by Nalini Singh
"I'll make that happen now," Yakov said. "We've got more than a few dominants just lazing about in the sun. Time to kick their asses."
"Hey," Nova said, hands on her hips. "They earned that lazing about, and as the clan's healer, I prescribed it."
Yakov was too smart to sass Nova in a disrespectful fashion. Rather, he bowed from the waist. "I will kick their fat beary asses gently, my lady."
"Pasha." Valentin called their technical expert closer as the others began to disperse, Nova stomping beside Yakov to make sure he didn't get too enthusiastic in his ass-kicking. "Anything?"
Chapter 8
THE OTHER MAN pushed up his glasses, his eyes a crystal-clear aqua green. Unfortunately, those pretty eyes had crap night vision. Pavel also couldn't see two feet without his glasses. But his brain was a razor. He also had the same dominance as his brother. Leaving him in a lower position in the clan simply because he had imperfect sight would've been a recipe for trouble.
Now, he shook his head, his shaggy dark brown hair several shades darker than the mid-brown of his skin. That brown came from his and Yakov's paternal grandfather, a bear who was a native of Angola--what the hell a bear clan had been doing in Angola before they moved to a colder clime, Valentin still hadn't figured out. Pavel's dedushka just laughed like a lunatic whenever he brought it up. The aqua-green eyes came from the twins' black bear mother.
Dewei Nguyen's genes appeared long buried, but they were there in the intuition that had marked the twins since birth. If either Pavel or Yakov told Valentin to more heavily guard a section of border, though there was no apparent reason to do so, he listened. The last time that had happened, they'd caught Selenka's wolves trying to sneak in, no doubt to spy on StoneWater.
Dewei Nguyen had been a foreseer.
"Comm traffic shows no suspicious signals that might mean the Consortium has a plant in the clan." Pavel's eyes lit up as he slipped into geek talk. "I've bugged it three ways to Sunday--"
"Pasha." Valentin pinned him to the spot with his gaze.
His second raised his hands. "I'm not breaching anyone's privacy. It's all done by a computer program. Got Brenna from SnowDancer to help me with the code. Man, that woman's brain." He sighed. "If only she didn't have the bad taste to be a wolf, and wasn't madly in love with her psycho assassin mate, I'd seriously consider switching teams."
Valentin slapped him on the side of the head. "Focus."
"Right." Pavel shook off the firm hit with bearish insouciance. Any less strength behind it and he'd have taken it as an insult to his honor. "Anyway, it's all automated. Programmed to send up a bright red flag if anyone starts getting cute trying to contact people who mean the clan harm. Nothing so far."
"Good."
"We have had four false negatives that tripped the slippery, sneaky keywords I programmed in," Pavel added. "Juveniles arranging hookups outside of parental view." The other man made a sulky face. "I almost turned them in because no boy ever wanted to hook up with a vision-challenged bear, but I restrained myself."
"I'll cry you a river when I give a shit." Pavel might be vision challenged, but he was never bedmate challenged. Many, many bears and humans found him adorable. Especially when he flashed the dimples he had in both cheeks. Whereas harder-edged Yakov hated the dimples, Pavel had been known to take shameless advantage of his.
Those dimples were nowhere in evidence when Pavel said, "You really think someone in StoneWater could betray us?"
"No, but I'd be stupid not to listen to Lucas's warnings." A good alpha had to take every precaution to protect his clan. "Apparently," he said, "this Consortium group has a way of getting under people's skins."
"You said they're all about money and power." Pavel scratched his head. "I don't get it, Valya. I can't believe they'd disrupt peace just for that."
"That's because you're a bear." The people they loved were everything to them, happiness not found in power or money. The latter two things were only useful because they helped protect the clan, helped keep their cubs and mates safe.
"I don't know what would possibly entice a bear to consider betrayal," Valentin added, "but I'd rather catch anything while it's still small." While he could still save a clan member who'd been led astray. "We do have people who don't want me to be alpha." It hurt every cell of his alpha's heart to say that, but it was a fact.
Pavel's face grew grim, the adorable lover replaced by the powerful dominant born with the same lethal drive to protect as Valentin. "None of those people are in Denhome."
Valentin's bear, too, roared that his people were loyal, but the lost part of his clan was a splinter in his soul that reminded him not everyone loved him as bears should love their alpha. "Keep the program running."
"Consider it done." Pavel folded his arms. "I also think the way you're updating the entire clan on this should help protect us. Leaves no shadows for the Consortium to exploit and burrow into."
Valentin nodded. Bears were terrible at keeping secrets . . . except for the very rare outlier, and the secrets the last outlier had kept had been horrific. "Spread the word about Silver, let people know outsiders might mean her harm."
"I know you wouldn't bring a threat into the pack." Pavel's gaze was unusually solemn. "But, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask if you're sure she's safe."
"About as safe as Nova on a rampage," Valentin said dryly. "But she won't hurt us." Valentin was alpha partly because he could read people, and he knew that in saving Silver's life, he'd earned a certain loyalty from her and her grandmother. Neither woman struck him as the kind who'd forget that act of friendship.
Pavel nodded, taking his alpha at his word. Like all of Valentin's circle of seconds, the other man wouldn't ever hesitate to question him, but he'd also back Valentin when Valentin made a call. "I'm off-shift for the next eight hours. Unless you need me for anything specific, I'm going to go catch some shut-eye in the sun. If Yasha dares kick my ass, I'll tear him a new one."
"Go for it." The other man slept less than any other bear in the clan except for his brother, but it was a natural inclination. Five hours and they were both revved up to go. It had made them little terrors as children. As adults, it made them annoying on occasion, but at least they didn't commit the cardinal sin of being morning people.
After Pavel left to shift into bear form and snooze in the sunshine, Valentin took a look around the Cavern. His tiny targets--gangsters and all--were sitting on a plush rug in the far corner, playing a game under the watchful eyes of two elders. Crossing the massive span of the Cavern to reach the currently sweetly behaved group, he hunkered down. "Can I join in?"
Happy faces lifted up to his, tiny bodies shifted, and small hands patted at his arms as he took his spot on the rug. He listened as they explained the rules of the game; then, as a powerful, fascinating, dangerous telepath slept not far from him, he played with the children of his clan . . .
Not all of them.
Not the ones who'd been ripped from his heart by their parents and guardians.
Aching inside at the loss that was getting closer and closer to becoming a permanent scar, he opened his arms to a cub who wanted to crawl into his lap. The boy's small body, the rapid beat of his heart--it all reminded him of the vulnerable he couldn't protect within his arms, the ones who were out in the cold.
He had time yet. Not much. But some.
The Human Patriot
THE SILVER MERCANT situation concerned him. The plan he'd set in motion when she began to do an increasingly stellar job with EmNet was a good one, but the unpredictability of it chafed. He was a man used to control, and he had none in this. He just had to wait for her to consume the poison.
The outcome of which would now be further delayed unless she had taken her own food with her into the bear clan that was hosting her for a diplomatic stay. It had ostensibly been organized through Trinity and was linked to her position as director of EmNet.
He crumpled the printout of the media release.
H
ow convenient that the Psy were beginning to inveigle their way into powerful changeling packs and clans. Whether they called it true love, or dressed it up as diplomacy, it was all about getting their hooks into the strongest alphas in the world. The second the Psy had enough operatives amongst the changelings, the alphas would no doubt start to die, to be replaced by puppets controlled by Psy telepaths.
It was how the psychic race worked. By going into the bear den as she had, Silver Mercant had proved herself as power hungry as any of her brethren. He'd been right to target her, felt no guilt any longer at the choice. EmNet's "humanitarian" mission was a very clever front designed to give the Psy access to people who wouldn't normally trust them.
"Patience," he counseled himself. "She'll keep." In the meantime, he'd work on fine-tuning the details of his next target.
He wasn't a bad person.
But neither was he a fool about to be railroaded into slavery masquerading as a bright new future. If he had to murder to achieve freedom, so be it.
Chapter 9
Deliver to: Silver Mercant at Krychek Enterprises, Head Office, Moscow
Text to read: Mr. I. M. A. Medvezhonok
--Work order at Astonishing Cakes (September 17, 2082)
SILVER WOKE ALL at once, at full alertness.
It was her usual waking process when she wasn't in a hospital bed recovering from an attempted poisoning. No haziness, no fuzziness, just sleep and then snap, wakefulness. The telepathic scan was automatic, trained into her since childhood. Mercants didn't sleep with one eye open, as was PsyNet myth, but they woke with both eyes open on the psychic plane.
Her scan picked up no Psy minds in the vicinity.
That was such a strange circumstance that Silver opened her eyes to take in her surroundings. Every city had a melange of minds. Some, her senses glanced off--the changelings, with their adamantine natural shields; others, her mind recognized as like her own; still others, it shied away from--the humans, with shields so paper-thin that if she wasn't careful, she'd unwittingly drill into their brains and drown in their secrets.
Except for a limited number of warped Psy driven by perverse desires or greed, most Psy were like her and automatically "bounced" as soon as they detected a human mind. Having another person's entire psychic presence--thoughts, dreams, nightmares, random pieces of sensory data, echoes of a million conversations--screaming into the brain was not a pleasant experience.
This was not her bedroom.
In fact, it wasn't like any room she'd ever seen. The walls were exposed stone that had been smoothed out only enough for safety. It appeared as if this place had been--literally--hacked out of the stone, then the ones who'd done the hacking had shrugged and said they were done.
Sitting up, she looked around.
The room held no threats as far as she could see, though the front door wasn't deadbolted and there was a door to the side she'd have to check. Other than the bed on which she sat--a bed covered with a soft sheet that was nonetheless not as soft as the blanket half-pooled at her waist--there was an armchair in one corner beside a standing garment rack on which hung a number of clothes.
An aged wooden trunk sat underneath the clothes.
Within easy reach of the bed was a small side table placed against the wall. It held a digital clock, the phone she remembered sliding into the pocket of her suit coat that morning, a sealed bottle of water, and a covered tray.
Leaving that for the moment, she focused on the clock. If it was correct--and a quick check on the PsyNet confirmed that yes, the clock was precisely correct--it was now five a.m. on the day after her last memories.
As if the thought had triggered a cascade, the memories rushed back: Valentin, poison, her grandmother, the hospital, small gangster bears, muscled warmth around her, a bass heartbeat against her ear.
Silver allowed the deluge to crash over her before slowly separating out the fragments until she understood where she was and why. The next thing was to test her body. Swinging her legs out over the side of the bed, she tried to stand up on the large rug on which the bed sat. A tremor, two, but she managed to stay upright.
Walking to the door beyond which she could sense no minds at all, she opened it to reveal sanitation facilities. Silver wasn't used to being dirty in any sense, and right now, she felt exactly that. The antiseptic scent of the hospital clung to her--but below that was the faint hint of perspiration from when the poison first hit her.
A shower was a priority.
Decision made, she walked back to the door to the room, threw the bolt on this side. It was solid. Made sense in a clan of bears. From what she'd seen in the reports on those Moscow bar incidents, bears broke things without trying.
Only once she felt secure did she examine the clothing. None of it was hers, but it looked as if it would fit. A few pieces appeared crisply new while others were used but clean. In the trunk was underwear meant for someone of her size; it was still in packaging that bore the name of the boutique Silver most often utilized.
Her grandmother must've sent through the new items.
A quiet alert pinged against her mind, telling her she had telepathic messages to which she needed to attend. They were currently corraled in a psychic vault. The vast majority of telepaths couldn't form this type of "waiting area"--only the high-Gradient pure telepaths had the capacity, and even most of them found it too much work. It was, but Silver had always found the work worth the convenience.
She scanned through the translucent bubbles in the vault. Each represented a separate message, kept neatly segregated from its neighbors so as not to risk a garbled crossover. For now, Silver ignored all the messages but two.
The first one was from Ena.
Silver, Alpha Nikolaev organized for a StoneWater bear in Moscow to drive some clothes to you. All are new, purchased by my own hand. It struck me during the shopping expedition that contact poisons may have been placed on your less-used garments as a fail-safe. I will have them tested.
The message ended as Ena's messages always did--with nothing but a crisp silence. Silver knew her grandmother was right to be careful, but contact poisons were unlikely; she had a small, functional set of clothes that she utilized efficiently. Had a piece been compromised, she'd be dead by now.
She opened the second message that had caught her eye.
Silver. Grandmother isn't saying anything, and I can't bring myself to believe the ridiculous "political friendship visit" to the bears touted in the media. Cousin Ivan tells me you've disappeared from your apartment. I can feel you, know you're alive. Are you under duress? Do you need assistance?
Ena had told Silver not to trust anyone, but this bond was one nothing could corrupt. If Arwen ever decided to kill Silver, it would mean their family was broken on a fundamental level. She replied without hesitation to the brother who'd been born at the same time as her but who wasn't her twin.
Their father was the Mercant. He'd signed fertilization and conception contracts with two women. By chance, their pregnancies had occurred within days of each other, one conceiving earlier than expected, one later. Silver and Arwen had been born in the same hospital, only ten minutes between them.
He'd always been an indelible part of her life.
Arwen, she said, reaching out with her mind because her brother wasn't a powerful telepath, his psychic strength lying in another area. To have reached her to leave the message, he must've pushed himself to the point of severe physical pain. I'm fine. There was an attempt on my life, but it was unsuccessful. Please make sure no one gets to Grandmother. If an enemy wanted to hurt the Mercants, taking out either Silver or Ena would do it.
Eliminating Arwen would also have a catastrophic effect, but most people didn't realize that yet.
Her brother responded at once, as if he'd been awake and listening for her. I've spoken to Grandmother in the time since I sent you the message. I'm . . . glad you didn't take her prohibition against trusting anyone to apply to me.
Silver didn'
t chide him for believing that she might; Arwen was on his own journey, and it was a difficult one. Did Grandmother share all the pertinent details?
Yes. After a certain amount of discussion--whereupon I pointed out that if she didn't tell me what was going on, I'd hack your mind and find you anyway.
Recalling Valentin's words about "rough and tumble," Silver chose a pair of black jeans that weren't new and that Ena was unlikely to have sent. The new pants were all sharply tailored, as per Silver's usual preference, and totally unsuitable for this rugged place. She paired the jeans with a crisp white shirt that had her grandmother's stylistic fingerprint all over it.
To her brother, she said, You haven't been able to hack my mind since we were four.
I haven't tried since then. A pause. I've been going over the security footage. The only non-family visitors you had in the operative window were Monique Ling and Alpha Nikolaev.
Monique only got as far as my living area and I never left her alone.
And you never let Alpha Nikolaev in at all.
Placing underwear with the clothing on the bed, Silver said what Arwen couldn't. There is no question then. It was family.
The incident with the power outage four and a half months ago means there's a gap in the security footage, so there remains a slim chance it was an outsider.
You know as well as I do that the power cut was caused by a freak technical failure, Silver replied. The poisoner would've had to have the gift of foresight and be waiting all but outside my door to action his or her plan in such a limited time window.
I know. I just don't want it to be family. Arwen's telepathic voice was as distinctively husky as it was in real life, boosted by her psychic signal to sound as if he stood in the room next to her. I'm assisting Grandmother to get to the bottom of it.
Forward me all the data.
Do you want it through your comm account or in a psychic vault?
Ending the conversation after they'd discussed the most secure method of transfer, Silver got in touch with Ena. She had no concern about waking her from sleep--Ena was the one who'd taught her how to set up the telepathic waiting room, would've activated that if she didn't want to be disturbed.
