by Nalini Singh
Odd that Krychek hadn't just teleported to him, but perhaps the other man was trying to be extra polite. Bo snorted. Yeah, right. Likely Krychek was trying to tread softly in an effort to keep Bowen and the humans of the Alliance talking.
Sliding away his paper-thin but highly resilient phone that had survived water, fire, small children, and dogs, he smiled at spotting his sister. Lily had been meant to come in late to the office today, had been in the opposite part of the city from him, so they'd agreed to meet midway.
She was standing on the bridge where they'd arranged to connect, but instead of her usual serene sweetness, she was leaning over the side of the bridge and having an enthusiastic conversation with the gondolier below. The two had to shout to be heard over the music of a busker on this side of the canal, so he could hear her voice, though not what she was saying.
Whatever it was, it had her laughing before she waved good-bye to the gondolier; the man poled away to pick up a couple of excited tourists. "Flirting with Piero?" he teased on reaching her. "What will your tattooed doctor say?"
"Ha ha. You know Piero's wife would brain me with her hockey stick if I dared make eyes at him." Stepping forward, she hugged Bo.
He squeezed her back. They weren't talking about the degrading chip in his brain, the one that was likely to lead to his death in a matter of weeks, but that bleak reality was there every time he looked into his sister's face. As was his own knowledge that Lily's death would follow his if they didn't find a solution. She'd been implanted after him but was now well outside the safe removal period.
Their parents didn't know--that was something the two of them had to decide soon. Whether to warn them . . . or to let them enjoy this time with Bo and Lily without that dark shadow hanging over every moment.
"Have you eaten?" He flicked her hair back from her face after they broke the embrace. "Your favorite bakers have just put out a fresh batch of pastries." The place was a few minutes' walk from the other side of the bridge, on their way to the meeting with Krychek.
"Are you Psy now?" She poked at his abdomen. "How can you have seen that on the walk from the office?"
"Social media," he said with a straight face. "They post a picture every time a fresh batch comes out of the oven."
Her lips twitched. "Who told you?"
"Niall." He grinned. "He passed me as I was walking here. He was stuffing his face with a hot-from-the-oven croissant at the time."
"Done. Let's go." Turning on her heel, she began to stride away, her black coat sleek and her feet clad in little red boots. "Hurry up, slowpoke!" She threw him a laughing look over her shoulder . . . and that was when he saw it.
The red dot centered on her forehead.
Ice crashed through his system, but Bo didn't freeze. He ran. "Get down!" The words were barely out of his mouth when he slammed into his sister, intending to take her to the ground.
They didn't make it.
The bullet hit his back, smashing through his body in a blast of searing pain that seemed everywhere at once; the momentum crashed them through the old bridge wall and into the canal below. He took Lily with him, her body held tight in his arms. She'd be safer in the water, where she could use the light and shadows to disorient the shooter.
The water closed over their heads, bubbles everywhere.
He kicked up, released her. He didn't think the bullet had gone through his flesh to hers, but he searched for damage nonetheless. "You hit?" he asked, finding it a little hard to breathe.
Shaking her head, Lily gasped for air. "How did you know?"
"I saw--" Bo began when his heart gave a jerking thud and the world blurred.
Lily screamed at the same moment. "Bo!" He felt his body sliding down into the water, felt Lily clutch at him to keep him afloat. Other hands joined hers soon after, hauling him up, but he couldn't speak, his vision nearly all black.
"Bo! Hold on! Help is coming!" Desperate hands searching for the cause of the pain shredding his flesh.
In the back of his mind, a mind that had a deep knowledge of weapons, Bo knew the bullet had been designed to fragment inside the body, causing maximum damage. "Lily." It was nearly soundless but she heard.
"I'm here, Bo." Her voice shook. "Just hold on."
"My brain," he managed to say. "Use it."
His vision collapsed. He felt his heart give one more beat.
Then . . . nothing.
Chapter 41
Hope, you audacious beast, you dancing moonbeam, you loyal canine, I miss you.
--Adina Mercant, poet (b.1832, d.1901)
A WEEK AFTER her release from the hospital--a full month following the operation--Silver knew intellectually that she'd lost a part of herself both she and others had valued, but she didn't experience any sense of loss. She felt nothing even when she went through memories tagged as powerful by her previous self, the concept of emotions just that: a concept. Foreign, difficult to grasp.
Her mind was cool clarity, devoid of anything extraneous. At least when she was awake. It was only when she was asleep that things went awry.
She dreamed.
She'd always dreamed, even in Silence. Arwen's impact. The truly Silent didn't dream. Or that was what the populace had always been told. If that were true, Silver shouldn't be dreaming. It wasn't as if she had any intention of willing the biofusion filaments to create a new, safe pathway to her emotional core. Silver saw no reason to feel when she was so much more efficient in her current state.
Her decisions during her emotional period were difficult for her to comprehend.
Why, for example, had she found the bear alpha so intriguing? Genetically, he wasn't a male she should consider for reproductive purposes--the children were unlikely to be high-Gradient Psy . . . though they would also have the ability to shift. Having a Psy-changeling child would be to her advantage as someone who worked with the other races, but it wasn't a big enough advantage for her to attach herself to a bear clan for life.
Look at how laissez-faire the bears were in how they lived life. It simply did not mesh with her measured, calculated approach. She found it impossible to understand why she'd been happy living in an enormous cave system. Happiness itself, of course, was a concept she no longer understood. She had the words for it, but not the internal comprehension she'd once had. It was a lack she was willing to live with given the myriad advantages.
Her logic was sound.
Yet, night after night, she dreamed of Alpha Nikolaev--and in those dreams, she sensed his hair-roughened skin sliding against hers, drew his earthy scent into her lungs, woke feeling as if she'd been entwined with a big, warm male body. Her sleep was deep and calm. It was only when she woke that confusion caught her in its grip.
"It's apt to be an echo of emotion," her grandmother had told her when Silver mentioned her dreams two days earlier. "The brain often fights losing pieces of itself."
It made perfect sense. Ena's next statement, however, hadn't been as rational. "Are you certain you don't wish to attempt to reactivate your emotional center?"
"Of course I'm certain. I'm far more efficient this way."
"Efficiency isn't everything, Silver. I learned that when Arwen was born."
Silver was still attempting to process her grandmother's statement as she dressed to return to work. She'd overseen her team remotely to this point, but had decided it was time to go into the office. It was too early according to Dr. Bashir, who continued to oversee her healing, but Silver felt capable--though she would maintain a close eye on her stress levels to ensure she didn't sabotage her return to health.
It was also why she was still home at nine forty-five.
A slightly less intensive schedule wouldn't be problematic, since it had become clear to her that she could achieve even more now than she had prior to the operation. She hadn't realized how much energy caging her Tp-A abilities sucked up until the act was no longer necessary.
Ready, she walked into the kitchen area of her apartment to mix up a nutrien
t drink. The kitchen was large, full of sunlight, the build optimized for the changelings who were the main tenants of this complex. The latter was how Valentin must've got in to slip a card under her apartment door two days earlier.
That card sat on her small dining table.
The picture on the front was from a children's story: a laughing blonde girl riding on the back of a huge bear. She knew the memory it represented, and that memory haunted her in her dreams. But it was the words inside that she found the most incomprehensible.
Silver Fucking Mercant. I told you nothing would keep you down. Happy twenty-ninth birthday.--V
It wasn't that she didn't understand the words; it was the impact those words had on her. She should've thrown the card in the trash as soon as she'd finished reading it, but instead, she kept it in a place where she'd look at it every single morning.
"Throw it away," she ordered herself.
But when she left for the office fifteen minutes later, the card was still exactly where it had been since she received it.
Her reaction had to be part of the emotional "echo" effect. It'd wear off.
Once outside her third-floor apartment, she walked carefully along a path that rose up above the lush grass of the huge central green area. The path had no railings or other handholds and was challenging in heels. Which was why Silver had made it a point to master the task, until her changeling neighbors gave her a thumbs-up when they passed her.
"Yo, Miss Silver!" The call came from a teenager whose family was living temporarily in the city while his mother undertook a lucrative short-term contract. The children would've usually been left with their pack, but as both teenagers had wanted to experience city life, they'd been permitted to enroll in a local school for the duration.
Silver knew all that because the changelings insisted on treating her as one of their own. Not because of who she was, but because of the relationship she'd had with Valentin Nikolaev. Uncertain what effect a denial of that relationship would have on Valentin's status, she'd said nothing.
He was no longer her mate, but she owed him and StoneWater a certain loyalty. More, she'd given her word that she would protect the clan to her dying day.
Silver did not break her promises.
As a result, people continued to treat her as his mate. The reaction held true regardless of whether it was a bear or wolf or nonpredatory changeling with whom she was interacting.
"Christof. Why aren't you readying yourself for school?" She had a vague memory of hearing that they were starting at ten thirty today because of a teachers' meeting.
The wolf male jumped up onto the path from the grass below, his grace that of a predator's, though his landing was shaky. "I got plenty of time," he said with a covert glance at his timepiece after shoving his long black bangs out of his eyes. "I figured I'd get in some jumps."
Silver had no need to ask what he was talking about--she'd seen him jumping down from a number of the high pathways. She'd also seen him fall badly, and had rendered first aid. "You do realize you're a wolf not a cat?"
The teenage boy made a face, his eyes deep blue against skin of wintery white. "Yeah, yeah, that's what Dad said when I fractured my ankle that time, but I hate those smarmy cats at school, always jumping off shit and trying to scare us."
"I didn't realize there were any big cats in this region." The question came from the part of her that had once been mate to an alpha bear.
"They're not big," he said derisively. "Just wildcats--transferred because the dad's some fancy-deal professor. They got permission to be here. But they're so smug." Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he slumped his shoulders forward and curled his lip. "They called me a 'feral wolf.' Can you believe that?"
"I see. Did you respond?"
"Of course I did." A growl that was nothing like Valentin Nikolaev's deep rumble, the sudden amber of Christof's eyes a much darker shade. "I couldn't let that insult stand. I put kitty litter in their lockers." His laughter was bright, but it didn't fill the air, didn't steal her breath. "You should've seen their faces."
Disturbed by the direction of her thoughts, Silver took a firm mental step off that unproductive path. "Your action may escalate the conflict."
"No. I got detention, but so did they because they threw the kitty litter at me." A distinctly self-satisfied look. "Second strike means an automatic expulsion, and I'm not done with the city. Neither are the kitties, so we've agreed on a truce." Having reached the end of the path, the teen lifted a hand. "Mom's calling. I better boost."
She turned to ensure he landed safely after his jump, but at the same time, she listened. She picked up no hint of his mother's call--clearly, whatever the teething problems with her operation, her Tp-A abilities were well under control.
. . . assassination attempt.
The fragment of breaking news came through her preset telepathic filters just as she reached the curb outside the complex. Before she could follow up on the news a familiar rugged all-wheel drive stopped in front of her.
The driver, a heavily muscled man with impressively broad shoulders, reached across to push open the passenger side door. "Hop in. I'll give you a ride."
Silver entered the vehicle without hesitation--one thing she'd learned from the memories of her time with Alpha Nikolaev was that he'd never harm her. Since getting to the office earlier would allow her to complete more work, it was a good decision to accept the ride rather than taking the skytrain. "Thank you."
He swung smoothly into the traffic. The fresh scent of his aftershave drifted across to her, layered over the natural scent of his skin.
That scent triggered a highly tactile memory of his hands skimming over her body, his muscled thigh pushing between hers, his hair falling forward and his smile an invitation. He'd been so warm, his weight heavy on her but not crushing, his chest hair rasping against her nipples.
She considered the memory with detached focus, every detail clear in her mind from the way his smile caused grooves to form in his cheeks, to how his breath whispered over her before his lips took her own, to the firmness of his mouth and the aggressiveness of his tongue.
Despite the richness of the sensory detail, she was still in control, her pulse normal, her breathing even. She remained stable.
"You still doing okay?" A gruff question.
Silver thought of the card she hadn't thrown away, the one that sat in the center of her dining table in a silent taunt. "I've had no unwanted auditory input since the surgery."
"The apartment? Everyone leaving you be?"
"For changelings, yes." Had they been Psy, she'd have considered their behavior incredibly intrusive, but she'd successfully adapted to changeling norms. "As there are only a few bears, it's relatively calm. Only one window broken in the past three days."
Valentin chuckled and the sound wasn't quite right, wasn't what she remembered. As if he were muting himself. Valentin never muted himself. "And you?" she asked. "You lost a mate."
His hands, big and powerful, clenched on the steering wheel. "Right now, my mate is sitting next to me, alive and breathing and with that brilliant brain going a hundred miles an hour. So yeah, I'm doing okay."
Silver looked at the traffic he was dodging with such ease. "Turn right here. It's a shorter distance to EmNet HQ." The words didn't seem right, either, didn't seem to be what she should be saying.
"So, now that you're pure Silence," Valentin said after making the turn, "you ever think about rerunning the sex experiment?"
"Whatever compelled me to do that, it's been shut off by the operation."
"What about the scientific benefits? Regular sexual contact with a willing partner is meant to improve health and general well-being."
Ignoring that deliberately provocative statement, Silver gave him another direction choice. This time, he ignored it. "If we go this way," he said, "I can show you something."
"I have a schedule to keep," she said. "There's just been an assassination attempt on Bowen Knight. He was sh
ot."
Valentin's muscles bunched, all playfulness erased. "How bad?"
Silver knew he considered the other man part of his extended family, but she had no good news to give him. "Early reports say it may be fatal."
"You need to mobilize EmNet?"
It was a good excuse, but Silver couldn't lie to this bear. "No. It's a political situation, not a humanitarian emergency." If Bowen Knight did die, it could plunge the world into chaos, but for now, the peace was holding. "I'm sorry for the impact this may have on your sister."
Valentin's hands flexed on the steering wheel. "Nika is tough--she'll be there for her mate. But I'm going to give Stasya a heads-up." A glance at her, their eyes colliding. "I might be alpha, but Stasya's the big sister who can bully Nika into telling her if she needs clan help."
Silver didn't interrupt while he used the vehicle's system to make contact with Anastasia Nikolaev. "Make sure Nika's mate and his family know StoneWater will offer any assistance we can," he told his second.
"I'll call her now," Anastasia said before hanging up.
Silver spoke into the quiet. "How is the situation with Sergey and the clanmates who returned with him?"
Valentin shrugged. "We're growing stronger together as a clan. They're loyal, just scared."
Silver found herself turning to look at his profile, taking in the harsh angles of his face. He'd never be called beautiful, but Valentin Nikolaev had a presence that demanded attention. "You have a deep ability to forgive."
"Prerequisite of the job. You've seen the shit bears pull--imagine how crazy I'd be if I held grudges." He brought the vehicle to a stop in front of a shop with a pink awning.
She stared through the car window. "I've had my nutrition for the morning."
"Yeah, but have you had waffles with maple syrup and strawberries?" He was out of the vehicle before she could respond.
Opening her door, he said, "It's looking like the world might soon go to hell again, but today there's time for waffles." Deep, dark eyes locked with hers once more, his big body blocking out the light.
"Remember your promise," he said, and though she'd lost her emotional core, she had memories to draw from, knew it was a profound hurt he was trying but failing to hide.
