Last Guard

by Nalini Singh

  Payal had no idea which element of that to address first, so she did what she always did when she got overwhelmed. She broke his reply down into its component parts. And went straight to the point that shook her the most. Thank you for protecting me.

  You never have to thank me for looking out for you. Pure voice, rough words.

  She swallowed hard. I’ll be perfectly capable when I contact the Ruling Coalition.

  I don’t care about that. I was worried about you, 3K.

  What had once been a moniker that indicated pain and horror had become a thing far more tender. As if Canto had claimed it, put his stamp on it.

  Payal stood motionless at her kitchenette counter, her eyes hot and her walls tumbling down all over again. She always ate in her apartment and ordered her own food via private delivery because she didn’t trust anyone in the house, not even those who’d professed their loyalty.

  She’d been fine alone for years. She’d been functional.

  And sad, whispered the lost, broken part of her. Sad and so alone. She didn’t want to be that way today, didn’t want to live in an isolated bubble where she could never let down her guard.

  Canto was so dangerous to her—and her craving for him was a storm.

  She looked down at her pajamas. A pair of thin cotton pants of blue with fine yellow stripes, paired with a white T-shirt in a silky fabric that felt good against her skin. My mind has regrouped, she telepathed to him, her heart a drumbeat. I might teleport to the oasis after I have my nutrients.

  If he didn’t want to acknowledge her implied invitation, he could just tell her she was welcome to go there.

  Nothing in her words made her need obvious.

  Nothing laid her soft inner core bare to him.

  No, Canto said. Come here.

  The image that entered her mind was of a room with comfortable sofas of chocolate brown and warm wooden flooring striped by what looked to be midmorning sunshine.

  Okay. Her fingers trembled.

  Breathing slow and deep, slow and deep until her mind no longer skittered, she drank the first glass of nutrients with focused concentration. She couldn’t so quickly intake the second, decided to leave it for later.

  Hurry, hurry, whispered the madness in her. Go to him. To 7J.

  She thought about brushing her hair into its usual tail, thought about putting on the cosmetics she’d learned to use because they created a shield against the world. Then she thought about the image Canto had sent her. Her heartbeat jerked. She was near certain what he’d done, but it made no rational sense to her. Yet she teleported into that space—into danger—while barefoot and in her pajamas.

  The ghost of the little girl she’d once been, wanting to see the friend in him.

  Her mind responded with red warning sirens an instant afterward, but it was too late to take back her action. She’d arrived.

  * * *

  • • •

  CANTO couldn’t believe she was here. All sleep-tumbled hair, a line yet marking her cheek from when she’d curled onto her side, her body clad in soft fabrics that made him want to touch, and her feet bare.

  Her toenails were neatly buffed and polished with a clear coat, her toes small, as befitted her overall size. He’d never before noticed anyone’s toes. It was probably strange and creepy to find himself fascinated by them, but he couldn’t stop noticing things about her—couldn’t stop being fascinated by her.

  His heart was thunder.

  “Don’t get mad, but I got you food.” He scowled, aggravated by the shadows under her eyes. “Actual solid food.” Payal needed fuel, especially since he’d made her teleport here; he’d thrown the items together in the short minutes since she’d said she’d go to the desert . . . and he’d hoped she’d come to him.

  “I can’t not help you. Don’t ask that of me.” He picked up a fortified roll and thrust it at her, even knowing she’d probably be furious with him for doing it. He couldn’t help it, not with her shoeless and sleep-mussed and looking at him with those big cardinal eyes, her face devoid of makeup.

  But what she said had nothing to do with the food. “This is your home.” She sounded . . . appalled.

  Appalled.

  His chest expanded, fire in his blood. She hadn’t stepped back, hadn’t told him to stop taking care of her. No, she was glaring at him as if he’d lost his goddamn mind. Canto wanted to fucking dance. “Yes.”

  Everyone in his family would lose their shit when they discovered what he’d done. But if Canto knew one thing, it was that he had to be the naked and defenseless one in this first step into pure trust. Payal didn’t have that capacity and he couldn’t ask it of her. While Canto might’ve had a cold bastard for a father, he’d then been embraced by a pack of Mercants who’d gut anyone who dared lay a finger on him.

  Payal had never had anyone.

  Well, fuck that. She had him now, and he’d show her until she accepted that indelible truth.

  “You just gave a teleporter access to your home.” Appalled was morphing into furious. Grabbing the bread roll, she shook it at him. “Do you know what I could do with that information?”

  Canto shrugged, fighting a grin. “Teleport in and murder me.” Unless he did major renovations—including blocking out the view beyond the automatic balcony sliders—she could now enter his home as she wished.

  “Why?” She spread her arms on either side of her body, and the sun speared through the white of her tee to reveal the protrusion of her rib cage.

  “Eat.” It came out a growl and he didn’t fucking care; he couldn’t concentrate when he knew she was hurting herself. “You’ve lost weight.”

  Glaring, she took a deliberate bite of the roll, chewed.

  Mollified, he huffed out a breath. “You planning to use this information to cause harm to me or mine?”

  “No,” she snapped, nothing muted or distant about her. “But you couldn’t have known that. You shouldn’t just trust people, Canto.” Her emotions were brilliant and dazzling, a crackle of energy in the air.

  This was the wild heart she kept caged. It was a shine in her eyes, a rapid jerkiness in her movements, a hyper energy that had her pacing.

  He was as compelled by this side of her as he was the other. “I know an empath—he says my instincts are generally good.”

  “Empaths have a tendency to get in trouble because they trust the wrong people.” Payal took another feral bite of the roll, chewed, and swallowed, before adding, “The last time we hired a commercial empath, I had to run interference the entire time because they kept going into rooms with unauthorized people who are controlled by Lalit.”

  She waved the roll in the air. “At least they had the sense not to want to be alone with him.”

  “Too late now.” He fought the urge to thrust a chocolate drink at her. “I’ve given you the key to my home. I’ve burdened you with my trust.”

  A hard look from glittering eyes. “I won’t reciprocate.” She still held half the roll.

  “I know.” This wasn’t about quid pro quo. “Have something to drink.” Great. That restraint had lasted exactly ten seconds. He truly was channeling a bear now. The last time he’d visited Denhome, they’d plied him with so much food he’d asked Silver if her packmates thought Psy had prodigious appetites.

  His cousin had given him an amused look. “No. They just like you.”

  Now Payal gave him the same look he’d probably given those bears. But she did deign to curl up on the sofa. It happened to be his favorite seat, and seeing her there . . . Good. It was good. After moving his chair to the other side of the low coffee table, he nudged across a sealed bottle of chocolate-flavored nutrients.

  She took it, before freezing and staring at the partially eaten roll in her hand. “I ate this.”

  He didn’t get it for a second. Then he did—it had been unsealed, could�
��ve held poison.

  Payal lived in a world where food was a weapon.

  Canto gritted his teeth. Anger was a familiar friend from his childhood, a hot flame that scalded from the inside out, but that wouldn’t be helpful here. “Throw it to me.”

  When she did nothing, he held out his hands. She finally chucked it over. Holding her gaze, he finished it in two bites. “If I wanted to kill you,” he muttered, “I’d just shoot you. I wouldn’t waste handmade fucking rolls.”

  A sudden intense burst of laughter from her that turned him to stone, it was so bright and sharp and beautiful.

  Chapter 23

  Yesterday, someone I was assisting yelled at me to stop being so damn naive, to stop expecting the best of people! I had to inform them it was congenital—and that it wasn’t a bug but a feature. Never, my fellow Es, let anyone tell you otherwise. One by one, we’re going to change hearts and minds . . . and the world.

  —Ivy Jane Zen, President, Empathic Collective, in a letter to the Collective membership

  SNAPPING HER MOUTH shut, Payal swallowed and blinked hard. “Do you see?” It came out a rasp. “I’m manic. My shields are down and I’m like a bullet that keeps ricocheting.”

  Canto made himself breathe past the shock of hearing her laughter for that one dazzling moment, made himself listen. He needed to talk to Arwen, find out more about how a mind like Payal’s worked—without ever mentioning Payal. But for now, he just wanted her in any way she wanted to be with him.

  Payal drank from the chocolate drink, gave it a long look afterward. “Too rich. I like the fruit ones better.” Putting the drink aside with a rapid movement, she teleported a fruit drink from the table to hover in front of her.

  Tilting her head to the side, she made the bottle tumble end over end while they both watched. Grabbing it without warning, she twisted off the lid and took two gulps before meeting Canto’s gaze again. “Do you see? I’m unstable.” It was a challenge. “No one normal acts this way.”

  “What I see is a telekinetic with fine control over her ability,” he pointed out. “You’re also having a fully rational conversation with me.” He had his suspicions about why she had such a negative view of her natural emotional inclinations, but he didn’t have enough information to know if he was right.

  Payal “threw” the bottle almost to the ceiling, held it there, then allowed it to drop into her hands. “My mind zigs and zags,” she muttered. “I can’t hold on to a single thought for long.” She jumped up, went to the balcony doors. “Why is it so green outside?” Her hand hovered over the touch-activated door control, but she looked back at him rather than making contact.

  “Yes,” he said, fascinated by the primal complexity of her.

  Opening the doors on a shush of sound, she ran out onto the deck that overlooked lush green foliage and, beyond it, a road bordered by more foliage. Farther back rose huge forest goliaths—as they did behind his property.

  Having reached the railing, Payal craned her neck left, then right. “There are no other houses. Only trees.”

  Canto didn’t tell her they were on the edge of StoneWater bear territory, even though this part of their land was technically accessible to the public. While he could put himself in Payal’s hands without a qualm, he couldn’t do that with the bears.

  He’d have to talk to Valentin, ask permission to give a teleporter this information.

  “It’s so quiet here.” Payal stepped back from the edge, then went to it again. This time, she leaned over the railing until her feet were off the deck boards. “You planted flowers!”

  “They were a gift. I couldn’t let them die.” It would’ve broken Arwen’s heart, and that Canto would never do.

  Running to the other edge of the balcony, Payal looked over there, too, then came back and said, “I’m hungry. I have a migraine. It hurts.”

  Canto scowled. “Do you need—”

  “Food,” she interrupted, dropping her fingers from her temple. “Food will make me feel better.”

  The two of them went inside, and she curled up on his sofa again, tangled hair, wild eyes, and a frenetic energy tightly contained as she wrapped her arms around her knees and began to rock. “See, Canto? See? I’m quite mad outside the cage.”

  “I see bright, wild energy. A little jagged at the edges, sure. But I don’t see any sign of dangerous mental instability.” With no other data at hand, he had to go on his gut instinct and on his knowledge of Payal on the mental plane.

  That she was disturbed by herself, he accepted. But he also knew that she’d never received positive feedback from those around her.

  “Kindness matters, Canto,” Arwen had said to him once, his empath’s heart pinned to his sleeve and his eyes shining. “Tell a child enough times that he’s brave and smart and good, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  Not ever would Canto gainsay Payal in any decision she made about her mind—but he damn well was going to be that positive voice, the one that shone light on the other side of the coin and made her realize that all her feedback to date had been skewed heavily to the negative.

  When she continued to rock silently, he picked up a piece of toast, spread it with butter, then took a bite. The salt hit hard and strong. “I’m a fan of butter and baked goods.” He held out the half-eaten toast to her. “Bite?”

  A halt to the rocking.

  She stared suspiciously at the bread, then snatched it and took an experimental bite. “Maybe,” she said, but she didn’t give it back.

  He made another piece for himself, began to eat.

  As she nibbled on the piece she’d claimed, Payal watched him with an intensity that should’ve been unnerving. It wasn’t. Payal wasn’t looking at him with murder in mind—but as if he were some unknown animal. “My father told me I was a feral and insane beast. That’s why he put me in that place.”

  “My father told me I was a blot on their genetic history, too broken to be worth saving even for my cardinal status.”

  Half the furniture in the room rose up off its legs before slamming back down. Hard. “I’ll kill him,” Payal said firmly, then frowned. “No, he’s already dead.”

  “And long forgotten.” Since she’d finished her toast, Canto threw her a piece of Chaos’s homemade muesli slice. “Want me to kill your father for you?”

  A pause as she chewed on a bite of the slice. Two deep vertical lines furrowed her brow. “No,” she said after swallowing. “He’s a monster, but it’d cause too much chaos if he died without warning—thousands of people rely on the Rao empire to feed their families.”

  Leaning forward in his chair, Canto raised an eyebrow. “Baby, you sound lucid to me.”

  She ate two bites in quick succession, her breathing short and jagged. “The jittering in my head. It’s not . . . good, Canto.”

  He heard the incipient panic, frowned. “Can you shield partway? So you’re not shutting away all of you?” He was compelled by her in all her guises, but he wouldn’t have her hurting. Payal deserved a life of joy, not pain. “Or is it all or nothing?”

  She parted her lips to reply, but shut her mouth before saying a word. For a while she just focused on the muesli slice, interspersed with drinks of the fruit-flavored nutrients she’d chosen. When she’d finished the slice, she looked at what else he had on offer, and chose a piece of mild cheese. “I don’t know,” she said after she’d finished that. “As a child, it was all or nothing.”

  “You’re not a child anymore,” he said softly, holding her gaze as his heart squeezed. “You were also doing it alone. If you want, I can get you access to an empath who’ll never ever betray anything you tell him. He might be able to assist.”

  Payal ate another piece of cheese before throwing her arms open without warning. “What are we doing? This.” Moving her arm around to indicate the two of them in his living room.

  �
�Being us.” It was a risk, to remind her that they were just Canto and Payal. 3K and 7J, with a bond fierce and unbreakable.

  Payal hugged her knees to her chest again. “I have to go,” she blurted out. “I’ll send you the details of my contact with the Ruling Coalition.”

  She was gone before he could respond.

  His heart kicked and he hoped like hell he hadn’t made a mistake, hadn’t terrified her away.

  A flicker of movement to his left had him jerking his attention that way. The last thing he expected to see was a small bear with dark brown fur climbing up the balcony strut to reach the beam at the top. Seeing him, the little bear made excited sounds and jumped onto the balcony before running over to him.

  The doors were still open, so the cub ran right in.

  Heart thundering—this level of his home was high above the ground—Canto leaned down and scooped up the small, furry weight. “What are you doing here?” He nipped the cub’s ear as he’d seen Valentin do; he needed the outlet for his fear, but he made sure not to do it too hard.

  The cub made more sounds and snuggled into him.

  Holding the cub’s warmth against his chest, Canto forced himself to breathe. What if Payal had been here when this happened? She’d have realized they were in bear country. He knew she wouldn’t have used the information in any ugly way, but he still needed to let Valentin know.

  The only reason he’d invited her here was that Denhome was some distance away. Just because he’d decided to move closer to his cousin didn’t mean he actually wanted to live with bears who didn’t know the meaning of personal space.

  He’d once put out a sign saying: I don’t want visitors.

  It had been replaced by a sign that read: We’re not visitors. We’re bears.

  Hilarious.

  But baby bears were not allowed out alone in this public-accessible area.

  He stroked his hand over the small bear in his arms. A bear who’d begun to tremble. “I have you,” he said roughly, patting its back—he was no expert in affection, but he had eyes; he’d seen how Chaos handled Dima, how Valentin interacted with all the cubs.