by Nalini Singh
As a result, DarkRiver had authorized a special education grant that meant Keenan had a teacher’s aide whose task it was to work with him on more advanced lessons while he remained among his usual classmates. When the class did math, Keenan did math, too, just at a more difficult level. When it was time for a sports or music lesson, he took it with his classmates.
Ashaya and Dorian could’ve easily paid for the teacher’s aide themselves, but cubs were considered the responsibility of the pack as a whole, for they were the pack’s heart.
It was an alpha’s honor to ensure they had what they needed to thrive.
“Yes!” Keenan bounced up and down in front of Lucas. “My new teacher’s name is Shonda and she makes my brain hurt.”
Lucas hunkered down to Keenan’s level. “Is that a good thing?”
A determined nod. “I like thinking hard.” He glanced up at Dorian. “Will you watch me kick the ball, Dad? I can get the goal sometimes now.”
As Lucas rose to his feet, he felt more than saw the emotion that crashed through Dorian at the innocent request. Swallowing, the sentinel said, “Lucas and I will watch you while we talk.”
Smile luminous as the sun, Keenan ran off a short distance to the leaf-strewn section in front of the cabin, while Lucas and Dorian leaned up against the trees. “It’s a punch to the heart each time he calls me dad,” the sentinel admitted in a gruff tone. “Right fucking here.” He pressed down on his chest above his heart, as if the organ ached.
“When did he start?”
“After the leg.” Dorian tapped the slightly green-tinged transparent plascast. “He said, ‘Dad, that’s just like the one I had on my arm!’” The sentinel grinned. “He was so excited and it was all so natural. No big deal, you know? Except it is to me.”
Lucas understood. To earn the trust of a child, that was a gift nothing could beat. “I heard from BlackSea,” he said into the emotional quiet. “They’ve narrowed Tanique’s vision of ‘Edward’s Pier’ down to twenty possible locations and are planning to check them out one by one. Of course, that’s if the place is even in Canada.”
Dorian folded his arms. “I feel so fucking helpless.”
“We’re here if BlackSea needs us.” Despite his rational words, Lucas felt the same prowling frustration as Dorian. To be a dominant was to protect. “Miane and her lieutenants have to be going crazy by now.” Leila Savea was only one of BlackSea’s many vanished.
“Yeah.” A long pause. “Reminds me of Kylie. How I held my baby sister in my arms and there was nothing I could do to bring her back to life.”
Memory smashed into Lucas. Of a laughing young packmate whose life had been stolen in a bloody, brutal way. “We made the fucker who hurt her pay,” he said with a growl. “Nothing will ever bring her back, but never forget that we did her memory justice.”
Dorian nodded. “I look at Keenan and I feel this pain deep inside because he’ll never know the funny, loving aunt he would’ve had. I can almost see how she would’ve played with him, how she would’ve taught him to dribble.” Swallowing, he smiled when Keenan kicked a goal. “But I figure she’s around, watching over us. Kylie would do that.”
Ashaya walked out of the cabin before Lucas could answer, two mugs in hand and her feet bare. Her body was clad in a simple orange shift that set off skin a shade darker than her son’s, as well as the arresting blue-gray eyes she shared with Keenan.
“Coffee.” Her smile was sunshine, banishing the dark—and her eyes, they were focused on Dorian, as if she’d sensed the pain that had rippled over her mate’s soul, come out in response to it.
“Thanks, Shaya,” Lucas said, deliberately using Dorian’s pet name for her as a silent tug pulling the sentinel back into the beautiful present. If there was one thing Lucas knew, it was that Kylie would’ve wanted only joy for her adored big brother.
The provocation worked.
Growling low in his throat as he accepted his own mug, Dorian hauled Ashaya to his side, the electric curls of her unbound hair shining with hidden highlights in the sunset light. “Why did you get him coffee?” he grumbled. “Now he’ll never leave.”
Ashaya laughed and kissed Dorian, her fingers lingering on his jaw for a long moment before she turned to face Lucas. “Did you hear Mercy was trying to do pull-ups?”
Lucas almost spit out his coffee on a bark of laughter. “Did she succeed?”
“She told me she was up to seven when Riley made her stop,” Dorian said, his very amused leopard in his eyes. “Can you imagine his face when he walked in?”
It was a priceless visual. “Poor Riley.” Lucas had a good idea what Mercy was up to with her antics—because when a dominant predatory changeling female loved, she loved with every ounce of her being.
“While I was there,” Dorian added, “I got into the swing of things. Pretended my ribs were killing me and I needed all kinds of assistance. I thought Riley was going to strangle me at one point.”
Shaking her head in laughing reproof, Dorian’s scientist mate gently patted his chest just as Keenan called out to her. “I’ll leave you two to talk. I’ve been in the lab all day working on the Human Alliance implant.” Her smile faded at the edges. “It’ll do me good to stretch my legs with our future soccer star.”
Dorian closed his hand over hers, his eyebrows drawing together. “Hold up. What aren’t you saying?”
Ashaya looked over as if to ensure Keenan was happy in his play before replying. “I don’t know for certain yet.” Her voice was troubled. “But . . . I have a very bad feeling the implants are going to start failing in months if not sooner. I don’t mean simply in effectiveness. I mean a degradation that’ll impact the brain.”
Lucas sucked in a quiet breath, all amusement instantly erased. “You’re talking about the same implant that’s in Bo’s head?” he asked, referring to the effective leader of the Human Alliance. “The one that shields his mind against psychic manipulation?” Natural human shields were far weaker than the rock-solid ones possessed by changelings.
Nodding, Ashaya said, “I haven’t shared my concerns with him yet. Amara and I want to be positive beyond any doubt—because the very first group that received the implants? They’re beyond the stage where a surgical removal is safe.”
That group included Bo and his top people.
“I won’t mention it,” Lucas promised as Dorian cuddled Ashaya against him, murmuring things to her that made her nod and whisper back.
“Shit,” Dorian said after Ashaya left to play with Keenan. “If those implants fail, we lose Bo.”
That would be disastrous. While the other man had made bad mistakes in his original interactions with DarkRiver and SnowDancer, he’d proven to be a cool head with whom they could build a relationship. Even more critically, he had the charisma and the passion to reach millions of humans and convince them to believe in the vital importance of uniting under the Alliance banner. Lose Bowen Knight and the Alliance would disintegrate, of that Lucas was convinced. It wasn’t strong enough to survive without him, not yet.
And if they lost the Alliance, Trinity would fall.
The world could not afford for Trinity to fall. The instant it did, the Consortium would sweep in and chaos would reign.
Jaw grim, Lucas said, “Let’s hope Ashaya and Amara disprove their own theory.” It was a very faint hope: together, Ashaya and her twin were the best in the world in their field.
Dorian’s eyes reflected the same bleak knowledge, but he just nodded. “So, the ocelots.” His expression darkened further. “Our old information was out of date. They did use to be a small but strong and stable pack in their region, but they got caught in the insanity that hit the Psy.”
“You’re talking literally?” Lucas’s gut went tight as he remembered the murderous violence that had nearly overwhelmed the Psy race at the start of this year.
“Yeah. SkyElm
was—is—based next to a large Psy hamlet. The ocelots have plenty of room to roam but their main pack settlement has always been near the border—just a historical thing no one bothered to change because the two sides kept to themselves.” Glancing over at his mate and son when they laughed, Dorian exhaled.
“But when the Psy started losing their minds because of the shit that was going down in their PsyNet, the pack was caught out.” Dorian drank more of his coffee but didn’t seem to taste it, his mind on whatever it was he’d discovered. “I can’t figure out why the hell the alpha didn’t move his people, since the hamlet outbreak happened after the first major outbreaks in New York.”
At which point, Lucas thought, the entire world knew ordinary Psy had suddenly become deadly neighbors to have. “How many?” he asked quietly. Dorian wouldn’t be this affected if the pack had lost two or three members.
The sentinel’s words were brutal. “There are only seven survivors. From a pack that was ninety-three strong.”
Lucas’s hand clenched so hard around his mug that he almost cracked it. “How is that possible?” The casualty rate was far too high for a predatory changeling pack pitched against the unthinking insane.
“Ocelots were unbalanced.” Dorian’s eyes turned into chips of ice. “SkyElm had too many elders and children, not enough aggressive dominants physically able to defend the pack.”
Claws pushing at his skin, Lucas had to make a conscious effort not to snarl.
He tried not to judge other alphas, but the situation Dorian was describing should’ve never happened. It was an alpha’s responsibility to ensure his pack had a balanced complement of dominants in the prime of their life. Sometimes that meant putting out the call to friendly packs for intrepid young men and women who wanted to take up higher-level positions than they could hope for in their own packs at the same age. Other times, it meant making the tough decision to dissolve the pack by requesting integration with a bigger pack.
“Even if the ocelots had no one they could amalgamate with,” Lucas said, “they could’ve asked for recruits from other feline packs.” Fellow alphas like Lucas would’ve even authorized temporary transfers to support SkyElm until the faltering pack had enough permanent packmates. “Why didn’t they?”
“They did put out the call,” Dorian said, to Lucas’s surprise. “Catch was they only wanted ocelots, no other cats. That’s why we never got a request for help.” A tight shrug. “There aren’t many ocelots in the country and while the other packs are healthy, they’re also small, can’t afford to lose members. But”—Dorian’s clipped tone grew harsh—“they all, each and every one, offered to accept an amalgamation request if it was made. SkyElm said it wasn’t interested.”
That was flat-out arrogance, and it had led to the decimation of almost an entire pack. “The survivors, who’s left?”
“Two of them are children,” Dorian began. “Alive because a submissive grabbed them in the middle of the carnage, threw them in a room, then barricaded himself inside with them, hacking off the hands of anyone who tried to get through.”
Lucas growled in approval. That was exactly what a submissive packmate was meant to do in such circumstances—take any children in his or her vicinity and keep them safe. At least one member of SkyElm knew his duty.
“Only two soldiers,” Dorian continued. “Both were badly injured in the fighting but are now up and walking. The pack healer is alive; she was on the front line, but the alpha pulled her back before she was too badly wounded. One of the only good decisions he seems to have made.”
“The alpha’s alive?”
Expression flat, Dorian nodded. “I spoke to a friend in the area—he says according to a few humans who were trapped in buildings near the Psy enclave/SkyElm border and watched the fighting go down, the pack’s dominants protected the alpha above all others.”
That wasn’t necessarily the wrong move—a dead alpha could collapse a pack’s cohesion, especially if it was a weak pack to begin with. However, in a situation where cubs were being killed, protecting those vulnerable lives should’ve been the dominants’—and the alpha’s—only focus. In DarkRiver, should it ever come down to such a horrible situation, even the most frail elders would take up arms and form a line of defense.
Then Dorian said the most unbelievable thing. “He lost his own cub and mate.”
Blinking, Lucas stared at his sentinel. “How is that possible?” In a battle where Sascha and Naya were under threat, Lucas would fight to the death to protect them. No one would get through him except by tearing him to fucking pieces.
“I don’t think it was on purpose,” Dorian said, though anger vibrated in his voice. “Far as I can piece together, SkyElm left one side of their settlement unprotected, believing the danger to be only on the border.”
A crack of sound, coffee spilling to the forest floor.
“Shit.” Putting the cracked mug on the ground, Dorian shook off the coffee that had spilled on his fingers. “You can figure out the rest.”
Lucas could and it wasn’t pretty. “It doesn’t sound like SkyElm would have the capacity to organize a kidnapping of any kind, much less hire a mercenary group. And why the hell would they want to attack DarkRiver when they could’ve reached out to us for help?”
Lucas would’ve accepted the refugees without question, DarkRiver more than big and stable enough to integrate the seven survivors and provide them any help they needed. While leopard changelings formed the vast majority of DarkRiver, the pack included Psy, human, one jaguar, and several lynx packmates. It was, in fact, the best pack for SkyElm to have approached in the aftermath of the massacre.
Especially since, unlike the alphas of smaller packs, Lucas wouldn’t have worried about a dominance challenge from the SkyElm alpha. He was too strong, had held power too long, and his sentinels were loyal beyond any question.
“Here’s the thing.” Dorian ran his fingers through his hair. “SkyElm was small but they have a couple of patents, courtesy of two elderly packmates who’d invented things and signed over the patents to the pack as a whole. Bastien tracked the money generated by those patents and he says that a month ago, someone transferred two million dollars of it to an offshore bank where the trail goes cold.”
From there, Lucas realized, it could’ve been funneled to the mercenaries. “I need to talk to the SkyElm alpha face-to-face.” No matter his disdain for the other man’s decisions, Lucas wouldn’t judge him guilty of Naya’s attempted kidnapping without firm evidence. The Consortium was too good at setting friend against friend, at creating fractures where none had previously existed.
“You planning to leave DarkRiver territory?” Dorian straightened, his leopard a wild green presence in his eyes. “Luc, you know that’s not a good idea.”
“I can’t ask him to come here, not when he must be all but broken.” The other alpha had lost his pack, his mate, and his child in a single horrifying day. Lucas wouldn’t wish such hell on anyone. “I have to go to him.”
Letters to Nina
From the private diaries of Father Xavier Perez
April 30, 2074
Nina,
The villagers are safe.
The Psy assassins have given up and gone away, and the people we saved know to stay in their hidden new home until things change on a far wider scale.
Today, for the first time since I lost you, since our people were butchered, I felt God in my heart again. And in the ray of dawn sunlight as it touched a child’s peacefully sleeping face, I saw hope.
The Psy soldier with whom I work in the darkness to thwart his fellow assassins shows no one his face, but these villagers know mine, trust mine. I am one of them after all, my skin the same dark shade, my features familiar, my language theirs, my race human.
Now, however, it seems I’m also a rebel in a sense I could’ve never predicted only months earlier. I fight alongside a man I woul
d’ve once murdered for the simple fact he is Psy and it was Psy who so viciously stole everything from me. That shames me and yet I write it here because I want you to know who I’ve become since I lost you. The good and the bad.
Nina . . . I miss you.
Xavier
Chapter 25
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AFTER Dorian told Lucas about SkyElm, Lucas’s sentinels and mate worked together to cover his absence while he moved alone out of the territory. It was the fact that he was on his own that had most worried his people, but a single panther moving alone in the night was a shadow. If he could’ve made the trip overland, there would’ve been zero risk of detection, even from other predatory changelings, but that would’ve taken too long, so Lucas had called on a party he’d never expected to need: Nikita Duncan.
Sascha’s mother owned more than one airline as well as a fleet of private craft. She’d got him on an unlogged flight on a small plane piloted by a man she assured Lucas wouldn’t betray him, even under threat of torture. Sounded good, but Lucas wasn’t about to trust anyone in her employ. Had Dorian not been out of commission, the sentinel would’ve been his pilot of choice. Still, since Nikita considered Lucas integral to Sascha’s continued security, he was probably safe.
Getting into the already-warmed-up and ready-to-go plane on an isolated runway outside the city, he chucked his small pack inside, hauled himself in . . . and recognized the scent of the pilot. “When the fuck did you get a pilot’s license?”
Max Shannon put his arm on the back of his chair and grinned over his white-shirted shoulder, his features a handsome mix of Caucasian and Asian and his black hair neatly cut. The dimple in his left cheek had fascinated Naya the last time Max and Sophie visited DarkRiver territory. Lucas’s cub had kept touching it, as if trying to figure out how it was made.
“Seemed a good skill for a security chief to have,” Max said in answer to Lucas’s question. “Especially when the woman I’m meant to protect is constantly on planes.” He lightly tapped the control panel in front of him. “Preflight check’s done.” The other man began to get up. “I just need to close and lock the door.”
