by Nalini Singh
"Stop, Aden."
"I can't. He was one of mine and I didn't protect him." Edward had lived decades under Silence, survived decades under Ming LeBon's cruel control, only to break when there was hope on the horizon. "I didn't protect him, Zaira."
Zaira couldn't fight her instincts. Not here. Not with this man. Going to him, she held his strong, beautiful face between her hands. "You're only one man," she reminded him. "You can't protect us all."
Aden just looked at her, and she knew the answer: He was their leader. The Arrows were his responsibility.
"No. I'm here." She couldn't walk with him into a new way of life, but she could shoulder some of the weight of responsibility. "Tell me what you need." Breaking the physical contact before she couldn't, before she went even closer and drew his head down to her own, their lips touching, she stepped back.
Aden shoved a hand through his hair in a rare physical sign of internal agitation. "I've been through everything, found nothing."
"The PsyNet. He could have created a psychic vault." They were trained not to do that, as even the most intricately built vaults could be penetrated, or might eventually degrade, leaking data into the Net. But--"Edward wasn't thinking clearly at the end, could've broken operating protocol."
Jaw a hard line, Aden shook his head. "I've alerted a PsyNet team to hunt for a psychic vault, but as far as I'm concerned, Edward was thinking very clearly. He didn't degenerate, didn't break down. He made a decision and carried it through."
Zaira could see his point. From what they knew, Edward had come home from his shift, taken a shower, dressed in a fresh uniform, then sat down on his bed and fired the laser pistol at an angle that meant he'd fall back onto the bed.
Making it easy for his body to be carried out and for the blood to be cleaned up. Not a drop had fallen off the mattress.
"He was the perfect Arrow to the end," Aden said, and she could see the brutal truth of it shredding him from the inside out.
Unable to bear his pain, she looked at the metal trunk at the bottom of the bed. It was where most Arrows kept their belongings.
"I've searched that," Aden said, his voice rough.
"When I was first made an Arrow and given my own quarters, I didn't trust that I wasn't being monitored." She tried to lift up the trunk.
Aden bent down, helped her flip it onto its side. "You stored things below?"
"No. These particular trunks have a gap between the bottom and the floor--I added another panel to create a hidden compartment." Seeing the smooth wooden surface with its patina of age and marks at the edges, she nodded. "Edward did the same."
Aden passed her a knife from his boot and she eased the tip under one of the deepest marks.
The false bottom flipped out. Several notebooks fell to the floor.
Picking up one, Zaira opened it. Neat, tidy handwriting filled the pages. "This entry is about an assignment he was given to disrupt the technological advances of a certain human group." There was no emotion in the report, not even an opinion, just the unembellished details of the op, but the fact that Edward had felt the need to write it down was an answer in itself. As with Zaira's small, secret treasures, it had been an attempt to hold on to a piece of himself that wasn't supposed to exist.
Aden had been going through the other notebooks. "I have it," he said as the notebook in his hand fell open to a blank page. "This must contain his final entry."
The decision instinctive, Zaira took it from him. "I'll find it." Flipping to the page with the final lines of text, she absorbed them, looked up at Aden. His expression was carefully controlled. "Is there an answer?"
Zaira wanted to shield him from it, but there was no way to do so without blinding him to information he needed. She passed over the notebook in silence, the words already embedded in her brain.
I don't belong in this new world. Like an old and obsolete piece of machinery, it's time for me to be decommissioned.
Aden read the words three times and still they didn't make sense to him. "He was part of us," he said. "We even spoke about the new direction of the training--I wanted him to be one of the head teachers." Edward had never been violent, never caused a child harm, and in him, Aden had seen a man very similar to Walker Lauren. A man he respected.
"I don't think he ever came to Ivy and Vasic's home."
And, Aden realized, he hadn't been at Ivy and Vasic's wedding. He'd taken a duty shift so that younger Arrows could attend. "How did I miss this? That he was distancing himself from the squad?"
"You trusted him--he was a senior Arrow who had your ear anytime he wanted." Zaira took the notebook, went back to earlier entries. "There's nothing here except his normal notes. It's as if he made the decision the moment before death."
"Or he was thinking about it for a long period, but trusted no one with his thoughts." Aden gathered up all the other notebooks. He would read each and every one, try to understand. "I need to talk to all the senior Arrows."
Zaira held on to the final notebook when he would've taken it. "We'll read these together, Aden."
"Protecting me again?"
"Someone has to." He couldn't be trusted to do it himself.
Dark eyes met her own, the power in them a violent storm. "So fight for me," he said, the words passionate. "Fight for the squad. Be the partner I need, the partner I want."
Zaira had made her decision, knew it was the right one regardless of how brutally it hurt. But at that instant, she wondered who would protect the protector? Who would make sure Aden took a breath, laid down the weight for an hour or for a night? If she didn't bond with him, she couldn't be by his side on a regular basis, couldn't pull him back from the edge. He needed someone in that position. Someone tough enough to stand up to him and lethal enough to force him to rest if necessary.
And someone from whom he'd accept censure.
That particular short list had only two people on it and one of them was already bonded to another. That left Zaira . . . and the monstrous creature inside her.
Chapter 31
SEEING THE PHOTOGRAPH of the Arrow leader alive and well was unexpected, but his survival didn't have to equal the termination or suspension of their plans. The group had always known the Arrow wouldn't be an easy target.
It was time to move to plan B: sacrifice the data, go for a public kill.
The Arrow Squad had to die. For some inexplicable reason, this midlevel telepath and field medic was its nucleus; cut him out and the resulting fractures would mean the rest would be far easier to eliminate.
No squad.
No one to hunt the serial killers.
No one to keep unscrupulous corporates in line.
Perfect.
Chapter 32
OVER THE NEXT three days, Aden spoke one-on-one with every single senior Arrow in the squad--classified as Arrows who'd been active in the field for more than two decades. What he heard was troubling.
"I'm forty-five years old," a female Arrow named Irena said to him. "All I've ever known is Silence. All I've ever been is a killing machine." She stopped beside a tree with glossy green leaves in the underground park that abutted Central Command. "Emotion is my enemy and the discipline of the squad is all that keeps me sane."
The echo of Zaira's own reason for rejecting his proposal added another layer of ice to his veins. "The Honeycomb?"
Irena touched one of the leaves. "I wish I wasn't part of it." Dark hazel eyes met his as she dropped her fingers from the leaf and turned to face him. "I can feel it pressing against me, awakening things that shouldn't be awakened." A hand placed over her heart. "This organ is starting to wake, starting to have needs I can never fulfill. I don't have that capacity and I wonder if the need will one day drive me mad."
Again and again and again, he had the same conversation, discovered the same disturbing truth: the senior Arrows felt as if they had no place in the new squad. Each promised not to follow Edward into suicide, but only because that would leave him with a personnel shortage.
"I've told them we need their expertise, their experience, their strength," he said to Vasic as they sat on a sand dune in the desert to which Vasic had teleported them late on the third day. "I'm not sure they're hearing what I'm saying." He thought of what Irena had said. "They're having trouble handling the emotions being nudged awake by the connection with the empaths--not one believes he or she can make it, even with you, Abbot, and Judd as examples."
"And Stefan," Vasic said. "He might not be an Arrow, but he is one of us."
"Yes." Aden knew that should he call, the Tk based on the deep-sea station Alaris would respond without question. "All four of you are powerful yet it doesn't seem to make a difference to the senior Arrows."
"They need to see you do it."
Aden wasn't ready to talk about that yet, not when the only woman he wanted by his side would only agree to stand there as a soldier--a woman who might only be able to stand there as a soldier. He'd been selfish in pushing her, he knew that. He also knew he'd probably do it again. Zaira was his own madness. "I'm not sure even that'll be enough," he said aloud. "We're all of a younger generation."
"Have you thought about using your parents?"
"My parents?" He was well aware that neither Zaira nor Vasic were fans of Marjorie and Naoshi.
"They're older than all the active senior Arrows and despite having lived in the outside world since their defection, surrounded by emotion, they've held themselves together," Vasic responded. "Put them in charge of the welfare of the older Arrows, the ones who are struggling."
"My parents aren't known for their kind hearts--and they survived in the outside world by sticking dogmatically to the tenets of Silence." No softness, no deviations from Arrow protocol. "That's not the life I want for my Arrows."
Vasic's black hair lifted in the warm desert breeze. "Yes, but it might be the life these Arrows need to live. In time, that may change--we just have to keep them with us long enough."
Aden considered Vasic's suggestion in silence, nodded slowly. "You're right." His parents might have any number of faults, but they also had a lifetime of experience that could help in this situation. They would know which tasks to assign to best keep the older Arrows stable, which mental exercises to teach. As important, the senior Arrows would listen because Marjorie and Naoshi had more than proven their mettle. "I wouldn't trust them to train younger Arrows, but they've always believed that Arrows who've put in their time deserve to retire in peace--regardless of their physical or mental state."
Aden couldn't see either of his parents treating the senior Arrows with anything other than respect, but he hadn't forgotten what Zaira had said of his father's comments about locking up Alejandro. Naoshi had likely deemed that an acceptable action because Alejandro was young, hadn't "earned" the care of the squad, but just in case--"One of us will have to keep a subtle eye on them, make sure they haven't become unforgiving of flaws."
"I'll take care of that," Vasic said. "But I'm certain it'll work--Ivy met your parents during the time you were missing and she said while they came across as abrasive, she also sensed a deep commitment to their fellow Arrows."
Aden was unsurprised. "I learned about loyalty from them." Only where he gave it to each individual Arrow and Arrow trainee, Marjorie's and Naoshi's loyalty was to the squad as a whole.
It was a subtle but vitally important difference that would forever divide them.
Vasic spoke again into the desert quiet. "The appointment will also clarify your parents' status in the squad now that we no longer have to maintain an external network."
That was what Marjorie and Naoshi had done while officially "dead"--acted as base command for all the different Arrow bolt-holes around the world, many of which they'd helped establish. Once Aden and his people got an at-risk Arrow out, Marjorie and Naoshi were the ones who'd set the defector up with a new life and teach that Arrow how to integrate into the world. A significant percentage, wanting to remain active as Arrows, had ended up in Venice under Zaira's command, but others had preferred or needed a quieter or more remote location.
The safe houses would stay in place and any Arrow who wanted to continue his or her life outside was welcome to do so, but the urgency and importance of the task was now over. Currently, Marjorie and Naoshi were at loose ends and struggling to understand the fact that Aden didn't intend to hand over the reins of the squad to them.
That he would never do, but their long service deserved a position where their status was clear cut and respected. "I'll talk to them."
"Why haven't you mentioned Zaira?" Vasic said without warning.
Aden looked at his friend's profile, Vasic's skin deep gold in the light of the setting sun. "Why should I?"
"Aden." Winter gray eyes met his. "I was with you when you first met her, and I was with you when you hacked the security systems to send her an e-mail. I know she means more to you than you've ever consciously acknowledged."
Aden thought of his and Zaira's time together in the aerie, and before that, of their fight to survive. The memories were burned into his soul. "You've never said anything before."
"I didn't understand who she was to you then." Reaching out to the little white dog who'd run along the top of the sand dune to sprawl huffing at his side, Vasic scratched his and Ivy's pet between the ears. "It took my love for Ivy to open my eyes."
A pause as they watched the last of the sun's rays fade.
"She's yours, Aden," Vasic said in the falling dark. "Always has been, always will be. And I'm fairly certain she considers you hers. Did you ever notice that the two of us were hardly ever in the same room together before my marriage? Zaira saw me as competition for you."
Aden thought of the feral fury with which Zaira had nearly attacked the RainFire woman, of the way the two of them had touched in the midnight hours, of the fact that she still wore his leather jacket, and gripped his wrist so hard he could feel his bones grinding into dust. "It's not enough," he managed to get out. "She believes her future lies in her past."
"And I believed my future held nothing but death."
Recovered from his exertions, Rabbit padded over to Aden and dropped a stick he'd brought from the orchard. Aden picked it up and threw into the distance. Barking excitedly, the dog flew down the dune after the stick. "I've tried to reason with her. I've tried emotion."
Vasic propped his arm on one knee. "The only reason I lived long enough for Ivy to find me was that you were too stubborn to let me die. I don't need your stubbornness anymore--Zaira does."
Aden looked to his friend again as Rabbit began to run back with the stick. "I'll simply wear her down?"
A slight curve of Vasic's lips. "Some barriers need to be worn down." Eyes flicking down, he used his Tk to help Rabbit climb the sand dune.
Changing subjects, because thinking of Zaira made things hurt inside him that had been torn wide open when he touched Vasic's bond with Ivy, Aden threw the stick again for Rabbit. "Ashaya Aleine has agreed to work with our techs on the implant."
"You aren't worried about how she might use any data she uncovers?"
"Aleine has proven her principles, but the squad has officially hired her for the project. The contract specifies confidentiality." Aden didn't think the DarkRiver leopards, whom Aleine called packmates, would misuse the data, but he wasn't taking the risk.
"I can't work out how you managed that," Vasic said. "It's not as if Aleine isn't in demand."
"According to Aleine, I 'seduced' her with a glimpse of the implant." Aden had hoped the scientist wouldn't be able to resist, was glad to be proven right. "I need to talk to Walker."
Judd's brother had been Aden's teacher once, the only teacher who had ever truly seen him. The telepath had also helped Aden come up with the new curriculum for Arrow children, his answer to Aden's initial request a simple one that betrayed the powerful heart that beat in Walker's chest.
"Of course I'll help, Aden."
Walker might never have worn the badge of the squad, but h
e was one of them in a way Ming LeBon would never be. Walker understood loyalty, understood that even an Arrow's life had value.
"I can teleport you to him if you make contact--it's still relatively early in the afternoon in his region."
Aden made the call. Walker was in the middle of building a table with the children he supervised, but agreed to meet with Aden. "I'll see you at the church in three hours," he said. "That'll give me enough time to finish this and get down there."
Aden didn't know what connection the Laurens had with Father Xavier Perez, but his church was a known meeting point. Walker was waiting for them on the back steps when they arrived, his forearms braced on his thighs. Dressed in worn jeans and a simple white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, his dark blond hair swept roughly back, he could've been any ordinary man. It was his pale green eyes that gave him away--intent and focused and strikingly intelligent.
Walker rose to his feet and joined Aden near the trees at the edge of the yard, Vasic 'porting away after a nod of greeting.
"You said you lost an Arrow," Walker said, his expression grim in the early evening light. "How?"
Aden told him, could see Walker taking it in. "I've accepted I have to lead from the front," he added, though he didn't yet have a solution as to how to get Zaira to accept his proposal. "But I'm younger by at least a decade from the ones at most risk. Seeing me make it won't be enough--and while my parents can keep them stable, I want more than a life in stasis for the senior Arrows."
Folding his arms, Walker leaned back against a tree. "For a long time, I saw myself as too damaged by Silence to ever be a good father, much less a good mate."
Yet Aden knew Walker was both. "How did you get past it?"
"I had to." A blunt response. "I had a daughter, a nephew, and a niece who needed me. I also had a brother who needed me, for all that he was an adult."
The wind riffled through Aden's hair as he stood there. "Judd was lucky to have you." Aden hadn't known it at the time, but unlike most siblings whose brothers or sisters were claimed by the Council for the squad, Walker had never lost touch with his brother--he'd kept Judd connected to the family unit, and in so doing, saved his soul.
