by Nalini Singh
“Innocents were never our targets,” Judd said, his next words directed at Kaleb. “Has that changed?”
“Do you remember when you asked me if there was one person in the PsyNet who mattered to me?”
“Yes.”
“That person has asked me not to destroy the Net.” Like the scars that marked him, the rot would be nearly impossible to eradicate without first sanitizing the network. But he knew he couldn’t do that and still have Sahara look at him the way she’d done on the terrace, a softness to her that made him believe he might understand happiness. “Your innocents are safe from me.”
“I’m glad.” Quiet words from the former Arrow.
“Would you have attempted to execute me if I’d answered otherwise?” While Judd’s Tk wasn’t as powerful as Kaleb’s, he was fiercely intelligent, might just have achieved his aim.
“Yes,” came the brutal answer. “It would’ve destroyed a piece of me to end your life, but I would’ve done it.”
Chapter 36
KALEB FELT NO sense of betrayal; he’d known the answer before he asked the question. He also knew the other man would’ve done everything in his power to save Kaleb before he attempted to assassinate him. Judd had somehow survived the cruel life of an Arrow with his conscience, if not intact, then not totally destroyed.
Not long ago, Kaleb had watched the other man laughing with his mate and considered such an existence beyond his understanding or reach. Even should he find Sahara, he’d believed himself too damaged to give her what Judd gave his mate. Yet tonight, Sahara had kissed him, fought with him, laughed that familiar husky laugh when he not only bent, but broke every single one of the metal railings during their slow, lazy sex under the stars.
If Judd and Xavier had helped him remain sane enough to give Sahara what she needed, then he owed them a debt that could never be discharged. “Ming,” he said, “is in France.
“Champagne region as before,” he added, having updated the data the previous day, “though he’s shifted his base of operations. I’m in the process of tracking that base, but he’s tactically minded and careful.” Ming also knew how to lay traps with blade-sharp teeth.
“The confirmation he’s in the region is enough. We have certain sources in the area.”
“You can’t kill him yet. I need to stabilize the Net enough that his death won’t cripple it.” Even with the Council in ruins, each of the former Councilors held so much economic and psychic power that a violent or sudden death could cause a deadly shock wave.
The ripples had been minor when Kaleb assassinated a Councilor just over a year and a half ago, but the PsyNet had been stable then, not teetering on the brink of collapse. The backlash from the loss had been absorbed with no more than a few minor incidents. “A shock wave right now could be catastrophic.”
“It’ll take time to set things up,” Judd said. “I’ll give you a twenty-minute warning before we move, so you can be on alert for any structural weaknesses in the Net.”
“How do you plan to reach Ming?”
“The same way the packs reached Santano Enrique,” was the cool response.
Kaleb knew he’d get nothing more. As Kaleb’s first loyalty was to Sahara, Judd’s was to his mate and the changeling wolf pack he now called family. It was a measure of the trust that had grown between them that Kaleb allowed the matter to rest.
Xavier spoke into the silence. “We sit in a house of God and speak of murder. What does that make us?”
“Men who understand that there is evil in the world,” Judd answered. “The data I passed on—did it help you track down your Nina?”
Nina, Kaleb knew, had been Xavier’s love before a Psy attack tore them apart.
The priest’s breath shuddered out of his chest. “The information points to a tiny village in the mountains of my homeland. I am . . . afraid to go there. I must gather my courage to face the truth, and perhaps my Nina’s hatred.”
They spoke of other matters then, Kaleb leaving an hour later, just before Judd. Waiting in the shadows until the former Arrow was out of sight, he returned to the church to find Xavier where he’d left him.
“I expected you,” the priest said without turning around.
Kaleb took a seat behind the other male. “Did you?”
“A man who has lost his only love knows when he hears the same loss in another’s voice.” Xavier shook his head, the near black of his skin gilded gold by the candlelight. “Has your Nina returned? Is she the one who asks you to have mercy on the innocent?”
“Yes.” Leaning forward, he crossed his arms on the back of Xavier’s pew. “I don’t know how to love her.” He would die for her, kill for her, but he did not understand the emotion he had always sensed she needed from him, even when she’d been a bright-eyed sixteen.
“Love is the greatest form of loyalty, one that places the happiness of the beloved over that of the lover,” Xavier said with a peace that was an integral aspect of him, even in his confusion. “And you know loyalty.”
“I will,” Kaleb said as the candles burned around them, “think on what you’ve said.” He paused. “Xavier, I can take you to your Nina.” It could be done without the other man ever glimpsing Kaleb’s face.
“Thank you, friend.” Xavier’s voice shook. “But I think I must do this the hard way. I must earn her.”
Leaving the priest to his thoughts, Kaleb went to Sahara after he exited the church, simply to watch her sleep. To see her safe and alive, the need he had to ensure her well-being one that would never fade. And though he made not a sound, thick lashes lifted to reveal eyes of sleepy dark blue. “Kaleb?” Scooting over, she raised the blanket with a mumbled invitation. “C’mere. ’S cold out.”
He hadn’t meant to stay, but he slept that night in the arms of the only person in the entire world to whom it mattered if he was cold . . . and he thought that perhaps he might understand not only love, but joy.
Maybe it was that thought that ignited long-dormant neurons in his brain, but for the first time in over seven years, he dreamed not of blood and pain and cruelty, but of the day a girl with eyes of darkest blue had forever altered the course of his existence.
* * *
HE sat motionless in the chair beside Santano, his feet flat on the floor and his eyes trained straight ahead. He’d already noted everything about Anthony Kyriakus’s office, particularly the two doors and the large windows that spilled sunlight into the room and onto his legs.
He had no windows like that in his room at the remote training facility where he lived, and logic said it made the office vulnerable to attack, but the design also had good points. The biggest was that it gave Anthony an uninterrupted view of the main gates that guarded the sprawling compound that housed most of the PsyClan NightStar.
In the reports that Santano had given Kaleb to read as part of his political studies, it said that “strong familial loyalty” was a characteristic NightStar trait. Kaleb had no family, hadn’t understood the concept of loyalty the first time he’d read about it—but after researching it, he’d realized it meant being connected to someone who would care if he lived or died, someone who would fight for and with him, someone who didn’t want to hurt him.
He had never experienced any of those things.
“Shall we begin?” Santano said to Anthony, placing a datapad on the desk between them. “I brought a copy of the relevant files.”
“A moment.” Anthony glanced at the small girl who stood in the main doorway, her hands clasped neatly in front of her. “Please show Kaleb around the grounds, Sahara.”
Kaleb didn’t move, even when Anthony nodded at him in silent permission. He knew Santano wouldn’t allow him to interact with anyone outside of the Tk’s control—Kaleb didn’t have to be an adult to know it was all part of his trainer’s strategy to break him down, erase his will. It was the same reason the other Tk had burned a large part of Kaleb’s back minutes before they teleported to the NightStar compound.
It had bee
n—was—excruciatingly painful, but Kaleb hadn’t made a sound, his expression impassive. He’d learned long ago never to react; that only fed the ugliness that lived inside Councilor Santano Enrique, an ugliness no one else ever seemed to see.
“That child,” the other cardinal now said, after a dismissive look at the girl in the doorway, “is too young to provide conversation that will in any way interest Kaleb. He can remain.”
Kaleb waited for Anthony to back down. Everyone did. Santano was a Councilor, while Anthony was merely the head of a family.
Except Anthony, his tone as firm as his gaze, said, “I don’t conduct business with children present. We can schedule another appointment next month to discuss the forecasting services required by your company.”
Rather than rising to make an immediate departure, Santano steepled his fingers and turned his head toward Kaleb. “Go. Behave yourself.” A wrenching tug on the psychic leash around Kaleb’s mind, the compulsions that kept him silent about Santano’s perversions in full effect.
Ignoring the additional pain, Kaleb walked to the door and into the compound with the girl called Sahara. They were in the hydroponic vegetable garden when she suddenly said, “My father’s an M. We can go see him.”
Kaleb froze. “Why?”
Sahara’s face held an expression he recognized as concern, but she said, “He has interesting scanners in his office,” and he knew it for a ruse to get him to the medical center.
“I’ve seen medical scanners before.” It was an answer forced out by the compulsions.
Searching his face, Sahara finally nodded, “Okay,” and carried on.
It wasn’t until ten minutes later that he realized she’d slowed the pace and ignored at least one slope . . . because she knew he was wounded. No one else had ever done anything to help him and he didn’t understand why she did, what she expected to gain.
“There’s fish in the pond,” she said at the end of the tour. “Do you want to see?”
Kaleb nodded to delay his return to the office . . . and to extend his time with this girl who saw his pain when no one else did. “Why was this created?” he asked once they reached the large pond bordered with smooth rocks.
Sahara knelt down beside him with a slight betraying movement of her shoulders that said she’d been about to shrug. “I heard Father say it was an ‘approved meditation aid,’” she said, her khaki-colored pants wet by a droplet of water as she dipped her hand in the pond and swirled. “The F-Psy who live here use it.”
“Are you an F?” he asked, echoing her movements in the water.
“Not really.” Nothing in her said she was troubled by her lack of status in a family so well-known for its foreseers. “I’m subdesignation B. That means I have backsight.”
Flicking her hand dry, she looked at him with eyes of a deep, distinctive blue vivid against the thick black of hair contained in two neat braids. “What are you?”
“A Tk.”
Her cheeks flushed pink, her eyes shining. “Can you do any tricks?”
Accessing the part of his telekinesis that Santano hadn’t strangled when he wrenched the leash, Kaleb thought about what Sahara might consider a good trick and lifted her small body off the ground.
Eyes wide when she realized she was floating, she stood up and, after glancing furtively around, jumped up and down on the cushion of air, the sun sparking off hidden strands of red-gold in her hair. Waiting until she’d sat back down and was stable, he lowered her gently to the grass.
“That was wonderful,” she said, her lips curving into a smile before worry darkened her expression. “I’m sorry. Did it hurt you to do that?”
Kaleb shook his head at the unexpected question. He’d lain bloodied and broken in front of Santano and his pet medics, but not one had ever looked at him like Sahara was doing—as if he was a person and not a thing. “Your Silence is flawed for your age group,” he said, the water cool under his fingertips as he swirled it again.
Folding her arms, Sahara bit down on her lower lip. “Are you going to tell on me?”
“No.” He had no loyalty to anything or anyone, nothing worth betraying this girl who made him forget she’d been ordered to spend time with him.
When she waved surreptitiously at him as he left, he decided he had to come back, had to find out what she would do if she was free to choose whether or not to talk to him.
It took him almost two weeks to slip away from the training facility. He used Sahara’s face as a teleport lock, arriving in the backyard of a small home to find her sitting on a wide stump. Her feet were bare and her braids messy, a frown of concentration on her forehead as she stared at a datapad.
“Hello,” he said, and waited for her to scream that an intruder had breached the security of the compound.
Except . . . she broke out into a huge smile. “Hi!” Setting down the datapad, she said, “Is that man here again?” Her smile faded. “I don’t like him.”
Kaleb shook his head, a strange sensation in his chest at not being rejected. “I came to see you.” He thought about not adding the next part, but it seemed wrong to lie to Sahara when she’d trusted him with her own thoughts. “I don’t know any other children who talk to me.”
“That must be lonely.” Taking a squashed nutrition bar from her pocket, she broke it in half and held out a piece toward him. “I know you probably think I’m a baby, but you can be my friend if you like.”
When he accepted the offering, she shifted on the stump to make a space for him.
Taking the seat, he said, “I don’t think you’re a baby. I think you’re smart and you see things other people don’t.” Countless adults had seen him after Santano tortured him, but none had ever noticed that he was hurt. Worse, none had ever seen Santano for what he was. “I don’t like him, either.”
Sahara chewed on her half of the nutrition bar and banged the back of her feet on the stump. “Oh, good.”
He wasn’t aware of what he was about to say until the words were out. “You have to be more careful.” If someone like Santano found out how bad Sahara’s Silence was for her age group, they’d put her into intensive conditioning and crush her with pain until her responses were “correct.” Until she wasn’t Sahara anymore. “You smiled at me.”
“That’s because I like you.” It was a statement so absolute, he couldn’t not believe.
“I can help make your PsyNet shields stronger,” he said, a sensation inside him that he thought might be the beginning of loyalty. “So you’re not exposed there.” He’d have to take care, but the ugly things Santano had planted in his mind only reported back if he used too much energy.
“You’d do that? Thanks, Kaleb!” She threw her arms around him.
It was the first time he could ever remember being held.
Chapter 37
SAHARA WOKE TO find Kaleb watching her, his eyes of starlight. “What are you thinking?” she asked in an intimate whisper, her legs tangled with his and one of his arms acting as a muscular pillow for her head.
He tumbled her gently onto her back, his body pressing down on hers. “How you taught me to climb trees.”
Delighted at the idea, she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Was I a good teacher?”
“Yes, but you kept trying to trade your teaching skills for answers to your math homework.”
The cool comment made her grin and demand further stories about her aborted career as an extortionist. He gave her what she demanded—and she hoped that these wonderful memories, innocent and bright, were safe in the vault, that she’d soon be able to access them herself.
“You even made a plaque to commemorate my first successful climb of the biggest tree in the compound,” Kaleb added. “It’s in my study.”
Sahara frowned. “I don’t . . .” Laughing as she realized what he was talking about, she nuzzled at his throat. “The piece of wood with your name?”
Fingers weaving into her hair, he held her to him. “You worked on it for weeks,” he said,
as another related memory tugged free of the vault.
“Here.”
Kaleb took the small, battered book from her hand. “What’s this?”
“Poetry.” Sahara saw from his expression that he had no idea what to make of that and clasped her hands nervously behind her back. “I know the lines seem nonsensical, but they always make me think.”
Perhaps, she thought, her heart hurting, the sheer perplexing nature of the rhymes would help him see that the world wasn’t simply full of horror and pain, that there were strangely wonderful things, too. It worried her how much darkness she saw creeping into him day by day, hour by hour, and she’d fight the slow loss of her Kaleb any way she could. Even if it was with whimsical poems about fantastical creatures.
“Thank you,” he said, opening the cover to see the homemade birthday card she’d put inside. His hands treated both the card and the book with care, as if they were precious. Kaleb always treated her gifts as precious.
“I’m sorry it’s not in very good condition.” She’d bought it with part of her stationery allowance, after managing to fix a broken datapad so she didn’t have to replace it.
Kaleb’s eyes were filled with stars when he looked at her. “It’s perfect. Even if I am certain I’ll be as bad at understanding poetry as you are at math.”
The memory fading, Sahara smiled at the dangerous man in bed with her. “Did you read the poems I gave you?” she asked softly, thankful to the girl she’d been for fighting for Kaleb with every weapon in her arsenal, no matter how small.
“First, I had to learn French,” he said, to her shout of laughter. “They were still incomprehensible. I told you that, and next time, you gave me a seventeenth-century romance.” His hair fell across his forehead as he dipped his head. “You had to decipher it for me.”
Laughing even harder, she cupped his face, their foreheads touching. They talked for several more minutes after she finally caught her breath, until Kaleb had to leave—but not before he gave her a molten kiss that was a promise. Feeling as if her body were one big smile, she tidied up the aerie, then called her father for a chat. Of course, he was already at the medical center. “I don’t suppose you’ll be going home early,” she said, worried he was overdoing it.
