by Nalini Singh
He would not fucking die while Kaia was in pain.
Driving faster than he should, he nonetheless spotted the leopard waiting on the side of the road fifteen minutes later. Bo slowed . . . and the leopard crossed the road to stand by a left turn. Getting the hint, he turned and carried on into the increasingly snow-draped landscape, the ground a gentle but constant slope. "We must be at the foothills of the Sierras."
"George will be scared here." Kaia took in the white and green landscape around them, majestic and alien and not of her home. "He's free in the ocean, but he knows the ocean. He's not built to deal with this much change."
And even though George might have stolen his chance at life, Bowen felt for the other man; he couldn't forget George's dejection when he'd realized Seraphina was seeing another man. Whatever else drove Dr. Kahananui's assistant, part of it was a broken heart. "We'll find him," he said to Kaia. "Mercy would've contacted us if he was in trouble."
Nodding, Kaia shifted in her seat to angle her body toward him. "Your head's hurting, isn't it?"
"Slight headache," he admitted. "But that could just be the interrupted sleep I had on the flight." He'd been too amped up to really rest.
"Only Atalina knows how to do the operation."
Bo tugged gently on the end of her braid. "One step at a time." He couldn't be a hostage to the loudly ticking clock; he had to go forward, had to fight for his future. "It's possible George may hunker down to rest." The man had been on the move since he left Ryujin, had to be exhausted. "That should give us enough time to catch up to him."
"I don't want to lose him." Kaia tucked escaped strands of hair behind her ears, her attention on Bo rather than the now pitch-black road lit only with the headlights of their vehicle. "He's burned his bridges with BlackSea, exposed himself. That means he's probably of no use to these Consortium people--if they even played a part in any of this in the first place."
"What will happen to him if we manage to bring him back alive?"
"He is ohana," Kaia murmured. "We have punishments, yes, but we don't shun or execute clan unless there's no other choice. If all he's done is stolen things, he'll be expected to pay for his actions, but he'll still be ohana, still be ours." Her voice trembled. "No one should be left all alone in the ocean."
Bowen hadn't thought of it in those terms, but she was right; such cruel aloneness killed or twisted or poisoned. "I'll do everything I can to make sure we don't lose him in the capture." Physically and tactically, he was far more skilled than George, but the stakes could change in a heartbeat if the other man shifted. "Help me make sure he doesn't shift." Thanks to Kaia, Bo knew what he was facing--George would be a formidable opponent in his nonhuman form.
"Try not to frighten him," Kaia said, thinking back to that time when she'd so badly startled George. "He reacts like a child might--morphing into the form in which he feels most powerful." It made her wonder what scars he bore, what had frozen him in childhood as far as his control was concerned.
"Even though he's on land, not in water?"
Kaia's eye caught on the pulsing vein in Bowen's temple, and her lungs emptied of air. It was beginning, the ultimate countdown. If they didn't get him the third injection in less than sixteen and a half hours, his chance at a full lifetime could end in this snowy forested landscape so very far from the canals of Venice and the place he called home.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Kaia took a hard mental step back to the now. Not the future that hadn't happened and wouldn't happen. If Bowen was to leave her, it would be to the surface and to decades of life. That was the only future she'd accept.
"Kaia?"
She flicked open her eyes, thought back to the question he'd asked. "I don't think it's a conscious choice with George. He shifts in reaction, like a hermit crab retreats into its shell." For George, his other self was the shell, the safe place.
"Got it." Bowen turned the wheel to follow the curve of the road. "For your people to be hunted, especially the ones who swim in remote parts of the world, someone had to have given the hunters their coordinates."
The thought was a crushing weight on her lungs, as heavy now as the first time she'd realized the inescapable truth. "George wouldn't do that." Kaia folded her arms. "Yes, he's stolen things, but to set up our people for murder? That would be an act of evil." Of a person devoid of conscience and empathy. "He doesn't like mice, but the one time Hex ended up in his quarters, he carried him back to me cupped gently in one hand."
"People aren't always simple, Kaia." Bowen's voice was quiet. "A man who hesitates to harm animals could well believe they are innocents but sentient creatures aren't." He blew out a breath. "George knew I'd die in a matter of weeks without the third injection."
It was true. The injection couldn't be given later. It had to be given by the quickly looming deadline. And God, she couldn't think about that.
"Whatever happens, I'll make sure George has a chance to explain why he did what he did." Taking her hand, Bowen pressed a soft, tender kiss to her palm before placing her hand on his thigh.
And they drove on through the snow-blanketed night.
Kaia began to feel her heartbeat quicken in an erratic pattern soon afterward, her gut churn. Taking an injector from the small bag at her feet, she injected herself in front of Bo. "After," she reminded him when his jaw set in a brutally hard line.
"After." A promise--and a demand.
Chapter 57
They've just crossed our border.
--Message from border sentry to the alpha of the SnowDancer wolves
IT WAS A bare five minutes later that the vehicle's lights glanced off silvery eyes on the side of the road. "We've got wolves," Bowen murmured, bringing the car to a halt.
A man appeared out of the falling snow. His hair was a stunning silver-gold, his eyes a strikingly pale blue. All Kaia could see of his body through the window were bare shoulders and a bare chest that gleamed with a slick of heat.
He looked like a wolf in human form.
She knew exactly who he was; a man that distinctive tended to be spoken of, especially among women--she was looking at the alpha of the SnowDancer wolves. And what she saw was that while he might be the stuff of female fantasies, his real-life presence was a crash of violent power. Her blood chilled at his presence, the tiny hairs rising on her arms.
His mate clearly had an iron constitution--and was maybe a little insane. No sane woman would consider this man anything but a deadly predator.
"Hawke." Bowen nodded. "I didn't expect to see you."
"I like to keep an eye on what's happening in my territory." Icy blue eyes landed on Kaia as snow dusted his shoulders and caught on his hair. "You smell afraid," he said softly.
Kaia's entire body grew tight. "I'm fine." Folding her arms, she told the lethal wolf alpha to "shut up" with her eyes, because the fear he'd scented wasn't because of him--and she didn't need Bowen reminded of her small madness.
Hawke's lips tugged up in a slight smile--and even then, she was glad he was all the way on the other side of the vehicle. "Your clanmate's taken shelter for the night with a family that lives down the drive you'll see about a hundred meters along on your right."
"Wolves?" Kaia couldn't imagine George asking such dangerous predators for sanctuary. "He has an acute sense of smell."
"Not wolves, but SnowDancers all the same," said the wolf in human form. "Go get your boy." He drew back into the falling snow. "We'll stay far enough off that he doesn't scent or spot us."
Raising a hand in silent thanks, Bowen pulled away to continue on down the road.
Kaia saw a shower of light beyond the windows, caught the merest glimpse of a huge silver-gold wolf in the rearview mirror. Exhaling quietly, she said, "He is the scariest person I've ever met in my entire life." She stared at Bowen's jaw. "How can you just talk to him like he's an ordinary person?"
"That's how you deal with alpha predators." He shot her an unexpected grin. "Never show fear. And Hawke's not that bad if you d
on't pull shit in his territory or against his people."
"No," she murmured, "you deal with him alpha to alpha." Bowen didn't wear his power in as primal a way as Hawke, but it was drenched into his bones. An alpha's power grew with the trust of the people who gave him or her their loyalty--and Bowen had the loyalty of humans across the globe.
He ran the back of his hand over her cheek. "I'm glad you're not scared of me."
"Never." Part of her had always known who he would become to her. "There, that's the turn."
They had no problem finding the house--it was lit up from within, a glowing beacon in the night. The land beyond was devoid of trees and, from what Kaia could sense through the snowfall when they pulled on their jackets and stepped outside, appeared to drop off into a gully or ravine.
Alerted by the lights of their vehicle, a bearded male stepped out to tell them that George wasn't inside. "Went for a walk to the lookout even though the snow was coming down. Said he'd be fine. Took all his gear with him, too." The man squinted his eyes against the snow that fell onto his lashes. "Not sure how helpful flashlights will be, but here's one." He passed it to Bo. "Give me a sec and I'll get another."
"I don't need a flashlight." Kaia began to walk through the snow in the direction the SnowDancer had pointed, Bowen beside her.
"Your night vision's that good?" he asked in a quiet murmur.
"No, I'm using echolocation." As natural to her as breathing. "There's enough ambient noise for me to hear it bounce off objects or people." The rustle of the trees, the movement of small creatures in the calf-length grass that defied the snow. If the noise fell and she needed an extra directional marker, she clicked gently with her tongue to send out a wave of sound.
It wasn't the call she used in the ocean, was far more subtle--and less likely to alarm George.
She sensed her lost clanmate while she and Bowen were still some distance away. The snow stopped falling halfway to his location, making him visible to the eye. When the moon slipped out from behind the clouds moments later, it was as if a silvery flashlight had been turned on the world.
The snow, glittering like crushed glass, reflected back the light.
In all that glory, George was sitting with his legs hanging over the edge of what was actually a sharp drop into a steep ravine, his pack beside him and his hair lifting in the breeze.
It was fairly flat from the edge of the house to the lookout, with no trees or outbuildings to hide behind, so when George glanced back over his shoulder, she expected to see him scramble to grab his pack and run. But he stayed in position, turning his face back toward the ravine and the jagged rocks that lined it.
Even the snow couldn't soften their lethally sharp edges.
George's shoulders were slumped and she thought she'd caught a glimmer of wet in his eyes before he'd turned away.
Kaia's heart clenched. "I'll speak to him."
"Don't get too close. That's a dangerous drop."
Nodding, Kaia continued on through the snowbent grass. Until she was only two meters away and George looked around and said, "That's far enough." He gripped the pack. "If you come any closer, I'll throw this entire pack and the compound over the cliffs."
Kaia held up her hands palms-out, then slowly took a seat on the snow. The cold seeped through her jeans to sear her skin. She was aware of Bowen remaining in a standing position to her left. "You look tired, George." Scanning his face, she noted the shadows and the hollows. "Tell me what's making you hurt."
His smile was tremulous. "That's the thing I always liked about you, Kaia. You pretend to be tough, but you care. Thank you for the burgers and the carrot cake."
It made her terribly sad that such small gestures of care had meant so much to him. "I'm furious with you," she admitted, because George was far too intelligent to fall for a lie--and because he deserved the truth. "But that doesn't mean you're still not ohana. I don't let go of family that easily. We can go home. We can fix this."
George shook his head. "I've done terrible things," he rasped out. "I've leaked all kinds of information. Miane would never again trust me in the clan."
"We are one." Kaia held the eye contact with steadfast honesty. "Yes, you'll be punished. But we don't abandon our own." They'd fought too long and too hard to come together to shove people away now. "Our laws are not the laws of those who live on land, or even of our fellow changelings."
His thin, long-fingered hand tensed on the pack. "Your clan isn't my clan," he said, his voice harder. "Where was BlackSea when I needed them? When I was a child screaming and bloody?"
Kaia thought back to what little she knew of George's family history. His father had died first, she remembered, causing his devastated mother to move George and herself to a small family compound founded by her uncle.
But she, too, had died only months later.
During that one conversation they'd had, George had seemed so curious about how Kaia had felt joining a settled family, and Kaia had been happy to talk to him about it--her pain had never centered on the loving and affectionate family that had embraced her brokenhearted presence. Both sets of grandparents, Bebe, her aunt Geraldine and her small family, and of course, Aunt Natia and the rest of the Kahananuis.
Kaia had been cocooned in love.
Unlike her own family, however, George's extended kin were only peripherally part of BlackSea; they preferred to keep mostly to themselves. In the course of their conversation on the topic of being adopted into extended family, George had said, "The Kahananuis treated you like their own?"
When she'd nodded and asked if he'd had a different experience, he'd changed the topic of the conversation so smoothly that she'd followed without realizing he'd never answered.
"What did they do to you?" She dug her hand into the snow. "People hurt you."
"He used to use an electrical cord or sometimes a switch cut from the tree outside. A few times, he used his belt." A single tear trickled down George's face. "I screamed so hard, but no one came. He was the boss."
"Your mother's uncle."
A jerky nod. "He told me not to tell my mom or he'd kick us out. But she found out and she was going to take me away. Then she got sick." Wet eyes holding Kaia's. "I still have the scars on my back--the belt was the worst because he used the buckle end."
Kaia's heart broke for the child George had been and for the man he'd become. She understood now why she'd never once seen him in the internal pool, or in human form in the sea. To do so would've been to expose his scars and his past as a brutalized child.
The vast majority of changelings adored children, treating them as precious gifts. The only reason BlackSea's minnows weren't awfully spoiled was that the whole clan raised a child--and the elders taught the younger generation. Many believed no changeling would ever harm a child. But changelings were people, and just like any other race there were good people and bad people. "We'll go to Malachai and Miane." Kaia couldn't keep the heat out of her tone. "We'll tell them what happened--"
"It won't matter," George interrupted bleakly. "He's dead. I killed him." The confession might've been flat and blunt, but she glimpsed a painful vulnerability in the eyes that clung to hers.
"Good." Kaia wasn't a bloodthirsty person, didn't ever get violent, but should anyone hurt the people she cared about, she'd use every knife in her collection to claim lethal vengeance. "You did what you had to do to survive. No one will judge you for that--least of all our First." Miane was ruthless when it came to protecting their vulnerable, a woman who took no prisoners.
George shook his head. "No, she'll look at me and see only a traitor."
And though Kaia didn't want to ask this next question, she had to or it would remain a cancer between them. "Our vanished, George. Do you know anything about them?"
Chapter 58
Pick up the phone. Just once! You owe me that!
--Message left by Heenali Roy for Trey Gunther
GEORGE'S SHOULDERS SHOOK, a sob breaking out of his mouth. "I swear I d
idn't know." He wiped his nose on the back of his arm, the checked shirt he wore woefully inadequate for this weather. "I thought it was about money and stealing scientific breakthroughs. Things that would hurt BlackSea but not any person. I didn't know they were the ones taking and killing our own."
Agony gripped Kaia's heart. "How did you find out?"
"I never betrayed anyone." He stared desperately at her. "I never gave my contact any coordinates or even spoke to him about specific people in the clan. I just passed on tech data and they put money into a hidden account."
Blood cold, Kaia somehow managed to keep her voice soft, gentle. "Then why do you think your buyers are behind the vanishings?"
"Someone made a mistake." George swallowed hard. "I got paid twenty times what I should've been, and when I queried it because I didn't want to end up hounded for it, my contact slipped up and said my payment had been confused with that of another informant in BlackSea."
Hugging the pack, he carried on. "It was two months ago, right after we lost a swimmer in the Arctic. I knew, I knew what it must mean, that one of us was selling out clanmates, but I didn't know how to tell anyone. And I had no details."
Just confirmation of what they'd all begun to suspect. That in itself was enough. It backed their decision to look within, dig out the poison that threatened their family. Kaia was trying to find a way to say that to George without making him feel bad about having withheld the information--she knew what it was to be frozen by fear, would never judge him--when Bowen spoke.
"But you don't consider BlackSea clan." His voice was quiet, the question in it devastating.
George's head jerked toward Bo before he returned his frantic gaze to Kaia. "I would never allow anyone's family to be targeted. I would never leave a child without his parents, without safety." His voice sang with anguish. "I just wanted to make BlackSea hurt in other ways. I wanted to destroy the cooperation agreement with the humans and the alliance with the leopards and wolves. Make everyone feel alone and powerless as I felt alone and powerless."
"Who is your contact?" Kaia was having a difficult time keeping her distance. Every part of her strained to go closer and grab hold of George, give him the comfort of clan.
