Because she’d invited him into her home, told him to sleep in her bed, eaten the food he sent her—and banned him from telling anyone they weren’t mated anymore. Not that Valentin believed the latter. Her cold, beautiful starlight might be missing inside him, but it wasn’t gone.

“What’s the situation with the BlackEdge border?” he asked after forcing his mind off his mate with conscious effort of will.

“Juveniles playing ‘I dare you.’”

“Bet they weren’t as good as we were when we played that game,” Pavel said.

“Of course not.” Grinning, Yakov bumped fists with his twin. “Anyway, I cracked the heads of ours; Stasya told BlackEdge of theirs. It’s sorted.”

“Good.” Valentin’s phone buzzed with an incoming message.

Reading it, he felt his heart kick.

Monique Ling has just arrived.—Ivan

Ivan Mercant was Silver’s cousin and part of the security team at the apartment building where she’d lived prior to the attempt on her life. Valentin had reached out to the man after he’d spoken to Grandmother Mercant and confirmed that Ivan had finally been cleared of any involvement in Silver’s attempted poisoning; it had taken so long because he was the one Mercant perfectly placed to get the poison into Silver’s apartment.

Ena had fully briefed Ivan as soon as he was eliminated from the suspect list.

As for Monique Ling, she’d thrown Ena by turning out to have a powerful natural shield.

“You would’ve scanned her if she hadn’t?” Valentin had asked, his arms folded and his opinion of the breach of privacy clear.

“Integrity is a useless relic when my granddaughter’s life is at stake.”

“Silver wouldn’t thank you for it.” He knew his Starlight; she’d made her own choices, and they weren’t always the same as Ena’s.

“The point is moot since I couldn’t get into Monique Ling’s head.”

Ena was certain she’d gained all possible information from the woman regardless, but Valentin wasn’t so sure. Conversational interaction was not Ena’s forte.

I’m on my way, he messaged back.

After telling his seconds what was up, he left for the city. It was pure chance that he spotted his mother moving through the trees in her bear form; Galina Evanova didn’t normally come this close to Denhome. Heart thundering, he halted the car, stepped out . . . and she pounded away.

Valentin could’ve caught her, but that would’ve achieved nothing.

His soul full of a sadness that was more than a decade old, he got back into the rugged all-wheel drive and drove on.

It took Monique Ling three minutes to open the door after he knocked. Her mahogany brown hair was damp but combed straight, her bangs a thick wedge across her forehead, and her body clad in loose white pants and a white top. “Oh!” Her bow of a mouth curved. “You’re Silver’s man! I saw it on the comm channels!”

“I am.” Valentin leaned against the doorjamb, arms folded and a smile on his face. Bears could be charming. Today, he’d be charming. He had a feeling Monique would react better to charming than to Ena’s brand of frosty politeness. “I was wondering if I could talk to you?”

“Sure!” She opened her door wide, all girlish happiness, despite the fact she was thirty-three years of age. “How’s Silver?” Big and round brown eyes looked at him with an earnest expression. “She’s icy, you know, in that Psy way. But she was always nice to me, even when I bothered her about random things like which color of cream was her favorite.”

Valentin quickly reevaluated his first impression of Monique Ling; she was far more emotionally perceptive than she might appear on first glance. “She’s my mate,” he said with a wicked smile. “So by definition she’s doing great.”

“Ha! That’s bear logic for you.” Clapping her hands, Monique walked him in. “I dated a bear once. Most fun I had in years.”

Monique’s living area was set up in a way similar to Silver’s neighboring apartment, with the windows overlooking the city. But that was where the similarities stopped—where Silver’s was elegant gray and pristine, Monique’s was a startling chaos of colorful clothes and objects against white: white sofas, white walls, white table, white chairs. One shoe he could see was bright red, a purse on a sofa vivid blue.

“Excuse the mess,” Monique said with the bubbly insouciance of a woman used to men doing as she wished.

Valentin found her sweet the same way he found other pretty, harmless things sweet. His bear would eat her alive in a second. That same bear wouldn’t dare even take a bite out of Silver unless they were playing. His mate was titanium fire to Monique’s gentle flame.

“This is nothing compared to Denhome after a big party,” he said with a grin. “Imagine a whole clan of drunk bears and party decorations. I once saw my second-in-command fast asleep in bear form—some wit had decorated her with string lights and crepe paper after painting her claws pink.” Stasya had not been amused at the twins’ stroke of drunken genius—after she stopped laughing. “Just when the bears responsible thought she’d forgotten the incident, they happened to get drunk at a party and woke to find themselves encased in melted chocolate that had gone hard.”

“Oh, that sounds like so much fun.” Monique glowed. “You want coffee? I was just making some.”

“I wouldn’t say no.” He followed her to the kitchen area, keeping things casual. “You know Silver’s moved out?”

“I heard.” Monique’s lips turned down. “I really liked her as a neighbor—she was the kind of person I knew would respond if I ever screamed, you know? She wouldn’t just ignore it.”

Yes, that was his Starlight. “Part of the reason she moved was because of a possible security breach.”

“Her grandmother asked me about that on a comm call.” Monique pushed the Start button on her coffee machine. “I was so surprised—this place is locked up tight.” She turned, leaning her hip against the counter. “Did they steal anything important?”

Valentin knew from Ena that she’d framed the breach as aimed at stealing restricted data rather than an attack against Silver. “Doesn’t look like it. Silver had taken all her electronics to work with her, so they were out of luck.”

“I do that, too,” Monique confided as the rich scent of coffee filtered into the air. “I deal with so much classified corporate information that it’s just not worth the risk.”

“Silver said you had a high-powered position.” He couldn’t quite marry this bouncy woman with a suit-and-tie corporate. “In fashion, right?”

“She remembered!” A beaming smile as she turned to pour their cups of coffee, her machine one of the fastest brewers on the market. “I wish I could help you figure out who might’ve breached her security, but I swear I didn’t see anyone suspicious. I would’ve remembered—my mom always says my mouth might be a runaway train, but my memory is a steel trap.” She handed him a mug of coffee. “And the people I’ve brought home with me have all been people I trust.”

There it was. “You’re searching for a mate?” He quickly followed with, “My eldest sister’s doing that at the moment.” Rolling his eyes, he added, “I have to mop up all the broken hearts she leaves in her wake.” Thankfully, Pieter’s wasn’t one—a single kiss and the two had realized they were meant to be friends. “The woman’s giving bears a bad name.”

Laughing, Monique said, “I just can’t find the right man or woman.” She took a sip of her coffee, sighed. “I’m totally open to anyone, but most people can’t handle the fact I easily earn five times a normal income. Or if they can handle it, they want me to spend all my money on them. I love buying gifts, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want it to be expected.”

Valentin nodded, suddenly realizing he and Silver had never once discussed finances. She probably made ten times a normal salary. As alpha of StoneWater, he was the CEO of their business ventures, but he didn’t think of that money as his—it was the clan’s. He drew the same income as his senior staff, nothing extravagant. The rest of the money went toward raising and educating their cubs, keeping their territory strong, and further developing their business interests to the betterment of the clan as a whole.

He wondered what Silver would say to that . . . and realized she’d understand exactly how the clan worked. From all he’d seen, the Mercants functioned the same way. “I had the same trouble until I found Silver,” he said to Monique. “Then, boom.” He thumped his fist against his chest.

Monique made a melting face. “Oh, that is so romantic.”

“Of course, she made me work for it,” Valentin admitted before casually asking, “You didn’t have any luck the last time you were in Moscow? There might’ve been an earlier attempt to get into Silver’s apartment, so we’re looking at anyone who was in the building during the time frame.”

“Not really.” Monique bit her lower lip. “I mean, there was Jai Shivani from work, but it never went anywhere and he’s hardly the type to do industrial espionage. Straight as a ruler, you know?”

Valentin’s instincts stirred. “Was he the only one?”

“Yup. I was really busy with work, hardly any time to play. Even Jai was only here maybe four times.” A conspiratorial grin. “One time, the power went out when some big-deal processor melted down or something. That was fun. Too much fun. I ended up with the worst hangover.”

Power didn’t usually go out in buildings like this one; there were fail-safes upon fail-safes. Which was why Ena had come to suspect that someone had made very sure the power would hiccup that night. To date, however, she’d found nothing to confirm that Silver had been the target of that hiccup—the building housed countless high-profile individuals.

“Vodka?”

“What else? I’m in Russia!” Monique giggled. “Actually, there might’ve been a bottle of tequila involved, too.”

Valentin grinned. “You weren’t worried about mixing business with pleasure?”

Monique waved a hand. “Jai is in accounts. We hardly ever see each other except at the company Christmas party.”

Valentin stayed another fifteen minutes but didn’t learn anything else that might be useful. His next stop was the security-control station, where Ivan Mercant brought up the security feeds from the night of the power cut.

Ena and Arwen had already been through these, but that was before Ivan was cleared. The other man’s demeanor changed from all business to ruthlessness camouflaged by a flawless black suit the instant he saw the gap in the recording. “This shouldn’t happen,” Silver’s cousin said, his blue eyes hard. “The security system has multiple redundancies. It should always stay on, power outage or not.”

“Why didn’t you notice this at the time?”

Ivan found his organizer, checked the dates. “I was on leave a week on either side of the incident. My return briefing wouldn’t have covered this.” He put down the organizer. “I would say I can’t believe this was missed, except that the individual noted as being on duty that night was a man I had to fire only a month later when he came to work high.”

“Could he be the inside man?” Valentin asked. “Someone had to turn off the security system.”

“If he was,” Ivan replied, “we can’t question him. While high one night, he fell into the Moskva and drowned. He was also a talker—I wouldn’t have trusted him with any kind of a conspiracy that required keeping his mouth shut. I’ll have Arwen trace his finances regardless.”

Valentin stared at the blackness of the missing footage. And thought of what Silver had told him of a family with strong ties to the energy market—and access to complex chemicals—whose leader was against racial integration, against Trinity, to the point that he might be funding a terrorist organization. “Anyone on your team connected to the Patel family?”

“Human conglomerate headed by Akshay Patel?”

Of course a Mercant would have that information in his perfectly coiffured head. “That’s the one.”

“Not according to my current data, but I’ll do some digging.”

“If the cameras went off, does that mean Silver’s internal security devices would’ve also gone off?”

“Yes. I helped her with the setup, and we locked them into the power grid to guard against failure.” His face displayed no expression, but had the very dangerous and highly trained man been a bear, Valentin would’ve said he was pissed. “I never considered that an enemy would take down the entire power grid to get to her—that shouldn’t even be possible with the safeguards in place.”

Yet someone had pulled it off, and the end result was that for twenty minutes that night, Silver’s apartment had been open to intrusion. “Someone really wanted her off the chessboard.” Valentin’s claws shoved against the skin of his fingertips.

“I’ll work on unearthing the traitor in our midst,” Ivan said flatly.

Valentin had a feeling that if there was a traitor, his cover wouldn’t last long with Ivan Mercant on the trail. The man reminded him of a spy from the silver screen, suave and handsome on the surface, deadly underneath.

Leaving the other man to his task, Valentin went to his car, used the car’s system to call Pavel. “I need you to find out about a man named Jai Shivani who works in the Moscow branch of the same company as Monique Ling. Look for any connections to the Patel family—of the Patel Conglomerate, headed by Akshay Patel.”

“Gimme a few minutes.” The other man hung up.

As it was, Pavel didn’t return the call until Valentin was about to get out at Silver’s complex, the dash clock showing it was eight forty. She wouldn’t normally be home at this time, but given how late she’d worked, Valentin was hoping she’d gotten some extra rest. He wasn’t sure he could control his protective instincts if she was running herself ragged. The possibility of a telepathic whack on the head or no, he might throw her over his shoulder and kidnap her to his lair.

“Jai Shivani is related to the Patels. Third cousin twice removed,” Pavel said. “But, distant relatives or not, he went to the same boarding school as Akshay Patel, and they seem close in the school photos I was able to unearth.”

“Boarding school probably made them closer than many siblings.”

“Fewer connections between them in their adult lives,” Pavel added, “but they both go to certain parts of the world at the same time every year. Family reunions maybe.”

Or planning sessions.

“Send me everything you have.” Once that information came through, Valentin had a decision to make: He knew the Human Alliance had asked everyone to wait, but it was focused on Akshay Patel. Jai Shivani was a small fish not even on their radar, according to the information they’d shared with Silver. The man was also in Moscow. Literally a ten-minute drive away.

Valentin’s instincts raged at him to head that way, eliminate a possible threat on his mate’s life. But Silver was also the head of EmNet and couldn’t afford to lose the Alliance’s trust.

Claws releasing, he gritted his teeth, made a call.

“I want to talk to him,” he said bluntly to Lily Knight after explaining that Jai Shivani’s name had come up in the course of another investigation. “I’m right here, and I can be a scary bastard.” He was very careful not to promise to hand the man over to the Alliance—if Shivani had orchestrated the attempt on Silver’s life, his own life was forfeit.

Bears didn’t take prisoners.

“I can’t make that decision,” Lily replied. “I need to talk to the leadership.” She returned his call five minutes later. “They want a human observer with you. Your mate has one working for her in the main EmNet office, a man named Erik Jahnssen.”

“Done.” Valentin knew he could drive away right now and Silver would never know about the upcoming confrontation. Of course, that kind of secret was how stupid bears lost their women.

Valentin was not a stupid bear.

He walked to her apartment, knocked.

Chapter 46

SILVER OPENED HER door seconds after Valentin’s knock, already dressed in a gray pantsuit with a white shirt and sky-high heels. Her hair was also up in that fancy twist that made his hands itch to mess it up. “Valentin.” Her eyes scanned his face. “Is something wrong?”

He wanted to yell at her. She had lines of exhaustion on her face, shadows under her eyes. “You have a half hour?” It came out a rumbling growl, his bear was so mad at her. “It’s important.”

She glanced at the complicated timepiece on her wrist, the face a large square that displayed all kinds of data. “My deputy is meant to log off at nine. I’ll ask him to take an extra thirty minutes.”

That she’d cleared her schedule without asking him why he needed her time, it crashed right through him, slayed him. Angry though it was, his bear rubbed against the inside of his skin, wanting her fingers running through its fur, her weight on its body as the bear took her for another ride. “Eat first,” he ordered.

“I’ll grab a bar.” She did exactly that and was in the car with him two minutes later.

“We also need Erik Jahnssen from your office.”

Again, she made the call without questioning why.

“You should be resting.” The words burst out, a loud thunder of sound. “This is not how you recover from neurosurgery!”

She chewed a bite of her bar, swallowed. “I’ll take that under advisement.” A calm statement that made it clear she’d do nothing of the sort.

“Grr.” Valentin made his claws slide back in. “You are an infuriating woman, Starlichka.”

When he stopped at the Psy café and grabbed her a hot nutrient drink, she took it but gave him a stern look. “Valentin, the bar was enough nutrition. You’ll increase my weight if you keep feeding me.”

He fought the urge to tumble her into his lap, kiss her, and kiss her until she laughed and became his Silver again, the one who said things like that to him but who also loved him. “Because I’m a gentleman bear,” he grumbled, “I won’t point out that a woman who barely sleeps is never going to get there. But if it ever happens, it’ll just give me more of you to cuddle.”

Silver focused pointedly on her organizer, drink in hand. “Are we crossing off another date on your list, this time with an observer?”

“Very funny.” His worst scowl had zero effect on his mate. It was like she was immune. “Do you think I’d waste a date by putting a time limit on it?” Snorting, he shook his head . . . just as she took a sip of her drink.

Bear satisfied, he said, “No, I just had a very interesting conversation with Monique Ling.”

“Monique?” She took another sip. “Everything I know of her—and I dug deep when I first met her—says she has no political or fanatical leanings.”

“No, but at least one of the men she brought home might.”

When he told her what he’d learned, she turned off the organizer and angled herself to better face him, her fingers still around the drink. “Have you told Grandmother?”

“No. I want to know if we’re right first.”

Silver nodded at once. “Agreed.” The possibility of Silver’s poisoner being a Mercant had caused a deep schism in Ena, calling all her beliefs about family, about loyalty, into question.

To heal that schism and return her grandmother’s absolute trust in the bonds of family, they had to give her categorical proof that no Mercant had been involved. “Erik is waiting outside his apartment down this street.”

Silver briefed the rawboned human male after they picked him up—even after a short acquaintance, she knew he could be trusted to keep the secret. According to the psychological profile run by a previous employer, if Erik had a flaw, it was that he tended to be loyal to people long after they’d failed to live up to that loyalty.

At this point, after watching her work from her hospital bed to handle crises with no bias motivated by race, creed, or any other divisive factor, he’d given that loyalty to Silver.

“I have to make sure you two don’t torture this dude?” Erik made a face, his eyes—a pale brownish-hazel—dubious, and stubble rough on the red-flushed skin of his jaw. “If he tried to poison Silver,” he said in his Dutch-accented Russian, “I’m happy to help you pound the mudak into dust.”

“I like you,” Valentin said with a baring of teeth, just as his phone rang.

Tapping an earpiece Silver knew he couldn’t stand but that was useful for private conversations, he said, “Pasha, what have you got?” He listened, asked several more questions before hanging up.

She wasn’t the least surprised when he pulled out the earpiece and threw it onto the dash. Shoving a hand through the thickness of his hair, he said, “The possible asshole is still at his apartment—surfing the news sites on his comm. His focus seems to be the recent spate of HAPMA attacks.”

“Pavel does realize hacking is illegal?” Silver curled her fingers into her hand when those fingers wanted to reach out and straighten the strands of Valentin’s hair about to fall into his eyes.

“Who said anything about hacking?” Valentin’s innocent look wouldn’t have fooled a four-year-old. “Here’s how we do the interrogation—you be scary and I’ll be scarier.”

“To a human with ordinary shields,” Silver said coolly, “I am far scarier than you.”

Valentin’s claws sprung out, curved and razor sharp. “What do you want to bet?”

Silver took in those deadly claws. “If you sharpen them to a point, perhaps.”

Both men laughed, but it was Valentin’s laughter that sank into her bones. “Silver Fucking Mercant.” An affectionate look as he pulled into an open parking space on the street.

Getting out, he went around to open her door. “Ready?”

“Let’s do this.” She held eyes that had gone amber when he laughed, still held the bear’s delight. “The loser in the scariness stakes has to eat the other’s choice of food for a day. Erik is the challenge witness and judge.”

A grinning Erik clapped his hands once. “I accept.”

Valentin shuddered. “Now I have to be super scary.” He lifted her out of the vehicle, the move so absentminded she didn’t think he was being purposefully aggressive.

As she and Erik walked with him into the secure apartment building, their way cleared by Pavel in some no-doubt illegal fashion, she was glad she’d worn her highest heels. With Valentin wearing work boots, it put them on a somewhat even footing—he was still taller and much bigger, but they . . . matched.

Match or not, however, it felt as if Valentin took up all the room in the elevator, his big body brushing against hers. Heat and earth and warmth, that was Valentin. Silver told herself to step away, but they were already at the correct floor, and the doors were opening to reveal a neatly carpeted hallway.

Jai Shivani’s apartment was at the very end.

Valentin had Erik push the doorbell, while nudging Silver out of the way of the security camera that allowed the inhabitant of the apartment to see who was standing at his door. The touch was gentle, very un-bearlike if you didn’t understand that bears could be tender with those they loved.

The bear, who stayed out of sight of the camera with Silver, loved her deeply.

“Yes?” The clipped query came through the intercom.

“Oh, hi. I’m, er, your neighbor from downstairs.” Erik sounded appropriately hesitant. “Could we speak?”

A telling pause. Followed by, “About what?”

“My wife and I were hoping to talk you into selling your place.”

“It’s not for sale.”

“Just listen to my offer.”

The camera swiveled without warning, focusing on Valentin and Silver.

“Why has your scent become pungent with fear sweat?” Valentin rumbled. “We simply wish to talk.”

“Get out or I’m calling security.” This time the tremor in Shivani’s voice was unmistakable.

Valentin turned to her and Erik when Jai Shivani hung up. “I asked nicely.”

“You did,” their human observer said. “Verified. I even got it on tape.” He held up his phone.

Smile dangerous, Valentin slammed his body into the door. It crumpled like tin. Two seconds after that, he was inside the apartment.

Silver made her way more sedately through the wrecked door—quite confident of Valentin’s ability to lock down their target and Pavel’s to blind security. Erik entered behind her. “You’re both scarier than me,” he said. “I’ll just observe like I’m meant to.”

Silver arrived in time to see a man with light brown skin and dark eyes, his rounded belly pushing at the buttons of his blue shirt and his hair caught back in a tail, put up his hands. His phone lay smashed in a corner. Valentin’s clawed hand was around his throat. “Don’t hurt me,” Jai Shivani whimpered, perspiration dotting his brow. “I haven’t done anything.”

“This should be easy to clear up, then,” Silver said with her iciest smile. “I’ll do a telepathic scan.”

Erik didn’t interrupt, the human member of her team well aware of Silver’s ethical lines.

Jai Shivani didn’t have that advantage. All the blood drained from his face, his skin going a sickly pasty shade. “Silver Mercant.” It came out strangled.

Ignoring him, Silver spoke to Valentin. “Should I rip his mind apart, find out if he knows anythi—”

“No, please.” Shaking, Shivani swallowed and shifted his attention desperately to Valentin. “Please, you’re not like her. Don’t let her rape my mind.”

Valentin flexed the hand he had around the man’s throat. “Talk.” Eyes aglow, voice a bearish growl. “You know about what.”

Jai Shivani was no hardened criminal. He crumpled.

When he next opened his mouth, it was to unleash a river of words. “I was following instructions, that’s all. I was told to get into your apartment”—his eyes cutting to Silver—“on a particular day. I had to put something from a sealed packet into the weird food jars all Psy use.”

“Why were you confident you could get in?” Silver asked.

“I”—a rapid swallow—“I wasn’t. Just got lucky with a power cut.” Chest heaving, he held up his hands palms out. “That’s it, that’s all I know.”

Silver glanced at the organizer she’d brought in with her. “He’s lying. I’ll take the truth from his mind—the depth of the scan will, unfortunately, leave him a vegetable.”

Valentin shot her a scowling look. “But I wanted to play with him a little.”

“Wait! Wait!” The would-be poisoner turned to the only human in the room. “You’re like me. Help me.”

Folding his arms, Erik leaned against the nearest wall. “I’ve never poisoned anyone in my life, so nope, I’m no sniveling coward.”

Denied his final hope of mercy, Jai Shivani began to babble out every piece of information he had. He confirmed the power cut had been manipulated and, of his own volition, told them it was Akshay Patel who’d given him the order to doctor Silver’s food.

He also had proof of the latter.

“I recorded our conversation,” Shivani blubbered. “I trust Akshay like a brother normally, and we vacation together at least once every year, but he’s gotten secretive over the past few months—I wanted to cover myself in case he was into something shifty.”

“Really?” Valentin’s voice was rapidly becoming all bear. “You didn’t get a clue when you were asked to break into an apartment and put an unknown substance in the food? I should kill you for terminal stupidity.” A deadly pause. “Maybe you did something even worse that night. To the woman who got you into the building.”

“I didn’t take advantage of Monique, I swear!” Tears filled Shivani’s eyes, his lower lip quivering. “I just put drugs in her drink to knock her out. Akshay gave me two pills to use, but I wanted to be sure they wouldn’t hurt her if mixed with alcohol, so I got some over-the-counter stuff myself.”

Fat tears rolled down his face. “I really like her, but they said I couldn’t go back after that night. I had to pretend we were just work colleagues who’d had a fling”—his eyes shifted to Silver—“so I wouldn’t be connected to the powder I put in your food.”

Silver checked her organizer again without seeing anything. It was a prop to further cement her pitiless reputation. “That additive was a fast-acting poison. Which means you are an accessory to attempted murder.”

Shivani fainted.

Valentin managed to catch the heavyset man, throwing him on the bed as if he weighed nothing. “I win. He fainted when I pressed in my claws.”

“I think not. He fainted after I stated the depth of his culpability.”

They both looked at Erik.

Throwing up his hands, the tall human backed off. “Hey, I am not getting in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel.” His grin was huge. “Though I am going to tell everyone I know that you have a scariness contest going on.”

“You’re an insult to judges everywhere.” Valentin’s grumble just made Erik’s grin deepen. “Go make your report to Lily. Starlight, you already give him the code?”

“No, here it is.” After doing that, Silver stepped over to stand next to Valentin, both of them looking down at Jai Shivani’s passed-out form. “We are, however, now in a quandary—it’s not to my advantage to have the news of my near-poisoning get out.” Robots were meant to be invulnerable. “Also, we didn’t exactly question him in a legal way. Calling Enforcement will be problematic.”

Valentin rubbed his jaw, his skin unexpectedly smooth today. “I really want to tear off his head.”

Silver stared at him, realizing the rough statement was dead serious. “Valentin.”

“He nearly succeeded.” His voice was as deep as a bass drum, his eyes pure bear. “I saw you collapse after that poison hit your bloodstream. I felt your body convulse.”

Silver gripped his smooth jaw between her fingers, forced him to look at her and not Shivani. “But he didn’t succeed. We don’t punish attempted murder the same as murder. And we don’t punish the pawns worse than the kingpins.”

Valentin rumbled dangerously at her before finally giving a hard nod. “I’m not letting him get off scot-free,” he said, his voice difficult to understand. “He hurt you.”

“Agreed. But you know what I realized in this room today?”

“What?”

“That, because he has no psychic shields, I have the power to cause him terror with a simple bluff.” Silver had never before understood humanity so clearly. “Imagine what that does to a person, how the fear must eat away at you, especially when some Psy do violate human minds. The human race has a very good reason for hating the Psy.”

“No argument,” Valentin said in that painfully deep voice. “But he didn’t attack a Psy who’d raped his mind. He attacked you, a woman he’d never met, and who would never touch a single thought in his head.” Breath harsh, Valentin shook his head. “Human assholes don’t get a free pass just because there are worse Psy assholes.”

Blunt and angry he might be, but Silver knew he was also right. As humans weren’t a homogenous entity, neither were the Psy. “Each individual makes their own choices.”

“Damn right.”

Releasing her hold on him when he pulled in his claws, she considered their options. “My family has the financial power to take much of what he values—and we’ll also make it clear to him that any further such acts will mean being subject to changeling justice. I don’t think he has the willpower or aptitude to defy us.”

“I’m going to keep an eye on the piece of shit, too.” Valentin’s eyes were still deeply bear, but his voice was becoming less deep, more human. “In fact, I think he’ll be moving into a building controlled by changelings so he can be closer to the bear business where he’s about to start work.” He took out his phone. “I’ll arrange for someone to take charge of him for now.”

Silver stayed silent, her hands at her sides, one holding the organizer, the other free. When Jai Shivani woke midcall, she calmly, coldly laid out his punishment. “You may, of course, attempt to fight our judgment,” she said. “In which case, Alpha Nikolaev will take you into bear country and challenge you to fight for your life.” That seemed a reasonable guess. “Do you think you’d win?”

The human male shook his head so hard it almost spun off. “I swear, I won’t ever do anything else bad. I’ll work hard, be law-abiding. I’ll think good thoughts.”

“Your thoughts are your own—no one will be scanning you,” Silver said, because constant fear of violation was too cruel a sentence: human, Psy, or changeling, the mind should be inviolate.

Two StoneWater bears arrived minutes afterward. Both greeted Silver with smiles and said they hoped her work would let up enough that she could soon move back to Denhome.

Erik caught a ride with them when they left with Shivani.

Silver got into Valentin’s vehicle instead. His primal anger vibrated against her skin.

“Akshay Patel,” he said. “Where the fuck is that man based?”

“Mumbai, but he has a house in Milan and another one in New Caledonia. The Conglomerate also has offices worldwide.” Silver had traced that data while they’d been in Shivani’s apartment. “According to media reports, however, he is currently utilizing his main residence.”

“Chert voz’mi!” His claws erupted again. “A tiger pack controls changeling access to Mumbai. They’re pissy with everyone—damn Bengal tigers, always mad about something. I need Akshay in my territory.”

“Having you tear off his head will hardly be conducive to getting him to divulge his motives and/or the names of any others involved.”

Amber eyes flashed to hers as the deep bass of his anger filled the vehicle. “He can still talk if I tear off his arms.”

Realizing she was attempting to have a rational conversation with a currently very irrational bear, Silver metaphorically threw up her hands. “Grandmother must be the one to have this meeting with Patel. You know it and so do I.” It was the only way to achieve balance, to heal that schism inside Ena.

Valentin gritted his teeth so hard she could hear it, his biceps bulging as he squeezed the steering wheel. She expected an argument. What she got was, “Your grandmother can be as scary as fuck.”

“So you agree?”

A nod.

“I need to talk to Lily first.”

When she did, the other woman said, “Screw it. I’m not asking the board. You break Patel, and you find out if he’s the reason why my brother is fighting for his life.”

“I’ll make sure we pass on any data,” Silver promised. “Bowen?”

“His heart’s failed.” Lily’s voice caught. “They’ve got him on a machine.”

“There are mechanical hearts that function as well as organic hearts,” Silver said. “If you need access to any cutting-edge medical intervention, call me. I’ll make it happen. The world needs your brother.”

“Thank you, Silver. I just . . . I need to wait a little longer. Bo wouldn’t want intervention if all hope is lost.”

After the difficult conversation with Lily, Silver contacted her grandmother telepathically, her range blinding. She’d gone up at least two Gradient points—to 9.5—since the operation. Either her audio telepathy had been utilizing part of her psychic “bandwidth,” or the strength it had taken to contain the Tp-A had used far more energy than she’d realized.

Ena’s telepathic voice was crystalline, her response to Silver’s revelation simple. I’ll take care of it.

Silver had the strong feeling she’d exchanged one dangerous predator for another. The one in the driver’s seat was still rumbling in his chest, a furious mountain about to erupt. Ena sounded like ice in her head, but that ice cut like a blade.

Grandmother, she said, we must know not only if he has other associates, but also if he is the head of HAPMA or if it’s connected to the Consortium.

I haven’t suddenly turned senile, Silver.

And I’ve just talked Alpha Nikolaev out of ripping off Akshay Patel’s head. You are sounding very much like him.

Valentin thinks like a predator. He fits well into our family.

Silver wondered how she’d ended up with an enraged bear on one side and an equally enraged—even if Silent—Psy on the other. Grandmother.

I will be circumspect, Ena said at last, but you must understand this man will not survive the interview. He tried to kill my granddaughter.

Silver wanted to reach out across the psychic void and hold her grandmother, tell her she was all right, that Akshay hadn’t succeeded. A very un-Psy thought, but Silver’s mind remained safely quiet. No audio from beyond the normal spectrum.

The final decision is yours, she said. But remember, Akshay Patel may have set in motion events far more dangerous than my attempted murder. Bowen Knight is currently on the verge of death, and there are major emergency incidents all over the globe where countless people are dying. I am not the only grandchild involved.

You are mine.

I am also the director of EmNet. Any lives lost because we didn’t fully debrief Akshay Patel are on my head.

You take too much on your shoulders, Silver, was her grandmother’s cool response. But rest assured, I will not make a final call until I have wrung him dry of all possible information.

You understand the critical need to get anything we can on the attempt to assassinate Bowen Knight?

Of course. We wouldn’t have Akshay Patel without the Alliance’s assistance.

Don’t go alone, Silver ordered. He may be human, but he’s ruthless and powerful.

I won’t be going anywhere. I think the family’s newest member will wish to offer his services to expedite this.

The connection severed.

“My grandmother is about to ask Kaleb to abduct Akshay Patel and put him in a cage she controls.” Silver tapped a finger on her knee. “I believe I talked her out of torturing him to death, but I’m not certain.”

The large predator in the driver’s seat smiled. “I’ve always liked your grandmother.”

Chapter 47

ENA HAD SURVIVED this long because she made it a point to know her enemies. So before she contacted Kaleb to organize a teleport for Akshay Patel, she did her research. What she uncovered was illuminating: Akshay Patel was forty-three and the head of his family group. That family group was a serious economic power. And, according to the records she discovered in what had once been Council-restricted files—not that it had ever stopped Ena—a large percentage of the Patel family had natural telepathic shields Psy couldn’t breach.

Not an unexpected development. Powerful human family groups were rare because ordinary humans, the ones without shields, were vulnerable to Psy manipulation, their ideas stolen before they’d ever had a chance to truly bloom. While Ena would strip a mind bare to protect her family, she didn’t believe in such underhanded methods to increase one’s power or wealth—being a shadow power didn’t mean being without ethics.

Mercants had always understood that honor defined a family.

The Patels’ strong genetic tendency toward mental shields went some way to explaining their rise in power, even during the time of the Psy Council, but that wasn’t the only thing that marked them as different. They’d consistently displayed strategic thinking that left their competitors in the dust, a skill that had very clearly been passed on from the time of Akshay’s great-grandfather.

The current head of the family was as smart as his predecessors. Akshay Patel also had a habit of supporting causes that were all about human advancement: scholarships, funding for scientists, grants. None of that was unusual. Many human companies did the same, believing the Psy and changelings had advantages enough.

What was unusual was that in the time since Akshay took over as CEO, the Patel Conglomerate had steadily cut ties with Psy businesses, in stark contrast to the vast majority of human businesses. Everyone wanted to get into the lucrative Psy market. The decision was especially surprising since the Patels were in an advantageous position in that they controlled energy to which certain Psy companies needed long-term access.

While Akshay Patel had maintained his family’s wealth and business success by creating alternative sources of income, he’d also given up sure bets when they involved Psy. Each time a Psy contract came up for renewal, Akshay said no. That didn’t speak of business tactics but a strong ideological viewpoint: Akshay Patel was anti-Psy.

Since the business news media had reported on a recent situation in which Patel had refused to do a deal with a changeling group, he was also turning anti-changeling. Most likely, he saw himself as neither.

No, to Akshay, he was pro-human.

Ena stood in the elegant gray of her living area, looking down into the crashing waves beneath the cliffs on which the architecturally designed house was perched. Her abode was all angular lines and glass, clean and functional, and yet it made a statement. That described Ena as well.

The only things that broke up the internal lines were the dark red roses that grew wild behind the house and that she cut and put in vases. At one point in the past, she’d considered why she did that and realized the answer was both simple and complex. Part of it was Arwen. She hadn’t been this Ena until his birth. She’d been harder. These days, she wasn’t soft . . . but she understood certain subtleties in life.

So she understood that Akshay Patel hadn’t come out of the womb this way. Neither could it be a simple case of nurturing designed to skew his viewpoint—his predecessors had all been happy to work with anyone who brought a good offer to the table. Even Akshay had followed the same path in his youth. Something had drastically changed his viewpoint. Knowing what that was would give Ena the upper hand.

It took her another three hours to find the answer.

That was when she got in touch with Kaleb. As expected, he didn’t blindly obey her request. His implacable will was part of why she’d once thought Kaleb and Silver would make an extraordinary power couple. She should’ve known neither would follow the well-trodden path, both masters of their own destiny.

After explaining the situation to Kaleb, she said, “I’d like to speak to him in a place he can’t control but that is civil.” Violence wasn’t always the best tactic with someone of Akshay’s power and likely arrogance. “I have a location.” She sent him a telepathic image.

Kaleb asked several further questions before saying, “When?”

“Twenty-five minutes.” That would give Ena enough time to prepare a pot of tea and make her way to the windowless cellar bathed by a lighting system that made the room glow as if in sunlight. Set up like a conversational nook, it was welcoming but private. If necessary, it could also become a cage.

“Do you need backup?” Kaleb’s cardinal eyes spoke of power most Psy could never comprehend.

Ena was nearly certain he was a dual cardinal, a creature of Psy myth, but she’d never been able to confirm. “No, I’ll handle this. But I need you to find another piece of information for me.”

Giving a curt nod when she stated her request, Kaleb signed off. Ena made her way to the cellar, was seated in one of the six antique chairs in the room when Kaleb teleported in her guest. He left without a single word. “Please,” Ena said to the man behind the attempt to poison her granddaughter. “Take a seat.”

Tawny brown eyes scanned the room before settling on her. “Ena Mercant, I presume.”

Ena inclined her head. “Would you like a drink?” She held up a bone-china teapot that sat on the graceful white table between them. “Tea?”

Taking a seat across from her with no sign of concern, one of his feet propped on the knee of the other leg, Akshay Patel shook his head. “Nothing personal. I don’t trust Psy.”

Ena wasn’t startled by the elegantly spoken rudeness. She’d expected that after having researched his bargaining tactics. “How can you know the motives or personal beliefs of all Psy?” Lifting a cup of the herbal tea she’d already poured for herself, she took a sip out of the delicate china.

Akshay Patel tugged down the sleeves of his pinstriped navy jacket, aligning them with the pristine white cuffs of his shirt. “Maybe I’m psychic.”

Ena lowered the fragile cup to a saucer as delicate. “You have no fear.”

“Of an old woman with delusions of power?” A mask of faux civility, the smile on his handsome face silent mockery to accompany his insult. “Why should I?”

“How do you expect to get out of this room?”

A gun was suddenly in his hand, the weapon sleek and metallic. “Psy, human, or changeling, a bullet punches through flesh, spills blood hot and red.”

“As occurred with Bowen Knight?” Ena lifted her teacup again.

Akshay Patel’s mask slipped, revealing turbulent emotions. “He wasn’t the target—Bo has done a lot for the human race, but he was being sucked into this takeover of our race described as cooperation. I just wanted to give him a wake-up call.”

“I fail to see how a human-on-human attack would’ve woken him up.”

“They’ll find data on his phone linking the hit to a meeting with Krychek.” A tight smile. “Bo would’ve already been acting on it if he wasn’t so badly wounded. That’s my fault and I take full responsibility for the fallout and the damage to the Alliance—I should’ve sent the shooter after Lily when Bo wasn’t around to protect her.”

“You didn’t do it yourself? I wouldn’t have thought you’d trust anyone with such a critical task.”

A shrug. “I’m no marksman, and there are people I trust with all I love. Not something you’d understand.”

Ena’s research gave her the answer. “Your brother-in-law, a former special operative and close friend. He is, I assume, driven by the same motive as you—the psychic rape of your wife.”

Akshay Patel’s eyes grew hard. “Connecting into that Hivenet of yours, I see. How are the plans for the subjugation of the human race going?”

The fact he didn’t deny her supposition, added to his body language, gave her the answer she needed. That answer cleared the Mercants’ debt to the Alliance and to Lily Knight in particular. Ena telepathed the data to Silver, shutting down the link before her granddaughter could ask any questions. “Is that why you’re so against Trinity? You believe it’ll leave humans in a worse position?”

“It’ll leave humans in a position of no power.” Akshay’s hand remained on the gun he’d placed against his thigh. “That’s what the Psy have always wanted, always done.”

“From your recent business moves, it appears you believe the changelings will come to feel the same way.”

The mask back on, he lifted a shoulder. “They’re sure getting chummy with Psy these days. Lucas Hunter pretends to be evenhanded, but he’s the father of a half-breed child. Psy and changeling. Not changeling and human.” His expression was granite. “Now I hear the precious Mercant scion has mated one of the two most powerful changeling alphas in Russia. What a stroke of luck for you. I guess the poor schmuck will never know you fucked with his mind.”

Ignoring the latter part of his rant because she wasn’t ready to talk about Silver, Ena sipped more of her tea. “Lucas Hunter has multiple packmates who identify as both changeling and human. One of his senior people is mated to a human.”

“It doesn’t matter.” A blood vessel stood out prominently on his temple. “Now that the changelings have access to Psy corporations, I can see them cutting off human contracts.”

“Has that happened?”

“Not yet, but it will.” Lifting his weapon, he deactivated the safety using his thumbprint. “Now, I think our conversation is over.”

“Talking of conversations, my granddaughter had an interesting one with your cousin Jai recently.” Ena’s cup made a quiet clinking sound against the bone china of the saucer when she put it down.

Akshay’s left eyelid flickered. “He’s always been a disappointment to the family. I used to think he’d be at my side as I took us to greatness, but he never quite achieved what he should have.”

While Ena respected Akshay Patel’s desire to avenge his wife, that he’d insult a member of the family to an outsider lessened his standing in her eyes. “Yet you used him to get to Silver.”

“Why not? He was available and in the right area.”

“And disposable,” Ena guessed.

“That, too. It was worth the gamble—and it’ll be worth other gambles in the future. If I take down Silver, I crash EmNet for long enough that certain other measures can be taken and will be far more successful than if Silver’s pulling in help more efficiently than any computer program.” He aimed the gun at her head. “Sorry. Can’t risk you telepathing the information.”

He pressed the trigger.

Or he tried to.

Grimacing, he tried until the veins in his temples began to pound, the finer blood vessels in his eyes bursting to give them a crimson tint. Ena poured herself another cup of tea with tranquil precision. “It doesn’t matter how hard you try,” she said in the same tone she’d used the entire conversation. “You won’t break my hold.”

Akshay Patel spoke through gritted teeth. “I have a natural shield.”

Not answering, Ena drank her tea.

Sometimes, the win came from perception rather than reality. Akshay Patel thought she was a telepath, which she was; however, she also had just enough of a strange little power for it to be useful. A power so erratic in its appearance in the population that it had no official subdesignation. Not quite telekinesis, but on the spectrum. She could affect a specific number of elements, including those used in the manufacture of weapons.

The human CEO thought she was controlling his mind. What she was actually controlling was the weapon itself—it was repelling Akshay through a little subtle manipulation on Ena’s part. “You’ll give yourself an aneurysm if you keep attempting to break free.”

Akshay finally threw aside the weapon. But rather than giving in, he jumped up from his seat, his hands reaching out as if to strangle her. In his eyes, she saw the moment he realized he could move freely. Ena shot him with the stunner she’d kept in her lap. His body spasmed as he fell to the floor, his limbs twitching with residual energy.

Looking down at him from the table, she held the bloody tawny brown of his gaze. “You’re about to die. You know that and so do I. Will you protect your co-conspirators?” That he couldn’t have gotten to Silver on his own wasn’t in doubt.

To cut off electricity to an apartment building that secure with that many redundant systems would’ve required help from various highly placed sources. The Patels might control a large number of energy systems, but they had no footprint in Moscow. Kaleb held the controlling interest in the largest energy company, and the smaller ones serviced areas that didn’t overlap with Silver’s apartment.

Akshay Patel simply could not have arranged for the power to be disrupted in a company under Kaleb’s banner unless he had someone on the inside. Even then, he’d need a second person inside the building itself who could override the redundancies.

Ivan would take care of unearthing that individual, but as for the employee at the energy company, Ena had requested Kaleb check the records to see if any of his hires had connections to the Patels. He’d telepathed her the results ten minutes ago, having found three employees who’d previously worked in businesses held by the Patel Conglomerate—not an unusual circumstance in the same industry.

Crucially, however, none of the three had been on duty the night the power went out in Silver’s apartment. Kaleb had seen that, dug further, and discovered that the workers on duty at the time of the blackout were all long-term, experienced, and skilled. One of those employees had a wife who’d received a six-figure payment into her account immediately prior to the incident.

That employee was Psy.

Yet Akshay Patel made it a point not to have Psy contacts. “Do you think your co-conspirators would be as loyal to you?” she asked conversationally when Akshay didn’t speak, his eyes boring into her. Hate foamed in their depths.

A spasm crossed his face.

“The pain will continue to increase,” Ena told him. “The muscle spasms will eventually cause you to lose control of your bladder, then your bowels. You’ll begin to drool. A second blast on the same setting will ensure you lie in your own waste for hours before your brain finally shuts down.”

She took a sip of tea. “Or you can answer my questions, and this ends with me putting a shot directly into your brain. You’ll die before you know it. And it ends with me and you. I won’t go after your son or daughter.”

Fear crawled across his face. “You wouldn’t,” he managed to grit out between spasms. “They’re children.”

“Silver is the child of my child.” Ena let him see her implacable will. “Like for like. Except I’ll be successful in my extermination efforts.”

“Y-you’re a monster.”

“Perhaps, but I’m a monster who’s giving you a choice. Will you sacrifice your children to protect your co-conspirators?” Ena knew the choice she would’ve made, though no one outside the family could ever know that. The Mercants were safe and successful partially because others believed that while they worked together as it was more effective, they were snakes who’d swallow one another should it come down to it. “You have ten seconds before the offer is off the table.”

Water shone in the human man’s eyes, his will broken. “Don’t let my family find out I died this way,” he said, his vocal muscles having relaxed enough for him to form the sentence.

“Give me what I want and your body will be discovered in a vehicle, broken beyond repair as a result of a single vehicle crash.”

A shudder that didn’t seem controlled, rather the product of the voltage still arcing through his body. “No faces, no names. Consortium.”

Ena was unsurprised at the words, but she wasn’t certain she believed them. “I thought you were against interracial cooperation.”

“Don’t have to like them to use them,” Patel said, his breathing starting to turn jerky. “Consortium is short-term. Psy in charge pretends to be evenhanded, but she’ll betray us all to hold on to power.”

Ena’s senses went on high alert. “She? The head of the Consortium is a woman?”

“No faces, voices distorted, that’s how it works.” His chest spasmed, his hands drumming against the floor before he brought himself under control. “But her software glitched for a couple of seconds once. I record everything. Went back and listened. Woman.”

It was far more information than anyone else had about the individual behind the Consortium. “How did she contact you?”

“Hard-copy letter. Inviting me to join because I’d been public in my distrust of Trinity.”

“Did you keep the letter?”

“I keep everything.” His eyes held hers, his will impressive given the hit he’d taken. “Bottom left drawer of my satellite Amsterdam office.”

Ena put down her cup again. “Do you expect me to take this on faith? Your son’s name is Vahan, isn’t it?”

A shuddering panic. “Please. Don’t hurt my children. I’ve told you all I know.”

“How do you communicate?”

“Internet. Throwaway e-mail addresses. A defunct chat room about entertainment stars.” He gasped a breath. “If we need a comm conference, we leave a message there, with the current channel settings. Different every time.” He gave her the web address without prompting. She didn’t look it up, in case there were safeguards in place tracking where a member was logging in from.

“I requested a power failure in a certain wide area. Someone with the right connections organized it.” His breathing was a touch better now. “I handled Silver’s building myself.”

“How did you find a traitor in the security team?”

A sudden smile with a touch of arrogance. “Not security. Maintenance. Lower pay, but had the right access and skills after I got him a coach. Psy junkie who’s good at pretending to be normal. People never do penetrating security checks on maintenance staff.”

Ena telepathed the information to Ivan. “You’re a clever man, Mr. Patel.” She meant that sincerely. “Tell me about HAPMA.”

“They asked for money, I gave them some.” He flexed his hands as control returned to that part of his body. “I thought they might be useful, but they’ve exceeded my expectations.”

“You expect me to believe you’re not the founder?”

Fear turned his face bloodless. “Please. They’re only children.” He stopped trying to regain control of his body. “HAPMA’s grassroots. Only contact I had was with a man named David Fournier. Survival trained.” He swallowed. “I was open in being anti-Trinity, caught his attention like I caught the Consortium’s. Only difference is that the Consortium bitch is stone-cold sane while I’m not so sure about David.”

“Yet you gave him money.”

“Fanatics aren’t always the sanest people in the room.”

“Unfortunately, that’s all too true.” She picked up the stunner and shot him again.

Chapter 48

SILVER.

Silver sat up straight at her grandmother’s telepathic voice. Grandmother.

Across from her, Valentin tapped the side of his head. He’d asked her if she had time for a date that afternoon and, since EmNet was currently in standby mode while Ena was dealing with Akshay Patel, she’d said yes. He’d told her to change into StoneWater clothes—she’d chosen jeans and a fine vee-necked sweater in palest green with narrow horizontal stripes of silver that Nova had given her and told her to keep.

When Valentin arrived, it had been with a truckful of cubs excited to go to an amusement center where they got to play in a pit of foam balls.

Now she nodded to confirm she was having a telepathic conversation. He grabbed hold of the two cubs who’d been seated beside him and said, “Who wants to be thrown into the pit?”

“Me! Me!” The cubs next to Silver scrambled out, too, running after Valentin as he carried his gleeful cargo toward the large pool made up of colorful balls that were soft enough to do no damage to children, but deep enough that the kids could get “lost” in them if they ducked down. Which was why Valentin had booked this pool privately—so he knew exactly how many kids were in there at any one time.

Anyone caught ducking down to hide would be summarily banished to the benches to watch mournfully while everyone else played. Valentin’s threatened punishment was apparently an effective one. As she watched, the kids thrown in popped immediately back up, laughing and asking to be thrown in again.

Grandmother? she said again when Ena stayed silent after that initial contact.

My apologies, Silver. I’m having to deal with a secondary telepathic matter. I’ll get back in touch once that’s completed.

The contact cut off.

Not surprised by the interruption—Ena was the matriarch of their family and, as such, was the first port of call for all of them—Silver was nonetheless . . . impatient. It had been hours since Kaleb confirmed he’d delivered Akshay Patel to Ena. Since rushing her grandmother was an impossibility, Silver slid out of the bench seat and headed toward the pool.

Watching Valentin’s arms move in his old white tee, his biceps bulging and his face full of laughter as he picked up the cub who’d just scrambled out of the foam pit, she felt a strangeness in her stomach she remembered from when she hadn’t been Silent.

Silver stopped, listened.

Nothing beyond the children’s voices and the sound of their play.

“Throw me, Mishka! Throw me!” The words were delighted, the childhood nickname used in innocence.

Many a man would’ve chastised the cub that he was speaking to an adult—that he was speaking to his alpha, and should be more respectful—but Valentin pretended to growlingly bite Arkasha before doing as demanded. He had no need to worry about respect. She’d seen how he was treated by the teenagers and older children. They loved him as deeply as these cubs, but they never called him Mishka. It was understood that was a privilege reserved for the very young, the very old, and his sisters.

“Siva!” The smallest cub, Dima, saw her on his way out of the pit, ran toward her after he exited. “Will you throw me?”

Reaching down, Silver gathered his warm, solid body into her arms. “I don’t want to do harm,” she said to Valentin.

“He’ll be fine.” He grabbed Fitz, who was jumping up and down next to him. “Throw just hard enough to get him into the balls—and watch for the other five in there. They know not to move when someone’s about to be thrown in.”

Having already noted the positions of those five, Silver watched Valentin throw his cub, noted Fitz’s landing position, then looked down at the little boy she held in her arms. “Ready?”

A quick nod, eyes bright.

She threw.

Screaming in joy, Dima sank into the foam, bounced up an instant later, chortling so hard he fell back down and his friend—a cub who’d returned with the dissenters—had to pull him up. “Is there a trampoline below?” Silver asked, realizing the children were bouncing around like rabbits rather than heavy-boned bears.

“Not quite, but close enough.” Valentin came to stand beside her as the children began to throw the foam balls at one another. “Part of the safety system—not a single accident here in the twenty-five years it’s been running.”

The furnace of his large body tempted her to edge nearer, sink into his warmth. “You did your research.”

“I’m alpha,” was the simple answer.

And these cubs were his responsibility.

She went to answer when a ball hit her on the nose. Startled, she looked toward the pool, saw several innocent faces. Arkasha began to giggle a second later, the sound quickly spreading to all seven cubs. “Come play!” sensitive little Sveta said. “Siva, Mishka, come play!”

Silver never saw it coming. One minute, she was standing on her own two feet disturbed by her compulsion toward the large bear alpha with whom she’d once shared skin privileges; the next minute, she’d been scooped up in his arms and was being launched into the air. He’d thrown her so gently that she barely felt the impact before she was bounced up. Much taller than the children, she ended up with her head above the balls even sitting down. Her hair tumbled out of its twist.

Around her, the children began to swim over. Valentin, meanwhile, was standing outside the pool laughing. She blew the hair out of her eyes, closed her hand around a ball. When the children reached her, she whispered, “Let’s get Mishka.” That was all the encouragement they needed.

They pelted Valentin with the foam balls.

Throwing out his arms and making the face of an enraged bear, he jumped into the pool and began to chase the cubs. They screamed and ran from him. Silver, meanwhile, continued to pelt him with balls. Valentin suddenly changed direction and dived toward her. She twisted out of the way, but he was too fast and she found herself pinned under him, his body keeping the foam off her face and his arms caging her on either side.

“Gotcha,” he said, the bear in his eyes, a playful presence.

Silver couldn’t speak, her stomach suddenly so tight it was difficult to breathe. The laughter faded from Valentin’s face, a slow slide into something deeper, more tender. “Lyubov moya, solnyshko moyo.” A harsh whisper colored in unconcealed, primal emotion . . . before he was assailed by balls from every side, the cubs coming to her rescue.

Backing off with a lionish roar that delighted the children, he began to chase them again. Silver, her heart a drum, simply sat in place. Her ears caught the sound of the children’s laughter, Valentin’s growls of mock pursuit, the odd noise from other areas of the play center, but nothing unusual. Her audio telepathy was under control.

The rest of her, however . . .

“Siva?” A small body scrambled into her lap. “I’m tired.” Giving a big sigh, Arkasha collapsed against her.

She wrapped her arms around his body and said, “I think you need a drink of water.” Getting up with the tiny gangster trustingly holding on to her hand, she walked to the edge of the pool and they got out. Arkasha drank deep of the glass of water she poured at their table, his eyes on the play in progress.

He was back in the pool seconds later.

Silver should have gone, too. She’d promised to participate. But it was too dangerous to her sense of stability, her mind in confusion, caught between who she believed herself to be, and who she was becoming. Though it was impossible not to watch Valentin, not to hear his deep voice as he played with the cubs, she stayed by the table using the excuse of being ready to give the children any sustenance they needed.

That afternoon passed by in a heartbeat—and it stretched forever.

Lyubov moya, solnyshko moyo.

My love, sun of my heart.

Valentin didn’t touch her again, but when he dropped her off at the complex, the children having been picked up by Yakov and Anastasia, he said, “Remember who we were, Starlight. Choose us.” His voice was unusually solemn, his gaze amber.

Silver couldn’t reply, her blood a roar in her ears. She certainly wasn’t in the right frame of mind to receive a telepathic contact from Ena. I’m just leaving Alpha Nikolaev’s vehicle, she said when her grandmother asked if she was free to talk.

Valentin needs to hear this, too. Ask him if he is available to meet at your current home. Kaleb will bring me in.

Silver’s fingers curled into her palm, her body half-out of Valentin’s vehicle. “Grandmother is asking if you’re free for a meeting.”

His expression changed, became deadly. “Akshay Patel?” Not waiting for an answer, he said, “I’m free. Where?”

“My apartment.”

This time, she didn’t wait for him to reach her, jumping out of the vehicle and beginning the walk to her apartment before he’d opened his own door. It didn’t take him long to catch up to her, of course. He was a big and warm presence at her side, his energy so vibrant she could almost touch it.

“Valya!” The call came from across the grass and two floors up, the woman hanging out the window a beautiful blonde Silver had seen around the complex but never met.

The blonde blew Valentin a kiss.

“Careful, Irina,” Valentin called back. “My mate is the jealous type.”

Clearly unabashed, the woman blew Silver a kiss, too. “Any woman worth my alpha would be!”

“She’s clan?” Silver asked after the woman drew back inside the apartment.

“Half human, all bear.” He winked. “Fariad has the biggest crush on her I’ve ever seen a man have on a woman.”

“Oh? Does he knock on her door at the crack of dawn?”

A scowl. “I didn’t have a crush. I was courting you. There’s a difference.”

“Right,” Silver said, her shoulder brushing his arm as they walked.

Valentin pretended to bite her. “Grr.”

“I quiver in terror.”

“I’ll have you know I do make people quiver in terror,” Valentin pointed out with a sulky look on his face that made her want to—

Silver shook her head, attempted to calm her skittering pulse.

Searching for a distraction, she pointed out the sun-lounging area below. “Look.” Several bears—in that form—lay lazing about on the lush green grass. The wolves lay on the other side of an invisible line of demarcation.

Every so often, they’d give one another a dirty look, then get back to sun worshipping. The first snowfall was forecast to hit any day. It wouldn’t stop either bears or wolves from being outside, but they were making the most of the grass while it still existed.

Several bear heads went up at that instant, their noses turning unerringly toward Valentin. They began to rise; she knew they wanted to come to him, touch him, have that tactile alpha-to-clan-member contact all bears needed. But Valentin waved them down. “I’ll be back after I take care of my mate.”

His deliberately provocative response made several bears “laugh” before they settled back down. The wolves, too, were looking very interested. Apparently being mortal enemies didn’t mean you weren’t intrigued by gossip about the other party.

When she didn’t say anything in response to his words, Valentin gave her a distinctly wary glance. “What are you planning?”

“You’ll find out when you fall victim to it.”

Valentin’s smile was more real than she’d seen it since her operation, his bear right there in his eyes, so close to the surface that she could almost touch its fur. “You’re a scary woman, Starlichka.” Lifting a hand, he brushed tendrils of hair off her face.

Silver broke contact with a jerk that had those bearish eyes narrowing, a predator on the hunt. He closed the inches between them, until her sneakers brushed up against his boots. “Scared?” A challenge.

His body was a furnace, but Silver didn’t back off. This wasn’t the first time she’d tangled with this particular bear. “I don’t get scared. I’m Silent.”

“You sure you haven’t been willing those filaments in your brain to build bridges?”

Silver thought of the card she still hadn’t thrown out, of how she hadn’t washed the sheets on which he’d slept, of how she kept permitting him physical contact . . . and how she hadn’t ordered any food since she moved into this apartment. “Why would I exchange perfect efficiency for the messy chaos of emotions?”

“Wild-monkey skin privileges.”

Silver stumbled into him at the rough words spoken against her ear.

Valentin caught her. “Was it something I said?” This time, his eyes were laughing, his body a muscled wall that invited her to snuggle in.

And her stomach, it did that strange thing again. “Must be the uneven floor,” she responded, because to let him win this verbal battle would set a bad precedent.

Bear that he was, he’d think he could win all their arguments by bringing up physical intimacy. She broke contact, started to walk toward her apartment again. “Speaking of wild-monkey skin privileges—”

“Naked wild-monkey skin privileges.”

“As I was saying, speaking of naked wild-monkey skin privileges,” she repeated without a hitch, “are there changeling primates?”

“Nope. Nothing from that part of the animal tree.” He glared at her. “You’re trying to distract me from seducing you.”

“According to Wild Woman magazine”—to which she now had a subscription, strictly to further her understanding of changelings—“bear males have delicate egos. I don’t want yours crushed when I kick you out.”

The deep rumble of his displeasure at her back, a big, dangerous presence that made her feel deeply safe, she cleared them into her apartment. The door slid back to reveal a room full of natural light. Greenery cascaded beyond the windows, while she knew from her orientation that the roof was a living carpet.

“I see you went wild with the décor, Starlight.” The affectionate words had her looking at the apartment through his eyes; light and spacious, it was fitted out with modern furniture covered in oat-colored fabric.

That, however, was how it had come. Silver had added nothing to it, simply putting her clothes in the bedroom closet. Which was why she looked askance at the giant pink teddy bear sitting on her couch. “How did you manage that?” she demanded. “It wasn’t there when we left.”

“Don’t look at me.” His expression was affronted. “I would’ve gotten you a brown teddy bear.” Folding his arms, he curled his lip. “There are no such things as pink bears.”

Walking over, Silver looked at the furry thing. “Who does it smell like?”

Valentin looked pained but drew in a breath. “Yasha and Stasya.”

Spotting the little bag that hung from the bear’s neck, Silver tugged it off. Inside was a handwritten note folded into a small square.

We all thought you might be missing your bear, so we got you a substitute. (Honestly, he’s probably just as good to cuddle up with in bed. Plus, his feet aren’t boats and he doesn’t snore.)

Valentin, who’d come to read over her shoulder, made a loud noise and, picking up the bear, went as if to tear it limb from limb. She touched her hand to his arm. And he stopped.

“It’s a gift. Don’t ruin it.”

“It’s pink.” His chest rumbled. “And it is not as good as me.”

She tried to pull the bear from his grasp. He held on. “Valentin.” She tugged again.

The stubborn bear refused to let go. “Release this now, or you’ll be facing Kaleb and Grandmother while holding a pink teddy bear.”

“So?” he said, but released his hostage at last. “I’m going to dye that bear brown when you’re not looking.”

Leaving him scowling in the living area, Silver managed to get the plush toy into her bedroom and return right before her grandmother and Kaleb teleported in. Valentin still had a glare on his face, but he inclined his head respectfully at Ena. “Grandmother.”

His greeting to Kaleb was a curt nod. “Krychek.”

“Nikolaev,” Kaleb responded in the same vein, sliding his hands into the pockets of his black suit pants, his shirt a simple white.

“Grandmother, please sit,” Silver said, only taking her own seat once Ena was seated.

Valentin came down on the couch beside her, while Kaleb took a seat across from them. Ena sat to their right. They looked at her as one, waiting to hear what she had to say.

“I have,” she began, “completed my meeting with Akshay Patel.”

“I think you meant to use the word ‘interrogation.’”

Ena gave Valentin a speaking look. “A meeting is far more civilized.”

“My apologies,” Valentin said with such perfect politeness, Silver had to check he was the one who’d spoken.

Then, as they listened, Ena told them what the CEO had confessed—and what he’d betrayed. “The Consortium did have a role to play in this,” Ena said toward the end of her briefing, “but only in the sense it gave Akshay Patel tools to pull off actions he already wanted to take. The Bowen Knight incident was wholly Akshay and his brother-in-law—he didn’t want to involve outsiders in human matters.”

Valentin’s claws had slid out long ago. When he spoke, his voice was gravel. “Tell me he’s dead.”

“No. He’s more useful to us alive.”

Chapter 49

SILVER STARED AT Ena. “Grandmother, you’re not known for mercy.”

“A slight understatement,” Kaleb said in his usual emotionless way, which terrified people with its very calmness. “For many, the name Ena Mercant is synonymous with the words ‘cold-blooded’ and ‘ruthless shark.’”

“I believe your picture would also suffice for that dictionary entry,” Ena said without missing a beat.

Kaleb’s smile was faint but real.

“Grandmother,” Valentin said, his body a storm of turbulent energy barely contained, “I respect you, but that bastard tried to murder my mate. He needs to die.”

“He might be able to give us the Consortium.”

Her words filled the room with a potent silence . . . broken only by the noise of play from outside. The apartment was fully soundproofed, but that soundproofing wasn’t a default, had to be switched on, since most changelings preferred to live in proximity to others.

Silver had never turned it on.

“I’ve had the briefing.” Valentin flexed, then fisted his hands after retracting his claws. “Those bastards don’t show each other their faces.”

“Akshay Patel is extremely paranoid and distrustful. He’s done everything in his power to discover the identity of the individual behind the creation of the Consortium. Already he’s told me that the one who sits at the center—the spider in control of the web—is a woman.”

“Interesting.” Kaleb leaned back. “You believe him?”

“A man will do many things to protect his children.” Her words were arctic. “Whatever his faults, Akshay loves his son and daughter.”

Kaleb didn’t move. “How will you control him once he’s with his children and able to spirit them into hiding?”

“Our family’s greatest strength is our intelligence network.” Ena’s words were directed at all of them. “Akshay is well aware that wherever he goes, it will never be far enough—and I have given my word that his children will be safe so long as he cooperates with us.”

Silver could feel Valentin’s body vibrating next to her, his shoulders knotted and thighs rigid against the denim of his jeans. “Patel’s a murdering bastard,” he said in a voice so deep it echoed inside her. “But it’s not right to make a man’s children pay the price for his crimes.”

“If he does what we want, that will never be an issue.” Ena’s eyes were ice when they met Valentin’s. “He has willingly bargained his freedom for their lives. He’s the one who will pay.” A pause. “You would’ve taken his life, and the children would’ve lost their father. Our moral compasses are not so different, Valentin Nikolaev.”

Hands fisted, Valentin nodded at last. “You’re right. But I wouldn’t have won his compliance by threatening his children.” He held Ena’s gaze with the wild amber of his own. “That line should never be crossed.”

Silver had never seen her grandmother back down against anyone. She didn’t today, either, but Ena also did not stare Valentin down in the way she did those who didn’t have her respect. “We have different lines, Valentin, but we both protect those who are our own.”

Valentin nodded slowly. “I don’t like leaving him alive—a man who uses poison, he’s not the straight-up kind.”

“He’s broken,” Ena said flatly. “I made sure of it. He is my puppet.”

Kaleb tapped a finger on his knee, his voice flawless midnight when he spoke. If Silver hadn’t seen him with Sahara, and if she didn’t know the other woman well enough to understand the passionate way Sahara embraced life, she, too, would’ve believed him wholly without heart. “Can he actually be useful to us?” Kaleb’s cardinal eyes were unreadable. “If he starts betraying Consortium plans, they’ll know they have a mole.”

“How we use him will require careful thought, but this is the closest we’ve come to the Consortium since they shied away after making initial contact with me,” Ena said. “Silver, you’ll undertake tracking their communication methods.”

“I’ve already sent word to our people.” Three of her family had trained in covert online operations. “They’re working on it now, but the setup is clever, and the Consortium could switch to a different chat room without warning—should the individual behind the group once again utilize physical letters to achieve that aim, we’ll be right back where we started.”

“Understood.”

“We should ask for Arrow assistance,” Kaleb said. “Unearthing the Consortium is a shared goal.”

“I’ll contact them,” Silver said without asking her grandmother; Ena had long ago given Silver carte blanche over network operations. But that wasn’t the topic at the forefront of her mind. “Grandmother, you must make a promise.” Even as she spoke, she ran her hand down Valentin’s back, over the rigid knots of his muscles.

Her grandmother’s gaze took in the placement of Silver’s hand. “Ask.”

“Whatever happens, Akshay Patel’s children are not to be harmed.” She made her tone as implacable as Ena’s had been. “He can keep on believing the same, but you are not to follow through on your threat.”

“Ena Mercant is not known for making toothless threats.”

“It was my life he tried to end,” Silver said. “I make the call.”

Valentin’s head turned toward her, his muscles unbunching under her touch.

Ena looked at her for a long time. Silver didn’t flinch. Finally, her grandmother inclined her head. “So be it. I won’t harm the man’s children. But should he step out of line, his life is forfeit. Does anyone disagree with that decision?”

Silver held her silence. Valentin didn’t. “Silver Fucking Mercant,” he said. “Granddaughter of Ena Fucking Mercant.” A grin at Silver. “Do I want to meet your mama, Starlight?”

“Those particular genes skipped a generation,” Ena said coolly. “I have no argument with the Arrows knowing of the chat room, but the information about how we came by that data needs to be kept within a very small circle. The fewer the number of people who know Akshay Patel is ours, the lower the chances someone will let it slip.”

“I haven’t shared it with our own tech team,” Silver said. “They don’t need to know to chase the communication channels.”

“Lucas Hunter and Aden Kai need to know,” Valentin said. “None of us would be aware of the Consortium without them.”

The resulting discussion was over quickly, the highly selective short list arrived at after mutual agreement. It was at the end of the meeting that Ena said, “Walk with me, Silver. Show me this complex.”

Silver had no trouble standing up to her grandmother when required, but she also understood that certain orders were to be followed. “Of course, Grandmother. You’re welcome to stay the night here, if you wish,” she added.

“I may do that.” Ena looked at Kaleb as they all rose. “Thank you for the assistance.”

Kaleb nodded, then glanced at Valentin and Silver. “Sahara,” he said, “has invited you both to dinner next Friday.”

“You look like you’d rather chew nails,” Valentin remarked with a very bearish gleam in his eye.

“My mate, as changelings term her, is insistent I learn to socialize.”

“How’s that going for you?”

Kaleb slid his hands into the pockets of his suit pants. “It makes Sahara happy.”

The simple answer had Valentin holding out a hand. “No further explanation needed.”

Kaleb, who rarely made physical contact with anyone aside from Sahara, shook it. He was gone the next second, a cardinal telekinetic of such power that teleportation took less than a heartbeat. But despite Kaleb’s power, it was Valentin’s wild charisma that made Silver’s body hum with a primal awareness.

He tugged on a strand of her hair. “I’m going to see the clanmates who live here.” His irises were onyx again, but rimmed by amber.

And he looked at her as if he wanted to eat her alive. The hurt she’d seen in his eyes, it was gone, erased by an emotion so huge, it demanded that she feel in return. His bear’s fur rubbed inside her skin.

Her heart slammed into her rib cage, memories that had once been flat suddenly taking on color and texture and depth. She wet her throat. “We’ll talk later.”

“Kiss me later,” he dared in a whisper for her ears alone. “Prove you can keep your distance. Prove you’re Silent.”

It wasn’t a playful challenge. It was deadly serious.

ENA didn’t say anything until they were outside, strolling along one of the gently curved walkways. “You made a request of me for Valentin’s sake.”

“He’s my mate.” The possessive claim was instinctive . . . and it ran bone-deep. “I’ve decided to have children with him.”

Her grandmother took her time answering. “An intelligent choice. It will strengthen your position as the head of EmNet. Pity Valentin doesn’t have human blood, or you’d have the trifecta.”

“Grandmother, you have human blood. As do I.”

Ena came to a full stop, looked at Silver with an unblinking expression. “Of course, I do,” she said after almost thirty seconds. “And the reason for glossing over that fact no longer exists.” She began to walk again, her calf-length coat a camel shade that suited the copper of her tunic and wide-legged pants.

“I will allow it to leak that your great-grandfather was a human engineer who chose to remain with his wife even after Silence came into effect, and she did everything in her power to subjugate her emotions. The idea of true love running in the Mercant line will further boost your credibility with the emotional races, while your track record will reassure the Silent.”

“I did some research as a teenager.” Silver stopped herself from looking over to where Valentin was no doubt roughhousing with their clanmates. “I believe your parents did indeed experience true love. They were together since they were fifteen, and she was twenty-five when Silence went into effect, too old for Silence to ever truly take.” Ena had been, for that time period, a late-in-life baby.

“My parents were never disciplined for breaching the Protocol,” her grandmother said. “I certainly never witnessed anything of the kind.”

“Yes, but when I dug through the physical archives below your residence”—a place Silver had spent a lot of time in as a teen, Ena the only one in the family who could teach her the telepathic skills she needed to know—“I found an old diary kept by a human relative who maintained bonds with them throughout her life.”

“That would be my aunt Rose, my father’s youngest sister. She bequeathed me her estate.”

“I always wondered how the diary ended up in the archives,” Silver said before continuing on with her original topic. “Rose wrote that though the two followed the rules of Silence in the hope it would help their violently psychic children, they shared the same bedroom all their lives.”

Ena nodded thoughtfully. “For me, that was simply the way it was in the family. I never thought to question it through the lens of Silence. I know for certain they slept in twin single beds, a foot of distance between them.”

“Yes,” Silver said, “but, according to Rose, when they died”—Ena’s parents had died at the same time, though only her father had suffered a long illness—“they were discovered holding hands, as if they’d reached out to one another in their final moments.”

As a teen, Silver had been intrigued by the report, but she hadn’t actually understood the gift of love and the sacrifice of her ancestors’ lives. That she did today told her a lot about her own emotional state . . . and the choices she had to make.

Her grandmother’s voice broke into her thoughts. “I was never told that. It would’ve been erased from any official record.” A heartbeat before Ena spoke again. “You should digitize the relevant parts of the diary if you haven’t already. Your great-grandparents’ love story will make excellent media fodder.”

“I’ll get you the whole diary.” Silver saw nothing wrong with Ena’s request or with how mercenary it sounded—her grandmother had been protecting the family for decades. All her thoughts were about how to achieve that aim. “Grandmother?”

“Yes?”

“Now that Silence has fallen, are you ever tempted to experience emotion?”

“Temptation is an emotion,” Ena said, her voice as difficult to read as always. “I would, however, choose to experience it for the simple reason that information is power. Ignorance is the opposite. The problem, of course, is that emotion and Silence are not things that can be switched on and off. To become Silent is a long and arduous process. Emotion is naturally chaotic.”

The words made Silver think of the foam balls that had been thrown around the play area that day, of how the cubs had gleefully attacked Valentin. She wondered if the exhausted cubs had curled up into furry snoring balls on the ride back with Anastasia and Yakov, or if they’d found a second wind and the ride had been full of noise and belly laughter.

“I have a request of Valentin,” Ena said without warning. “Let us speak to him.”

Dangerously ready to see Valentin again, despite how problematic he was to her equilibrium, Silver accompanied her grandmother to the central green space. The wolves had all left—perhaps because there were too many bears, or perhaps so the bears who lived in the city could be free with their alpha. Silver had noticed that though the two sides were never friendly, they were respectful. It was the only way a complex like this could work.

“It appears we have a problem.” Her grandmother came to a stop on the edge of the path, just before the grass.

Silver went to ask what, then realized it. “Oh, Valentin is that very large one with the scar on his left ear.” She pointed him out where he sat in the center, his clanmates around him—the physical description had been for Ena’s benefit; Silver knew Valentin whatever his form. “The bears here don’t see him as often as those in Denhome.”

“I will take but a moment of his time.” Her grandmother stepped onto the grass and walked straight toward Valentin, ignoring the other large bears in her path. They, in turn, lumbered out of her way when she would’ve otherwise had to go around them.

As Valentin had said more than once, Silver’s grandmother was an alpha; she demanded respect by her simple presence. Silver, too, was an alpha personality, but when she stepped onto the grass to make her way to Valentin so she could hear what her grandmother intended to ask him, the bears didn’t get out of her path.

They came to her instead.

One midsized bear leaned up against her, would’ve pushed her over without meaning to if she hadn’t set her feet apart to steady her balance . . . and if she didn’t already have another bear on her other side, his warmth heavy against her. Her hands rose, rested on their fur. They leaned a little deeper into her.

She stroked.

It was her responsibility as Valentin’s mate to see to the welfare of clanmates who needed contact from their alpha pair.

When she lifted her gaze, she found the largest bear in the clan looking at her. The sense of pride that burned in those eyes was a rough kiss.

The connection broke only because Ena had reached him. He turned to her grandmother, listened to whatever she had to say, then gave a single nod. Ena inclined her head in return and began to walk back. When she reached Silver, she said, “I will be accompanying Valentin to Denhome. I wish to see where my grandchildren will spend much of their time.”

“Much? I don’t think Valentin would trust his cubs out of his sight.”

“He will when they are with me.”

Silver had no argument to that—her grandmother’s ethics might not be Valentin’s or Silver’s but she knew how to protect children of the family. “I’ll come with you,” she said, without having thought about what she was about to propose. “My deputy has things well under control, and I need to reconnect with my clanmates.”

Her grandmother made no comment on Silver’s choice. “I will walk until your mate is ready to leave.”

The bears who’d been pressing into Silver stepped away, as if aware she needed to walk with her grandmother. She and Ena didn’t speak much as they walked, but they reached an understanding nonetheless. When Valentin drove them to Denhome, the ride was quiet, the words Silver had to say to Valentin a heaviness that pulsed.

It was time to end this.

Chapter 50

“TELL ME OF your family, Valentin,” Ena said from the backseat of Valentin’s large vehicle. “It is surprisingly difficult to research changeling clans. You keep your records off any major network.”

Silver saw Valentin’s shoulders bunch, went to head off her grandmother, but he caught her eye, shook his head. And then, he told Ena the dark secret of his clan. He contained his pain behind a gritty control until he spoke of his mother. “She wanders the wild, a bear who will never be at peace.”

A hard swallow, his hurt so apparent to Silver it was as if he were inside her. “When Nova had Dima, I spotted her lingering close by, brought him out for her to see, but she disappeared into the trees before I could reach her. I’ve seen her near the den recently, but for all intents and purposes, she is lost to us.”

Ena asked penetrating questions. Valentin answered all of them. “What will you do with our secrets, Grandmother?” he said softly at the end.

“What do you think, Valentin?”

He smiled through the echo of a terrible series of events that had scarred his huge heart but not changed its warmth or its ability to love. “I think you’ll bury them in the same deep, dark hole where you bury Mercant secrets. We’re family now and family protects. It never harms.”

“I have always appreciated your intelligence,” Ena said regally. “Now, tell me about this Pavel individual who is distracting Arwen from his duties.”

Chuckling, Valentin shook his head. “I’m not touching that with a ten-foot pole.”

“Neither am I,” Silver said before Ena could ask. “If you wish to poke into Arwen’s private life, Grandmother, you are on your own.”

Valentin’s hand lifted as if to play with her hair, his fingers curling into his palm halfway as he pulled back. It didn’t matter. The raw power of his presence, his dare an invisible visitor between them, it wrapped her up in possessive arms. She felt as if she were vibrating within by the time they arrived at Denhome.

She walked into the Cavern to find it relatively quiet. It was soon apparent why. An exhausted ball of cubs—some in bear form, some in human—lay in the center, snoring in short bursts. Clanmates walked around them, throwing them the odd smile, but otherwise not worried about their choice of sleeping position. Someone had managed to get a thick rug under them, so they were well cushioned at least. She saw Nova bend down to pet one, causing the cub to smile in her sleep.

That was when the healer saw Silver. Welcome lit up her whole face. “Silver!” She ran over, her feet clad in deep blue heels, her dress a vibrant cerise, and her hair precisely curled. “It’s so good to see you.” A hug before Nova jerked back. “Oh, I forgot—”

Silver touched her hands to Nova’s. “It’s all right, Nova.” The warmth of the other woman’s skin against hers, it didn’t feel wrong. And her heart, it felt so strange inside her chest. “I’d like you to meet my grandmother. Grandmother, this is Nova, the clan’s chief healer.”

“Grandmother,” Nova said respectfully. “You are most welcome.”

Ena received the same response no matter which part of Denhome she visited, until they reached Sergey; the older bear was helping build a bed in the area of Denhome set aside for carpentry and other such projects. He held Ena’s stare without welcome. “Come to see how the lesser races live?”

“Your low opinion of your own race is not my concern,” Ena said, cold as ice.

Sergey narrowed his eyes . . . then threw back his head and laughed a big bear laugh of which Silver wouldn’t have believed him capable. “That’ll teach me to poke a bear straight out of hibernation.” He swept out his arm in a wave. “Would you like a tour of our workshop?”

Ena took her time answering. “I suppose,” she said at last, “a bear of your years is apt to have at least some useful knowledge. You may proceed.”

Silver felt a living warmth at her back as Ena and Sergey walked off deeper into the cavernous space. “He seems in a far better mood.” Even though he had baited Ena, the man had given Silver a welcoming glance.

Curving his hand over her hip, his chest brushing her shoulders, Valentin said, “I’m his alpha—he needed to understand that and accept it. We had a discussion. It’s done.”

“By discussion, do you mean a fight?”

His chuckle vibrated against her, the heat of him sinking into her to warm parts she hadn’t known were cold. “Since your grandmother has a guide, do you want to catch up with your clanmates? Nova and the others are making drinks so you can sit and chat.”

Shifting on her heel, Silver looked at the hard edges of his face, touched her hand to that thick black hair he never bothered to comb, felt her heart squeeze. “Valentin.”

He lowered his head, his hair rough and tumbled. “Starlight.” A ragged word.

She touched her fingers to his lips, saw her hand was trembling. “Who are you to me?”

“Yours,” he said. “I’m yours.”

AN hour later, Nova showed Silver into her old room. Ena had made the unexpected decision to stay at Denhome overnight, so Silver didn’t have to return to Moscow—especially since she could hook into EmNet systems using her devices or the StoneWater network. The latter she knew she could trust; to these bears, she was half of their alpha pair.

No one would treat her as an enemy.

No one would spy on her.

No one would do anything but defend her to their last breath.

And Valentin . . . he’d die to keep her safe. She felt that knowledge in the very core of her being, as if she were inside his mind, inside his soul.

“I made sure all the clothes you left in Denhome stayed in good condition,” Nova told her. “I figured you could change here, and then if you and Mishka . . .” A sudden pause, her smile fading. “I don’t know what to do or say. Mates are usually for life unless one dies.”

“He’s still mine,” Silver said at once. “He told me so himself.”

A dangerous edge to her that Silver had never before seen, Nova said, “Don’t break my brother’s heart, Silver. He’s a big lug, but where you’re concerned, that heart of his, it’s like glass. You could shatter it with a few careless words.”

The visual was an unforgiving one, shards of glass crimson with Valentin’s blood lying at her feet. “I would never hurt Valentin.” The words came out hard, a rebuke as brutal as Nova’s words.

Nova’s eyes went amber, searched Silver’s face. “You still love him,” she whispered. “My God, Seelichka. Even though they cut into your brain, even though they rewired you, you held on to him. No wonder Mishka calls you Silver Fucking Mercant.”

Silver didn’t answer the healer, but after Nova left, she exited her bedroom and looked until she spotted Pieter. Making her way to the quiet male after ensuring Nova and Stasya were nowhere nearby, she said, “Petya.”

A suspicious scowl. “Why are you calling me Petya? You always call me Pieter.”

“You asked me to call you Petya.”

“But you never do.”

“I’m doing it now.”

“Why?”

Bears.

Deciding not to go any further down that rabbit hole, she said, “Will Valentin return soon?” He’d made it a point to find her after dinner, tell her that he had to go speak with Selenka.

In his gaze had been an unhidden need that clawed at her, his love worn openly, though she might yet kick at it. He wasn’t budging in that love, wasn’t building walls behind which he’d be safe, wasn’t doing anything but inviting her back into his warmth, despite the pain she’d caused him.

Alpha bear he might be, but he had no self-protective instinct when it came to the people he loved. If he wouldn’t protect himself, she’d do it for him. That was why she’d hunted out Pieter.

“Valya? I’m guessing he’ll be back in two hours.” Hazel eyes watched her, Pieter the most difficult to read of all of the seconds. “Why?”

“I need you to take me to Galina Evanova.”

No change in Pieter’s expression. “Why do you think I can track her?”

“You’re one of Valentin’s best friends,” she said, gaze resolute. “You keep an eye on her because it matters to him and his sisters.”

Folding his arms, he looked bear-stubborn for a second before admitting, “We all do—Inara spotted her a hundred meters from Denhome earlier today.” Flinty eyes. “If you get hurt, Valya will tear off my head and stomp on it.”

“I’m a high-level telepath, Petya. I can smash back a rampaging bear.” It’d stun the bear, but it wouldn’t do harm unless she literally sought to kill. Psy couldn’t breach changeling shields, but they could kill changelings with a massive psychic surge.

“A-hem.”

“And, of course,” Silver added at that pointed cough from the bear in front of her, “I’ll have your big, strong self with me.”

Scowling at her, Pieter nonetheless snuck her out of Denhome and into the trees. “You won’t be able to approach her,” he said in the soft dark green of the trees, the sky above dotted with stars. “She doesn’t even let Dima close, and he’s her only grandson.”

“Leave that to me.” Silver had things she wanted to say to Galina Evanova.

A glance from Pieter, his eyes glowing a faint amber in the darkness. “You could wipe the floor with me, couldn’t you?”

“What do you think?” she asked, steel and ice in her tone.

“I think,” he said with unexpected solemnity, “my alpha chose well.” He raised his hand a second later, then put his finger to his lips.

Nodding, Silver tried to walk in his footsteps, so she’d avoid crunching a branch or making any other noise. He stopped five minutes later and, hunkering down, pointed into the darkness. Silver didn’t have changeling night vision—it took her a full minute to see the outline of a bear seated under the branches of a tree with a large canopy.

She put her hand on Pieter’s shoulder, whispered so low she could barely hear herself. “I need privacy.”

He looked outraged. Putting his hand to his hair, he pulled up the strands and drew a line across his throat, demonstrating what Valentin would do to him if she got hurt. Having half expected that response, Silver dug out the earplugs she’d requisitioned from the medical supplies while Nova was away from the infirmary.

Pieter scowled when she held them out, but put them in his ears. Now he’d be able to see her, but not hear her conversation with Galina. She rose to her feet, stepped forward, deliberately making a noise. The sleeping bear woke, her head jerking up.

She began to lumber to her feet seconds later.

“Do not run,” Silver said flatly. “I’m an extremely strong telepath. I will slam you into unconsciousness as many times as it takes.” It wasn’t that easy, of course, but Ena had taught her that sometimes, belief was all about projection.

She set her feet apart and stared into the wild amber eyes facing her, daring the other woman to defy her.

When the bear rumbled at her, she folded her arms. “Try it,” Silver said softly. “I will put you flat, then I’ll tie you up and drag you to Denhome.”

The bear just stared at her. As well it might. Silver was currently a tiny percentage of its overall weight. But it was listening, and it hadn’t run. Nostrils flaring, it suddenly jerked forward before stilling. Behind her, she felt Pieter ready himself, but he held back when the bear froze.

“Yes,” Silver said softly. “I’m your Mishka’s mate.” She used the pet name deliberately as a reminder of the boy whose heart this woman was breaking every day that she wandered out here. “I’ve also had enough of this bullshit.” She spit on the ground for emphasis, the act not natural to her, but in a negotiation, every move counted.

“You’re in pain, I understand that,” she said in the same hard tone. “But that does not give you permission to brutalize your children’s hearts.” Never again did Silver want to see that pain in Valentin, his big body held so fiercely rigid as he contained his emotions. “Get out of sight, or come in,” she said flatly. “Those are your only choices.”

Bear faces might be hard to read, but Silver had been around them enough to know this one was as outraged as Pieter had just been. “If I see you lingering around Denhome but not coming in, if I so much as hear a report from a sentry that you’ve been spotted, I will track you, and I will put you down. Is that understood?” Of course, Silver wasn’t about to murder Valentin’s mother, but this was a hardheaded bear she was trying to reach. It required tough talk.

“Your children’s wounds need to heal,” Silver continued. “Each time they see you, and you turn away from them, it rips the scabs wide open. Enough.” She sliced out her hand.

The bear actually scrambled back.

“If you want to wallow in your pain, you do that. But you do not get to hurt Valentin or his sisters.” She took a step forward.

The bear backed away.

“The next time I see you,” Silver said in her most icy tone, “you’d better be walking into Denhome.”

Shifting on its paws, the bear turned and lumbered off into the trees.

“These earplugs don’t work that well, you know,” Pieter said softly from behind her.

She shot him a flinty look. “Say a word, and I’ll bury you beside her.”

A rare grin from this reserved bear. “You’re the scariest woman I’ve ever met. I think I’m in love with you.”

Bears. “Let’s get back.”

As they made their way through the forest, Pieter said, “You’ve taken a risk.” It was quiet. “They hurt seeing her, but they also need to know she’s all right.”

Silver knew that. She also knew that StoneWater bears would’ve never called Galina Evanova on her behavior. Valentin, with his big heart, would’ve never been so pitiless. He looked after the people he loved. He’d looked after Silver even after she hit his heart with blow after blow. “She’s a bear, Petya. You really think she’ll listen to me if she wants to see her children?”

“Huh.” He ran a hand through the sunset of his hair. “Never knew a mama bear to let anyone stop her seeing her cubs, but you did say some pretty harsh things.”

“They needed to be said.” She didn’t think Galina was manipulating her children and clanmates on purpose, but she was doing it. If Silver had to face her down again and again until the other woman understood the damage she was doing, so be it.

No one was allowed to hurt Valentin.

Not even Silver.

Chapter 51

SILVER AND PIETER made it back fifteen minutes before Valentin returned.

Having gone to her room to dress for bed, Silver waited another ten minutes before leaving that room and going next door to Valentin’s. She pushed open the door without knocking because he was hers and she had every right to go in.

He was standing shirtless in front of the bed, his hands on his hips and his hair damp from a recent shower that scented the air with soap. Wearing blue jeans on his lower half, he was staring at three different shirts laid out on the mattress: one white, one black, the third a steely blue.

“Why are you getting dressed?” Silver asked, closing the distance between them.

He’d gone motionless the instant she entered, watched without moving as she picked up the blue shirt. “Put on this one.” Shaking it out, she walked around behind him and helped him shrug it on, smoothing her hands over the muscled breadth of his shoulders before she came around to the front. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m planning our next date.” He raised a hand, caught a lock of her unbound hair, tugged her gently closer. “I need to have a swanky outfit for that.”

She didn’t offer to button his shirt for him, though the strip of skin and crisp hair on his chest was highly distracting. “What are we doing that requires formal clothing?”

“A dinner date at a fancy restaurant.”

“I would suggest we swap that date for a different one.”

Valentin folded his arms, jaw set. “No trickery.”

“Let’s exchange naked skin privileges.”

Valentin ripped off his shirt so fast she heard fabric tear. She was on her back on the bed the next second, a bear in human form looking down at her. “Done,” he said, but froze with his hand halfway down her side. “Hold on—is this Silver-and-Valentin-wild-monkey skin privileges, or is this biological-exchange-of-fluids-so-we-can-create-a-cub skin privileges?”

She felt the tremor in his body, heard the hope twined with fear in his voice. And knew, no matter what, there was no turning back. Hurting Valentin was simply not acceptable to any part of her.

“This is Silver-tasting-Valentin all over again.” Breasts aching and her core hot, she touched her hand to his cheek, things unfurling inside her for which she had no name. “This act, it’s so raw, so primal, so intimate. I need to know if I have the capacity to process it along the new pathways in my brain.”

VALENTIN’S heart pounded like a bass drum. Sliding his hand under Silver’s head, he pressed his face against the side of hers as his body shook. She’d come to him. They’d rewired her brain, and still she’d come to him. He could work with that.

She wove her hand into his hair, wrapped her legs around him in an open possessiveness that gripped his heart tight. “Valyusha, you’re shaking.”

He kissed her, hot and deep and full of all the love he’d had to contain while she woke from her long sleep. He’d missed her so much. Crushing her to him, he told himself to slow the fuck down, to not rut on her like a damn feral bear. But then Silver licked her tongue against his, and he had no hope in hell of doing that.

He tore off her clothes.

She didn’t give him a cool stare and remind him that clothes cost money. Her body arched under his, her skin flushing a creamy rose. He kissed his way down her throat, over her right breast, to her nipple. When he bit, she pulled hard at his hair. He shuddered, did other bad things to her.

His tongue in her pussy made her scream; his fingers digging into her butt had her fighting him for control; his stubble rubbing against her breasts had her locking her legs so tight around him that he felt owned. “Fuck, I missed you.”

Silver didn’t speak.

She scratched him, she bit him, and then she pushed at his shoulders until he let her be on top. He took the chance to squeeze her ass as she undid his pants. Drunk on her scent, he gave up on the momentary good behavior and hauled her up with a single powerful motion to press his lips to her pussy once again.

She gave another little scream.

Valentin was more than strong enough to hold her in place while he lapped her up like honey. She came so hard her body shuddered. He would’ve kept going forever if his cock hadn’t been a stone rod in danger of snapping in half if he didn’t get inside her.

Throwing her limp body onto the bed beside him, he tore off his pants and underwear and rose over her. One hand on her breast, he squeezed, fondled, branded. Mine, said the bear. He didn’t realize he’d spoken the guttural word aloud until Silver’s eyes, eyes gone that mysterious dark, locked on to his mouth.

Still fondling her breast, he kissed her. Not gentle and loverlike. Uncivilized and bearlike. Releasing her breast only so he could stroke down her body to grip her hip, he bit at her lower lip before rising above her. “Are you wet enough for me?”

She spread her thighs for him, her hands on her knees and her core slick.

His brain lost all thought. He sank into her in a single thick thrust, gathering her close and crushing her to him as he filled her body with his—but as her arms and legs came around him while her pussy clamped down on his cock, he was the one who was claimed. By Silver Fucking Mercant.

“IT wasn’t the skin privileges,” Silver said to him some time later, his well-satisfied mate lying with her head on his shoulder, her hair sweeping across him. He, of course, had his hand on her butt. Why the hell not when she was naked in bed with him, and he was sweaty from being totally and utterly wrung dry?

“Hmm?” he play-growled. “Sure felt like naked skin privileges to me.”

Silver stayed lax against him, pure satisfied female. He smiled, smug. Okay, yes, he’d lost it and rutted on her exactly like a feral bear, but he’d also made her come three times. Not his best effort, but he planned to make up for it.

He slid his hand from her ass to between her legs, cupped her. “Are you sore?”

“You are rather well-endowed, but the ache is one I like.”

He kept his hand right where it was. Possessive? Him? “What were you talking about before I got distracted by how soft you are”—he ran his fingers through her folds—“and how good you smell.” Rolling over onto her, he nuzzled and bit at her neck.

Silver pulled at his hair again to make him pay attention. His displeased rumbling had zero effect on her. His mate would never fear him. His bear swaggered around like an asshole, pleased with his choice of this strong, sexy woman.

“I’ve been feeling more and more,” she said, her eyes locked to his. “And I’ve been trying to justify my responses in various ways.”

Valentin couldn’t hide his hurt. “Why would you do that, Starlight?”

Her hand on his jaw, a petting caress. “Don’t you understand, Valyusha? I was justifying it to be with you, to do things with you. I couldn’t explain why when my emotions were meant to be gone.”

“Bears are stubborn fools,” he said with a baring of his teeth. “The mating bond wasn’t about to let go.” It was anchored in a part of the psyche so primal even the operation couldn’t sever it.

“Neither was I. You’re mine.” Flat, no room for argument.

Hurt retreated under a wave of smug pleasure.

“I want no confusion about that.” Silver’s fingers gripped his jaw hard. “I want no one believing we might not be a unit. Not our clan, not your family, not mine. And never, ever you.” Her gaze was pure steel. “If that means embracing emotion, so be it.”

Happy as he was, Valentin worried. “Your audio telepathy?”

“Nonexistent, though I’ve clearly reaccessed my emotions far faster than anyone could’ve predicted.” Playing with his hair again, Valentin’s dangerous, beautiful mate said, “I’ve always had a sense of it at the back of my mind. That sense is gone.”

“And physical contact?” he asked, remembering how she’d overloaded in his arms. “Not just skin privileges with me, but tactile contact with the clan. Since you and I, we’re forever”—it was hard to breathe through the joy crashing through him—“we need to protect you from overloading.”

“There’s no need,” Silver replied. “My time in Denhome taught me that I can manage the impact—our bears are baffled by but respectful of a clanmate who needs time alone now and then.” Fingers still in his hair, her touch proprietary. “And I have a strong feeling the mating bond helps, too. We balance each other.”

Valentin’s happiness threatened to explode out of his skin. “I can’t wait to grow old with you—and to see you turn into a hard-ass like Ena.”

She didn’t smile. “I hurt you. I’m sorry.”

Not liking the pained guilt on her face, he shifted onto his back again and hauled her up on his chest so he could cuddle her close. “It was tough having you distance yourself from me, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

He tangled one hand in her hair. “Partly because I was too fucking stubborn to believe you when you said you didn’t want me, didn’t want us, but mostly because you were always right here.” He tapped a fisted hand against his heart.

Silver propped her chin up on her hands, looked inside her mind. There it was, the primal bond that connected her to Valentin. It dared anyone in the PsyNet to touch it, just dared. She hadn’t thrown a shield around it this time, and following her lead, neither had Arwen.

Silver had a feeling anyone who got too close would get a riled-up bear’s welcome. “I don’t know where our bond was hiding all this time,” she murmured, “but I have my suspicions.”

The lazy-eyed bear who was now stroking her back, all the way down to her buttocks and back up, demanded a kiss. She gave it, demanded another one herself. “The PsyNet is alive in a way most people don’t understand,” she told him afterward.

“Of course it is.” Her bear rolled his eyes. “All those brains in one big psychic network. If it wasn’t going to become a sentience of its own in some way, what else was it going to do?”

Silver narrowed her own eyes and moved until they were nose to nose. “You’re much, much smarter than you like to make out, Mr. I. M. A. Medvezhonok.” Not that she hadn’t known that from day one.

Smiling at her in that smug bear way, he fondled the side of her breast. “Tell me more about this sentience in your PsyNet. What do you think it did?”

“I think the NetMind and its more erratic twin, the DarkMind, make decisions for the good of the entire network.” The majority of Psy didn’t know about the NetMind’s dark twin, but Silver was a Mercant. “And—Oh.” She scrambled up to sit astride him.

Hands firmly possessive around her hips, Valentin scowled at her. “Now my chest is cold. Aren’t your pretty tits cold?”

“Focus.” She glared at him, but her body missed his, too, so she snuggled back down. “I’ve just realized something.”

“What?”

“We know the PsyNet must need changeling energy, too, even if at a lesser level than it needs humans.” Their world had always been a triumvirate. “But we’ve been thinking that means pulling others permanently into the PsyNet.”

She shook her head. “There would’ve been Psy like me in the past, Psy who needed to remain in the PsyNet. I see it, Valyusha. I see how it was meant to be.” Excitement was a heated river inside her. “Bonds across networks were once the norm. The energy can flow from one to the other.”

Valentin frowned. “I know I have a bond with my seconds and my healers that you’d probably see as a psychic network, but what about humans?”

“Humans fight and die for those they love,” Silver whispered. “Bowen Knight put his body in the path of a bullet to protect his sister, put a dangerous implant in his brain for the sake of his people.

“We’ve been so arrogant all this time,” she said, furious with herself for falling into the same trap. “We’ve assumed that because we can’t see a human psychic network, that means it doesn’t exist. Stupid when there’s so much evidence that it does.”

“Fascinating.”

She dug her nails lightly into the chest of the bear whose hands were lazily mapping her body. “It is fascinating.”

“Not when you’re naked and my cock is hard and I want to eat you up like candy.” A slow smile. “I missed you, Starlight. Come be with me.”

Silver had no chance against this bear. Never had.

“SOMETHING’S happening,” Valentin said an hour later, while the two of them were lying sweaty and boneless in each other’s arms. “There’s a commotion in the Cavern.”

Silver got up with him, quickly pulling on clothes as he tugged on his jeans. Bare-chested, he took her hand and the two of them walked out. Valentin froze partway to the Cavern. “I can scent her,” he whispered, eyes wild. “My mom.”

“Good, I’m glad I didn’t have to carry through my threat of stunning her with my telepathy and dragging her back to Denhome.”

Valentin’s mouth fell open. She waited to see if he’d be angry at her interference, but he threw back his head and laughed that huge, generous laugh. “Silver Fucking Mercant.” A hard kiss, her body crushed to his. “She’s going to be pissed at you for the next decade.”

“I don’t care.” It had never been about her. Only him.

His expression when they walked into the Cavern and he took in the dirty woman with long, tangled black hair who sat wrapped in a blanket . . . it was everything.

Later, when he kissed Silver and kissed her and kissed her until she was drunk on him, she knew she’d do anything for him. Face down feral bears. Face the chaos of emotions. Battle the world itself.

“I love you, Valyusha.”

“I’ll be your teddy bear anytime, Starlight.” Taking her hand, he pressed it to the bass beat of his heart. “It’s yours. Forever and always.”

Shadows

AKSHAY PATEL’S BODY was found in his study, the CEO dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. Silver scanned the photos and report her grandmother had been able to gain from her Enforcement contact, Valentin reading over her shoulder as she sat in the computer center of Denhome.

“He didn’t do that to himself.” Valentin’s tone was definitive.

“It’s a picture-perfect scene,” Silver said. “That alone makes me doubt it, but why are you so sure?”

“Patel was a man used to power, but he bargained away his freedom for his children—yet according to this, he shot himself while his children were home and the door to the study unlocked.”

Silver nodded. “You’re right.” No loving father would want his children to discover his mutilated body, the high-power projectile weapon having destroyed most of the back of his head. “Further to that, Akshay Patel might’ve been broken, but he was an intelligent man. I would’ve expected him to begin thinking about how he could somehow make the situation work to his family’s advantage.”

“Consortium?”

“It makes the most sense.” She tapped her finger against the desk. “But it’s far too soon for them to have known he was broken by my grandmother. We kept the information within a trusted and extremely small circle. And I’m certain Patel wouldn’t have told anyone.”

“Too proud,” Valentin agreed. “Maybe the Consortium never knew Patel had been turned.” He began to play with her hair, Silver having kept it down for him since they were in Denhome, where she didn’t have to wear her armor. “Cracks might be appearing among the co-conspirators.”

“The psychological profiles of the kind of people who’d join a group like the Consortium are also not those of people who’d do well in a group that requires long-term cooperation.” Arrogance, narcissism, control, they were the hallmarks of the Consortium’s higher echelons. “The ones we’ve run to ground have all been the heads of their family groups or business empires, people used to making their own decisions.”

Bear claws touched her neck but she didn’t flinch. Valentin would cut off his own hand before harming her. Sometimes the bear just rose to the surface and wanted to play. Reaching back from where she sat in the work chair, she ran her fingers along his thigh. “The person who created the Consortium would’ve done better to reach out to people in my position.”

“You can’t be bought, Silver.”

“No.” She gave her loyalty not for power or influence but because it was deserved. “I meant people who are close to those in power—the seconds-in-command or the senior aides. The vice presidents. People with ambition but who aren’t yet used to being in charge.

“Collect the right personalities into a group, and the leader of the Consortium could’ve had a stable and powerful network.” Instead, that person had gone for those at the top, believing they could control the vicious dogs she—if Akshay Patel had been right in his deduction that the architect of it all was a woman—had brought into the mix.

“I’m glad you’re not on the side of evil,” Valentin said, rubbing his jaw against her cheek. “You’d make a deadly evil genius.”

“I will put that on my résumé.”

Laughing, her bear mate scooped her right out of the chair and threw her up before catching her snugly against his chest. She glared at him, though her lips wanted to curve at the joy on his face. “I am not a cub.”

“Grr.” He pretended to bite her.

“Valyusha!” She pulled at his hair to get him to stop.

He tickled her.

And Silver laughed so hard that she snorted. Throwing her hands over her mouth at the inelegant sound, she found her eyes locked with those of a bear who was delighted with her. She dropped her hands, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed the life out of him. “Let’s go or we’ll be late.”

“Definitely can’t be late for ice cream.”

It was after their ice cream date, as they were walking through the fading light of Moscow, the air bitingly cold, that Silver updated Valentin on her search for information about his father, specifically whether Mikhail Nikolaev had been the subject of a terrible Psy experiment. “I haven’t yet discovered anything concrete,” she said, “but I’m following several data threads.”

“You’re being careful?”

She didn’t chide him for his rumbling concern. Her mate was an alpha bear—he couldn’t help being protective of those he loved. Neither could she. “Yes,” she said. “This data is old, that’s why it’s so difficult to unravel. I don’t think there’s any real risk of attracting dangerous attention, but I’m taking maximum precautions.”

“Good.” He ran his hand over her hair, a wild peacefulness to him even as they discussed this emotionally wrought topic. “No information is worth your life.”

Silver interlaced her fingers through his. “I know, but as you know,” she added in a cool tone, “I can be just slightly relentless in pursuit of a goal.”

His chuckle was warmth wrapping around her, an acceptance so deep she knew nothing could ever shake it—Valentin Nikolaev saw every part of her and he loved every part of her.

Before he could speak, however, her phone lit up with a call from Lily Knight.

“Bo is degrading,” Lily told them, her face stark on the small screen, but her voice clear. “The doctors are giving him days at most.”

“I’m very sorry, Lily.” Silver had a brother she loved; she knew Lily would be devastated by Bo’s death—but the impact of his loss would spread far beyond the other woman. First and foremost, it would leave the Alliance with a huge power vacuum. The previous leadership had been swept away by Bo and his group when they came in fighting for the Alliance’s future, and Bo hadn’t had long enough to train a successor.

The Alliance stood in real danger of collapsing right when it was needed most. Their world was a triad; it could not stand strong if one part of that triad was missing. “Is there any way EmNet can assist?” Their mandate was to offer help in all emergencies; to Silver’s mind, this qualified.

“Smoke and mirrors if you can,” Lily said. “Anything that’ll keep the focus off the Alliance and off Bo.” Huge gray eyes met Valentin’s. “If it all comes tumbling down, we may need a place to hide certain vulnerable people.”

“No need to ask, Lily,” Valentin said. “StoneWater will protect them.”

“We’re standing on a precipice,” Silver said after Lily signed off.

His face grim, his fingers warm and rough around her own, Valentin spoke her concerns aloud. “Trinity, EmNet, your PsyNet, it could all collapse if humans withdraw from the playing board.”

“Yes.” Humans needed Bo, needed the Alliance, needed to know they had someone in their corner who’d protect them should the Psy or changelings become aggressive. “Right now, all we can do is give Lily what she’s requested. Any ideas for the smoke and mirrors?”

Her mate’s eyes gleamed just as soft flakes of winter’s first snowfall drifted out of the sky. A second later, she found herself bent over a bear alpha’s powerful arm while his laughing mouth covered her own right there in the center of Moscow.

MOSCOW DAILY: MORNING EDITION

SILVER MERCANT WITH ALPHA NIKOLAEV! EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS WITHIN!!