Purest quiet reigned for thirty seconds, the two sharing data.
"My twin is correct," Amara said afterward in the same flat tone.
And so it went.
All the while, she felt Valentin inside her, a huge presence full of an intrinsic wildness wrapped around her like a living shield.
*
HAVING received a message from Silver that she was on her way home after "having her brain mapped to the last neuron," Valentin had intended to wait for her at the border to StoneWater lands. He'd planned to see if he could pull off a modified tiny-gangster trick just to make her laugh.
All his plans changed when he felt a painful yank inside him just as night began to fall. That sensation was of a healer reaching out desperately for their alpha's strength. Not Nova. A younger healer who was nonetheless bonded to his alpha.
Valentin didn't delay even long enough to send his Starlight a message. He headed straight for the healer in distress. Silver would understand. She was an alpha, too.
"Sergey," he said, stepping out of the trees in front of the cave system that held those of his clan who'd left him. "Who's hurt?"
The tall man of his father's generation, a man who had been first second to Mikhail, folded his arms. "You have no right to be here." White lines bracketing his mouth, he stood his ground, though he was having difficulty meeting Valentin's gaze.
While Sergey's human half had rejected Valentin, the animal knew he was alpha, knew that Sergey shouldn't be trying to oppose him. But Valentin wasn't here to win by force. If it had been about that, he could've subjugated this group eight months ago, when he'd taken over from Zoya and they'd broken away.
"I don't have time for a pissing contest." Valentin was too angry to watch his words--if what he suspected was true, Sergey had let down not just a clanmate but a healer at that. "Someone is badly wounded, and you have only a trainee healer." That trainee, Artem, had come with the splinter group because Sergey was his father--and because a healer needed to come with them. "Why haven't you called Nova?"
"Artem is helping him," Sergey insisted. "There's no need to further stretch Nova. She's already been to see us twice in the past week."
That statement might've softened Valentin if not for one thing. "Your son is killing himself for you." Claws shoved at his fingertips, his bear enraged. "Nova warned me that Artem is already worn down to the bone. I knew you were a stubborn durak but I didn't think you'd be stubborn enough to put your own child's life at risk. Now, who the fuck is hurt?"
Sergey went white under the roaring force of Valentin's dominance. "It's Jovan." His shoulders slumped. "He got into a fight with Laine and they both shifted. It went to hell in a heartbeat. Laine is scratched up but otherwise fine--he got Jovan in the gut with his claws."
Valentin saw the pain on the other man's face, saw the stress. But he also saw the guilt: the teens were becoming aggressive in the absence of an alpha to calm their bears, and Sergey knew it. They would discuss that later. Right now, Valentin had other priorities. "Take me to them."
Sergey didn't argue again, just turned and led Valentin into the cave system. Pinched faces and stark eyes met his when he walked in. A few jerked toward him, held themselves back at the last minute.
Valentin's bear raged, wounded and angry, but Valentin couldn't force this. These clanmates had to come to him, had to choose to trust him. He made eye contact with every bear he passed, and he smiled at the cubs--who did run to him, crying "Mishka! Mishka!"
Easily lifting two children into his arms as he went down on one knee so the others could gather around, he kissed them all on the cheek, squeezed them hard one by one, murmured reassurance that they were still clan, still his. He could only stay a minute or two, but that time was necessary.
These cubs were also becoming stressed in a way that made him beyond furious.
Leaving them chattering happily, he stepped into the small cave that was acting as this group's infirmary. He saw Artem at once; the young male was on his knees beside a comfortable mattress on which an unconscious Jovan had been laid. There was a bed in the room, but the injured boy had been placed on the mattress--which lay directly on the floor--because Sergey and the others obviously knew Artem was too weak to stand for long.
Tamping down his fury with conscious effort of will, Valentin strode to the trainee. "I'm here now, Tyoma." He put one hand on Artem's shoulder as he spoke the affectionate nickname, the other on Jovan's uninjured shoulder. "Take what you need."
A sob from Artem, tears rolling down his bloodless face. But he was a healer to the bone, swallowed his pain to work on the wounded boy. The primal energy of the clan ran from Valentin to Artem and from Artem to Jovan, changed by healer alchemy to be what the body needed to mend itself. Valentin barely felt the draw, the entire strength of the clan behind him . . . even that of the broken shards.
Because he hadn't lied to the cubs who played down the corridor: These bears were still his even if they didn't want to be, their animals reaching out to be part of StoneWater. If there had been a total break, he wouldn't be able to do this, wouldn't be able to help Artem heal his clanmate.
His phone vibrated in his pocket about ten minutes later. Ignoring it, he continued to hold contact with both Jovan and Artem. The healer finally stopped working on Jovan a half hour after that, his trembling body collapsing into Valentin.
Wrapping the young male in his arms, Valentin pressed his lips to the boy's hair.
Over the worn-out healer's head, he checked on Jovan. His stomach wounds were closed, and he was breathing far easier. "Rest now." He held Artem against him until the healer's body grew lax, his breathing even.
Scooping up Artem's far-too-light form in his arms once the healer was asleep, he laid his clanmate down on the unused bed. He was aware of Sergey and his mate hovering in the doorway, but neither interrupted as he pulled the blanket over their son and made sure he was comfortable. Returning to Jovan's side, he brushed the hair off the boy's face, spoke to him, because an alpha's voice was especially important when a clanmate was wounded.
Getting to his feet only after he was sure both the wounded boy and healer were in a deep natural sleep, he headed to the doorway. "I need to get back to the clan."
Sergey swallowed at his curt tone, stepped back, his mate Enja doing the same. The space behind them was filled with a large number of the adults who'd left. But it was shy Enja who spoke, her voice tremulous. "Are Jovan and my son . . . ?"
"They'll both be fine," Valentin reassured her.
When he spoke to the man who'd precipitated the breaking of StoneWater, however, it was in a much harsher tone; as of today, the time for private talks was over. "Don't allow Artem to get to that state again." His bear was in his eyes, in the claws that erupted from his skin. "He's your son, but he is also a gift to the clan. Look after him, or I'll send someone here who'll make sure of it."
The older man looked as if he'd been struck.
Valentin didn't take any pleasure from the reaction--but it was one thing to be stupid and angry and full of hate toward Valentin, quite another to let a young trainee healer get to Artem's current state. "I'll be back tomorrow to check on him." Jovan would be fine, but Artem would keep giving and giving until he snapped.
Not trusting himself to speak any further, he began to stride out.
A young woman sobbed and stumbled into his arms. He crushed her to him, ran his hand over her hair. A gentle submissive, she was here out of loyalty to her mate, rather than because she'd wanted to leave. Valentin felt only love for her, well aware the competing needs inside her had to be tearing her apart.
However, when he spoke, it was to all of them. "Small bears, you have ten seconds to leave the area and go to the nursery."
Only after that order had been followed, the little ones out of earshot, did he continue. "Denhome is open to you anytime you decide to come back." Then he made the most painful decision of his life as alpha--because what tonight had shown him was that this situ
ation wasn't just deeply hurtful to him and his clan; it was dangerous.
It was time.
"But," he said, "I can't have you camped here anymore. You need to acknowledge an alpha so your young will thrive rather than turning on one another." Bears were predators, big and powerful.
They could do a hell of a lot of damage to each other.
"You also need an alpha so your healer is safe." Several of the adults dropped their heads in shame. "Most dangerous is that you can't hold this territory, which means I have to assign extra clan resources to secure the border. The instant I withdraw the patrols, the wolves will see it as a weak point to claw more territory for themselves."
Selenka was holding to their negotiated truce, but wolves were predators just like bears. Sooner or later, one of her border sentries would figure out that this wasn't simply a satellite part of the clan, but a broken shard of it. At that point, he'd have to rely on BlackEdge's better nature--and despite what bears liked to mutter, the wolves could be civilized. It would, however, last only so long.
Wolves were wolves as bears were bears, and changelings could only claim what they could hold. That law existed for a reason.
"You have a month to get off this land or to find yourself an alpha who will help you defend it against the wolves and against StoneWater." Because the instant they brought in another alpha, they became an unknown force in his territory.
Total silence around him.
It was an older woman who finally broke the shocked silence. "Valya, you wouldn't . . ."
He knew her. She'd been a friend of his mother's. He'd played in her cave as a child. "I have a clan to protect," he said, still holding the yet-trembling clanmate who'd come to him. "You can choose to be part of that clan, or you can choose to leave. There is no middle ground." He'd given them eight months longer than anyone else would've done. "One month."
Releasing his clanmate, who was now sobbing in huge gulps, Valentin walked out. His heart hurt, but it had to be done. He wouldn't endanger those who chose to be clan for the sake of those who couldn't--wouldn't--forgive the past.
Chapter 36
I will guide this clan. I will cherish my clanmates.
I will dispense justice. I will offer love.
And I will hold StoneWater's secrets as my own.
I take this oath on my honor.
--Part of the oath spoken by Zoya Vashchenko, Interim Alpha of StoneWater
SILVER WAS OVERWHELMED by a sense of peace when she walked into Denhome. It was noisy here, her head full of countless voices, but it was home in a sense her apartment had never been. That had been a place to sleep and to keep her things.
This was a place where the Barnacle barreled straight for her and clamped himself around her leg, a cheeky grin on his face. "Siva!"
She touched her hand to the tight curls of his hair, the texture soft against her palm. "I'm wearing heels, Dima. If I try to take a step with you attached to me, I'll fall flat on my face."
His smile full of mischief, Nova and Chaos's son tightened his embrace for a moment before releasing her and running off to attack another victim. Stepping forward--and only then realizing she'd handled herself on the uneven surface just fine--she found herself accepting more than one teasing congratulations on her mating with Valentin.
After going to her room--their room now--to put away her bag, she returned to the Cavern and to her clanmates. It wasn't difficult to converse with bears; they weren't quick to take offense, and found her direct nature perfectly normal. Possibly because they thought questions such as, Did Valya tie you up to get you to agree to the mating? were also normal.
Valentin's arrival was a brush of fur against her senses, her psychic awareness of him a bone-deep pulse. But despite her need to gorge on him, to store away a thousand memories, she didn't rush toward him. She turned, waited. In seconds, he was swamped by children as he always was when he returned to the den after time away.
His eyes met hers over their heads, their chatter music in the air.
She spoke to him with her own eyes, let him know she was content to wait. He was hers, but he was also StoneWater's, an alpha to the core. "Until I met him," she said to Nova, to whom she'd been speaking, "I didn't know one person could love so many people, truly love them."
Nova slipped her arm through Silver's. "That's what defines a really great alpha--yes, it takes intelligence and skill and strength, but most of all, it takes a heart huge enough to hold an entire clan. Mishka has always had that. From the day he was born, he made our family better."
Silver closed her hand over Nova's where it lay on her forearm, having caught the bleakness in those final words. "No family is perfect."
"He told you?" A pause too short for Silver to speak. "Of course he did. He's your mate."
Nova leaned her head against Silver's arm. "Our father was a wonderful papa until he began to change. Mishka had it the worst in many ways--he got that wonderful father for the shortest time, and he felt the loss most keenly. He and Papa used to stick together, two men outnumbered by four women." Memories in her voice of a time of innocent happiness. "Mishka was our father's shadow and our pet. Now he's bigger than all of us, with far too much weight on his shoulders."
"He would choose nothing else," Silver said, certain of that beyond any doubt. "He was born with those big shoulders and big feet for a reason."
Nova gave an open-throated laugh. "I like you more each time we meet, Seelichka. And I already liked you a whole lot."
Silver felt the weight of the future smash onto her like a boulder designed to crush. How could she tell Nova and the rest of her friends in the clan that she might soon be incapable of reciprocating their friendship? That, or she'd be dead.
Valentin's heart would break in either case.
"It looks like I'd better grab my son and make sure he eats his dinner rather than his friend's arm as he's threatening to do."
"Shouldn't they be asleep by now?"
"Bears, Seelichka. Small bears, but bears." With that very descriptive answer, Nova went off to grab not only Dima but also his two friends. She held one wriggling body under her arm, gripped another child firmly by the hand, and made the third child hold that one's hand.
The third child looked to be considering escape but one stern look from Nova and he fell in line.
"She's good at cub corralling." Valentin's arms wrapped around her from behind, unrepentantly possessive.
It felt like coming home all over again. Emotion threatened to overwhelm her, a pain in her chest that spread to every corner of her being.
"Solnyshko moyo." A nuzzle against her temple. "Don't be sad."
The simple, rough request threatened to shatter her. "Our bond," she whispered to him, "it's like earth and green and starlight entwined."
She'd never know what Valentin would've said in reply, because loud sobbing interrupted the ordinary conversation in the Cavern. Valentin was moving to intercept the woman who'd run out of one of the many passageways that honeycombed Denhome before Silver realized he'd taken a step.
Slamming against Valentin's massive chest, the woman wailed, "Why didn't you bring her home?" It was a scream. "I want my baby home! How could you tell her to go? She called me! She said you told them to go!"
Valentin's voice was quiet, but Silver heard it with crystal clarity, her audio shields having lost further cohesion during the day. "She's an adult." He held the sobbing woman in a gentle embrace. "She made the choice."
"No!" The distraught female pounded at Valentin's chest with fisted hands. "You're alpha! You make her come back!"
Wrapping her totally in his arms, Valentin murmured to her--and again, Silver heard every word. "She'd only leave again." His voice was ragged, his huge heart wounded but still beating because it needed to beat for his clan. "I can't permit her choice or those of the others with her to jeopardize the clan."
The woman screamed again.
Silver's head pulsed.
She slammed up her mo
st powerful shields, the ones she didn't usually use because those shields muffled her senses in a thick fog.
The stab of pain faded at once--but so did her crystalline awareness of her surroundings. She could see and hear everything around her at a normal level, but she felt disconnected from it all. As if she'd cut off part of herself.
Lowering the shield, she braced herself for the pain, but it was more manageable after the short respite . . . and because the mating bond was taking some of the impact. Valentin's big heart was taking some of the impact. Silver tried to stop it--her mate didn't need any more pain--but found it impossible.
The mating bond was as stubborn as the bear to whom it connected her.
In front of her, the woman Valentin had been holding was now sobbing in the arms of a white-haired man with lines carved into his face that spoke of deepest anguish. Valentin looked little better.
It was instinct to go to him, slip her hand into his.
Around them, the Cavern walls dripped with sorrow.
Thankfully, the cubs had all been moved swiftly away the instant the woman ran in.
"The decision has been made," Valentin said, his voice carrying to every corner of the huge space. "It's the only choice that could be made." His words were final.
His eyes locked with hers for an instant, a question in them. Silver answered through their bond--Yes, she'd stay. She was his mate, was clan, would stand with him no matter what.
When clanmates came to her, she opened her arms and held them close.
*
LATE that night, seated on the edge of the bed with Valentin beside her, she fought the infamous Mercant temper as he told her about the ugliness of the day he'd become alpha. What should've been a day of celebration had been marred by a jagged break in the heart of the clan.
"Sergey said I was a good man, a man he respected, but that I came from bad blood," Valentin said, a grittiness to his voice. "Blood that couldn't be trusted. Sergey was my father's best friend and his first second--he became Zoya's first second when she took over."
Silver asked a question so he could pause, his anguish such a huge thing, she worried it would crush him. All the time, her own fury bubbled inside her, a creation of cutting ice. "I don't understand how StoneWater had an alpha available, especially someone of Zoya's age."