by Nalini Singh
"Yes, the dosage was precisely calibrated to be devastating to the Psy system." Arwen gave them a precis of the report because he'd already had time to digest it.
"The poisoner," Silver said, "is either a highly skilled chemist or has access to the same."
Valentin's eyes glinted amber. "It's a scent, a place to start." He went to say something else when his phone rang.
The person on the other end had news of a highly unexpected nature.
The Human Alpha
BOWEN KNIGHT TOOK a second look at the header of the e-mail his assistant had forwarded to him. He had an open-door policy to every member of the Alliance, having learned that an out-of-touch leadership could destroy an organization from within. However, with that policy came an avalanche of messages no single human could possibly read. He'd finally agreed with his sister's suggestion that he get an assistant.
Lily had also provided him with the CV of an eminently qualified person.
Not only was Neha trained to the highest level, she was extremely intelligent. Filtering his messages--everything apart from those that came directly to his private address--was just one part of her complex duties. At first, he'd checked the messages she'd filtered out from his inbox; he'd found not a single decision with which he disagreed.
These days, he trusted her judgment.
Which was why he was surprised to see the subject line of the message she'd forwarded, not just to his inbox, but also to his phone, so that it would pop up for his immediate attention.
IGNORE AT YOUR PERIL!!
It seemed like the kind of scam/junky header designed to get people to open questionable mail, but Neha had clearly seen something important in it, so he didn't ignore it.
Scanning it as he stood on his balcony overlooking a canal, he frowned.
Consider this fair warning. If you do not stop your efforts to DESTROY the human race by taking part in this ELIMINATION EFFORT disguised as a PEACE ACCORD, you will pay the price. You are important to the Alliance, have just been led astray. See the ERROR of your ways.
The first one will be a WARNING. The second will be aimed at you.
There was no signature line, nothing in the generic free-to-get address to show who might've sent it. What was clear was its threatening nature. Bo immediately contacted the tech team that was part of his larger security team and put them on the job of seeing if they could track the sender.
"Also, issue a yellow-level warning to all staff," he ordered. "A crackpot like this might actually turn up and take a shot."
Yellow was appropriate and would be taken seriously. Red was saved for an emergency, orange for when they had details of an actual event that was nearly guaranteed to take place.
After he hung up, he considered the message again. At first glance, it appeared to be written by someone of limited education, but when he looked at it more carefully, he saw that there were no misspellings and, except for the odd capitalization, the grammar and syntax were perfect.
Unfortunately, the writer's pattern of speech wasn't enough to track them down--there were a whole lot of intelligent, unhinged bastards on the planet.
The alert would have to stay at yellow until he had further data.
Closing the message, he was about to slide away his phone when it rang. He answered with a smile. "Phoenix. How's work going?" His closest cousin in age, who also happened to be one of his best friends, had relocated to Mozambique eight months earlier on an engineering contract.
"On schedule, all good to finish in two months," the other man said quickly. "I called you about something else." Before Bo could ask what that was, Phoenix burst out with, "I got mated!"
Mated.
That word had very specific usage.
"A changeling?" Bo grinned. "One of the gazelles you've been admiring from afar?" Phoenix was brilliant and hardworking, but he was also shy to the point that Bo knew he hadn't ever had a girlfriend--despite the efforts of his friends to find him equally gentle women to date. "You actually went up and introduced yourself?" Gazelles tended to be gentle and shy, too, so it'd be a perfect match.
"Not quite." Phoenix sounded like he was grinning so hard his face was about to crack. "Janika came up to me, hauled me into a kiss, and the next thing I know, I'm naked and happy and waking up with the most beautiful woman I've met in my entire life."
Bo blinked. "Not a gazelle then."
"She's a bear."
This time, Bo had to sit down. He did so on the balcony floor. The idea of sweet, blushing Phoenix with one of the toughest predators on the planet . . . "You're sure you're mated and your beautiful bear's not just taking you for a delirious ride?"
"He's mine and he's delightful." Those words were spoken in a throaty female voice that dripped with possession. "You can't have him back."
"I don't want to go anywhere." Phoenix's voice, the timbre unexpectedly solemn. "You're it for me, Jani."
"Ah-hem," Bo said before the two forgot he was on the line. "Congratulations to you both." His happiness for his cousin was no less, despite his shock. "When do we get to celebrate with you?"
"I can't leave the project at such a critical time, but plan for a huge party when I get back. Jani's got a lot of relatives."
Bo felt a scowl coming on. "Your Janika can keep you, but tell her you belong to us, too." Changeling packs and clans had a bad habit of absorbing people; Bo wasn't about to lose touch with a member of his own clan.
"Possessive, aren't you?" The female voice again, her accent distinctive.
Very distinctive.
Bo sat up straight. "StoneWater? You mated a bear from StoneWater?" The bear clan controlled an immense chunk of Russia--and its members were notorious for the way they managed to nab business deals right out from under their opponents' noses. Someone in that clan had one hell of a strategic brain.
"Tell my brother I said hi when he calls," Janika said. "I'm now going to ravage my adorable mate."
From the masculine laugh Bo caught before Janika hung up, Phoenix was more than willing to be ravaged. "Jesus. Phoenix with a StoneWater bear." It was like putting a fluffy kitten with a saber-tooth tiger.
He hoped to hell his cousin knew what he was doing.
His phone flashed again. This time, it was a call being redirected from the number the Alliance had on file with Trinity. That it was being routed directly to his phone told him it was important. "Bowen Knight," he answered.
"This is Alpha Valentin Nikolaev."
Bo didn't believe it. "I'm still in shock over my deathly shy cousin mating a StoneWater bear." He banged the back of his head against the railings. "If you tell me Janika is your sister, my head will probably explode."
Laughter filled the line, the sound big and warm and primal. "We are family now, Bowen Knight!"
Chapter 15
Ain't no party like a bear party.
It's the hangover that's the problem.
Worth it. Carpe-the-diem!
Wolves are cool, bears are fools.
Didn't get an invite to the party, huh?
--Graffiti on a Moscow wall, each line written by a different unknown individual over successive days prior to erasure by the city works department
TWO HOURS AFTER they'd returned to Denhome, Silver sat in a--comparatively--quiet corner of the Cavern and watched several bears--in bear form--stand up on their back paws to dance. At least two were holding beer bottles in their paws. One had tinsel wrapped around his neck and was, for some unknown reason, wearing sunglasses.
Another was snoring a few feet away from her. Every so often, he'd slap out his paw as if killing dream flies. The cubs who weren't yet asleep kept sneaking up to the sleeping bear on tiptoe and putting flowers and play "jewels" on his fur. By now, he was extremely well bedazzled. Not far from him, a number of clanmates, who hadn't shifted form, were playing a game called bobbing for apples.
No one had so far returned from their shallow dive with an apple, but that didn't stop their stomach-holding laughter. Po
ssibly because the adult barrel was apparently filled not with water but with liquid of a more alcoholic variety. The cubs had a cub-sized barrel that was more traditional.
The tiny gangsters were making up their own games. One was currently standing on her head next to Silver, while another two had stuffed so many cherries into their mouths that they looked like chipmunks. It was a contest from what she could see, with the stems of the cherries neatly lined up beside them.
Two more were in bear-cub form, doing "kung fu"--as told to Silver by the martial artists themselves before they shifted.
"How many seconds?" the head-stander called out.
"Seven," Silver said.
"Nika's mated!" the same child called out. "I like Nika!" Tumbling to the floor, she rubbed at the top of her head before running off toward the food table.
Silver watched the tiny girl duck between much larger bears with fearless dexterity, saw a hand reach down to pluck her up and throw her across the room into another pair of waiting arms. She was lowered to the floor right by the food, a wide grin on her face.
"Boom, boom." A very small cub lurched against Silver's chair, balance not yet his strong point. Someone had shaped and gelled his soft blond hair into a Mohawk, and dressed him in a miniature replica of a biker jacket, complete with fake chains. "Boom, boom!"
"Yes, the music has a strong beat," Silver responded. "It's not as loud as I expected, however."
Big blue eyes looked at her with solemn attention. "Boom, boom!" He then dropped a soggy half-eaten cookie onto her lap.
Plucking the child into his arms, Valentin blew a raspberry on his stomach. The cub giggled. "You should be in bed." Despite the stern words, Valentin cuddled the cub close and began to pat the little boy's back as he leaned up against the wall next to Silver. "Sound's calibrated not to blow out our eardrums."
Silver put the unwanted cookie on a discarded plate nearby. "Of course." Changeling hearing was acute. "I haven't seen you take a drink." It was his sister's mating the clan was celebrating, after all.
A wink. "I'll wait until Nika's home with her engineer. That'll be a party."
Silver looked around the wild chaos of the Cavern. The kung fu cubs were now doing kung fu on the legs of adult bears, while the beer-drinking bears were pointing to the whiskey bottle on the bar table, and nodding at one another. Pavel's twin, Yakov, was spinning Anastasia in a dance that kept crashing them both into the other couples. At which point, everyone involved cracked up laughing . . . right before a pie sailed from across the room to nail Yakov on the back of his head.
"Pasha!" With that roar, he took off through the crowd, hell-bent on vengeance.
"If that will be a party," she said, "what is this?"
"Fun, but it'll shut down soon--that whiskey's never going to be opened. People have shifts to prepare for, work to rest up for." He looked down at the child who'd fallen trustingly asleep in his arms. "I'll get this escapee to bed." A glance out of eyes gone amber. "Stay until I get back?"
Silver found herself nodding, though she should've retreated to her room an hour ago, her body yet healing. She watched as Valentin walked toward the residential area, his big body too heavy with muscle to be graceful . . . yet, he was in a way that was all power and strength.
*
VALENTIN had just returned from putting the cub into his crib--after ridding him of the biker jacket--and was trying to think of a cat-sneaky way to talk Silver into a dance when her eyes suddenly connected with his, urgency in their depths. His phone buzzed three seconds later, a second after he'd navigated his way to her.
The name on the screen was Zarina Saarinen. Head of StoneWater's educational system and mother to Zahaan, Zarina was in the city for a party to celebrate the birthday of her former college roommate, a human female who was now an astronomer.
He answered it as Silver motioned for him to follow her back into the quieter residence section. "Zarina, what's happened?"
"A bomb, I think," she shouted down the line, screams and shouts loud in the background. "I heard the explosion from two streets away, ran over into dust and chaos. Looks like the Dancing Frog bar was the focal point."
A bar?
"Who's on scene?"
"Krychek's here, along with people from neighboring businesses. No emergency crews yet."
"Do what you can." Hanging up, Valentin looked at Silver. "You know?" The telepathic highway was a lightning-fast one.
"Only human victims discovered so far," Silver said, her eyes on her phone, which scrolled with data. "I'm in touch with local authorities to see if they need EmNet assistance."
Anger raced through Valentin's blood. "The fanatics who've been predicting the destruction of the Psy race if Trinity goes ahead?" The threats had been sent to various comm stations, warning of a loss of Psy "superiority" if others were to "interbreed" with them. "Didn't the pieces of shit threaten to attack humans and changelings seen associating with Psy?"
"Word's filtering through that it was a suicide bomber." Silver touched her temple for a second before starting to work her phone again. "No signs of him being Psy at this point. Taking into account the location and the known casualties, as well as the lack of any violent psychic ripples in the Net, there's a high chance it was a non-Psy."
Valentin wanted to say no changeling could do this, but their race wasn't perfect; it was capable of spawning those with hate and violence in their heart. Valentin knew that firsthand. Even if he hadn't, it was changelings who'd stained the earth bloodred during the Territorial Wars three and a half centuries ago. No alpha, no changeling, could ever afford to forget that, especially in a time when it would be so easy to blame the Psy for the world's ills.
"I'm heading to the city," he told Silver, raw pain intermingling with the anger. "A StoneWater team will follow." He'd give the order as he was leaving--as he'd said to his Starlight, people had been having a good time, but despite appearances, nobody was drunk. "The cowards behind this will see a coordinated response, see a united city that can't be so easily broken."
"I'll go with you." Silver held up a hand, even as his bear lunged to its feet in rejection of the idea of her going out into the cold night. "Yes, I'm weak, but if I don't show up at an incident in my own city that's claimed mostly--perhaps only--human victims, I may as well resign as director of EmNet." With that, she disappeared into her room and when she returned, she'd shed his sweatshirt and changed into a fresh white shirt.
She'd also swapped out her sneakers for ankle boots.
That quickly, she was cool, elegant Silver Mercant again, even in jeans and with not a single gray hue in sight. "People of all races need to believe in me for EmNet to work."
Biting back his protective urge to throw her on her bed, order her to rest, and shut the door--all that would get him was a sore head when Silver turned her telepathic muscles against him--Valentin instead ran to Nova's quarters and borrowed one of his sister's coats. It was darkest gray.
Tracking Silver's scent to the exit from Denhome after he'd spoken to Stasya about sending in a rescue team behind them, he felt his raging protectiveness calm. "No emergency teleport?" He hated the idea of her being out of his sight when she hadn't yet recovered from the attempted poisoning. Especially if she'd left without a coat when the temperature had plunged.
"I don't want to split Kaleb's energy." Accepting the coat with a nod of thanks, she added, "I'm used to coordinating resources remotely, so a delayed arrival on-site won't matter." She did exactly that during the drive, using both her phone and her telepathic senses as necessary.
She updated him in the short periods when she was free. "First responders have pulled out three survivors so far, but my sources say the bar was packed for a private celebration. A wedding reception."
Valentin's claws shoved against his skin, the ugly pointlessness of it all infuriating him. "There were probably changelings in there, too."
"No bears identified," Silver said, her tone careful.
Valentin's han
ds squeezed the steering wheel. "As far as I know, no one was in the city to attend a wedding reception, but I'll alert Pieter to check that all our people are accounted for." The thought of losing even one more person from his clan . . .
The two of them were still ten minutes out from the city when Silver's phone beeped. The person on the other end must've spoken as soon as Silver answered, because she listened in silence.
Valentin couldn't hear anything, Silver utilizing the earpiece that had been part of the tech package he'd given her. A button microphone was attached to the collar of her shirt.
"Yes," she said a short time later. "Moscow does need to show a united face to our enemies, but that can be done by a single high-ranking member of your pack at the scene." A pause. "It would be better if it wasn't you. Alpha Nikolaev will be there very shortly. Kaleb is present already. I don't want all three alphas in the region in one place."
Selenka.
He didn't need to ask Silver to confirm: there were only three true alphas in this region--Valentin, Selenka, and Krychek. And Silver was right. The three of them shouldn't be in the hot zone at the same time. It might prove too tempting a target for anyone who wanted to destabilize the area.
"You should pull in the nonpredatories," he said after she ended her conversation with the BlackEdge alpha.
"Already in progress," Silver replied. "A disproportionately high number of the local mountain-pony herd are in the medical field. The others, I've asked my EmNet assistant to contact."
Valentin knew her assistant was Psy; the stern woman had given him the stink eye many a time when he dropped by to speak to Silver. "You need to have a human and a changeling in your inner circle," he said as he drove hell-for-leather through the traffic in the city proper.
"It's more efficient to work with fellow telepaths."
"Everything you do in EmNet is finely balanced--you made that clear when you came along on this trip." Even though her face was too pale and her strength shaky.
Biting back his bear's bellow of displeasure at how she was mistreating herself, he said, "No one race can be seen to have more influence or power."
"I'll take the suggestion under consideration." Silver's fingers moved on her phone. "The problem with choosing a changeling is that many of you are antagonistic to other changeling species. Predators won't always accept orders from a nonpredatory workmate, while two different predators can get into dominance battles."
