The bear inside him was badly wounded. And she was the cause.
"I remember," she said. "Ten dates. That was the promise."
A ring of amber around his irises, his body a muscled wall.
She took a breath and his scent washed over her. Wildness and soap and warmth. So much warmth. Like that which kept her safe in her dreams. "I can't get out of the car if you block my way." He was so close, she could count each individual eyelash. "Why is your bear rising to the surface?"
"It wants to lick you up like honey," he said, his voice a rumble and his attention that of a predator's. "It's missed you."
Silver knew that, despite the memories between them, there was only one answer she could give. "It needs to get over that." Because she wasn't his mate any longer, couldn't ease his hurt.
A smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Come on then, Starlight. Let's go eat waffles."
Starlight.
The address clicked into place inside her. Unable to process the sensation or to explain it, she waited for Valentin to step back. He took his time, until she wanted to lift her hand and shove at his chest. Her palm tingled, remembering all the times she'd done exactly that--not just to Valentin but also to other bears who'd tumbled into her. It hadn't been done in anger. That was simply how bears interacted, tactile and a little rough.
Never too rough with her, however. As they were never too rough with the cubs.
Stepping back at last, Valentin said, "After you."
Silver was expecting Valentin's steadying hand on her waist, knew it was a stabilizing gesture done out of habit. "I can exit on my own."
He severed contact at once. "Whatever you say."
Suspicious of his quick agreement, Silver had her guard up when they entered the waffle restaurant. The maitre d' looked Valentin up and down with a jaundiced eye. "Break it and you pay for it."
Valentin's response was startling. Grinning, he grabbed the stern and well-built brunette up into his arms and off her feet, pressing a kiss to her lush red lips. "Nice to see you, too," he said after setting her down.
Smile wide, she slapped at his chest. "I mean it. I'll send you an invoice if you so much as bend a spoon."
"I only did that once." Valentin released her with that scowling statement. "You got a table for us?"
The brunette tilted her head, the smile she bestowed on Silver blindingly warm. "It's good to finally meet you. I'm Victoria."
"Thank you for fitting us in," Silver said, waiting until she and Valentin were seated and alone to ask her question. "Do you kiss all maitre d's?"
"Sure, why not?" His eyes were bear again, amber and challenging, his voice bad-tempered. "It's not like my mate's kissing me."
Chapter 42
"YOU DON'T HAVE a mate."
"Semantics."
Silver stared pointedly at her organizer. "How long will this take?"
Reaching over, he grabbed her organizer, switched it off. "Confiscated for the duration." He placed it beside his cutlery. "You promised to go on ten dates with me. No fair if you spend it with your nose in your organizer."
Silver knew he was playing a dominance game. And she knew never to let an alpha bear win. "I can have my nose in my telepathic senses. How will you confiscate that?"
He leaned back in his seat, sprawling to take over all available space, his booted feet on either side of her chair. Shoving his hand through the windblown strands of his hair, he said, "Starlichka. You know I'd never take away part of what makes you, you."
"Alpha Nikolaev--"
"Valentin." A firm word. "You know you've been calling me Valentin since the day we met." In his eyes, she saw the more intimate name he didn't say: Valyusha.
"Things have changed."
"My name hasn't." Primal amber eyes held hers.
Silver refused to blink. "You're being difficult."
"That's my other middle name. Valentin Mikhailovich Difficult Nikolaev." Stubborn words, but the hurt he was trying so hard to hide, it remained.
"Valentin then," she said, deciding this small capitulation didn't send the wrong signal when he was wearing his heart on his sleeve. "You must understand that I'm not the Silver you once knew." While she didn't feel emotion, it was important to her that Valentin didn't have his pride crushed.
He was alpha; he needed that pride.
"I know," he said with a slow smile. "You're Silver Mercant point two. Even sleeker and sexier."
"Alpha Nikolaev."
"Valentin," he said in a mock-stern voice accompanied with a wink. "Here are the waffles."
The male server put a large plate in the center of the table. It was piled high with waffles doused in what appeared to be a sweet syrup, as well as sliced strawberries and cream. He then placed a single smaller plate in front of Valentin.
Silver went to state she had no plate and only then realized they'd forgotten to give her cutlery, too. Before she could point that out, however, the server was gone--moving so fast that it had to have been planned. "I thought you brought me here to eat waffles."
Valentin cut off a corner that was relatively clean of syrup and cream. "I did." He held out the piece on his fork. "I know what you can handle. Trust me."
"We're in a public location."
"Changelings know you're my mate--"
"I'm not."
"--and the rest of the world already thinks we're having a hot and heavy affair." His lashes shadowed the amber glow of his gaze. "Run with it, solnyshko moyo. It's good for your image."
That he was right didn't alter the fact he was once again playing dominance games with her. After taking a second to consider the situation, Silver moved without warning to grab the fork right out of his hand. She then fed the piece into her mouth. "Interesting." She no longer had trouble with most foods, a holdover of her experiences in StoneWater.
Valentin held out his hand. "My fork?"
"I think not." Using the edge of the utensil, she cut off a piece that was thick with syrup, before picking it up along with two slices of strawberry. "Here."
Valentin's eyes sparkled. Leaning in, he ate the offering. "Good," he said. "But that was a girly bite. I'm a bear."
Silver thrust the tines into the top waffle and held up the entire thing to him, syrup and strawberry slices dripping off it onto the plate. "Better?"
Throwing back his head, Valentin laughed. And the sound, it filled the air, filled the room, filled her up. Disturbed by the powerful intensity of her reaction, she went to lower her hand, but Valentin moved with that unexpected speed to grab her wrist. Tugging her forward, he took a huge bite out of the waffle she'd speared.
His throat moved as he swallowed. Then he was back to take another bite. And another.
He'd demolished it in under a minute. "That's more like it."
Applause erupted into the air. When Silver glanced around, she saw they were the center of attention. Each and every face wore a smile. As if taking Silver's glance for permission, the red-lipped maitre d' came over. "I have to admit, I wondered how it would work when I heard Valya had mated a Psy, but you can clearly handle a big hardheaded bear."
Silver didn't respond except to incline her head; her and Valentin's relationship--or lack of one--was their business. Waiting until the woman had left, she lifted an eyebrow in a deliberate action. "I think we've eaten enough waffles."
"Hell no. Try this." Picking up a whole strawberry, he held it out.
Silver could have ignored it, but doing so would once again call their relationship into question. She bit into the fruit, allowed the burst of flavor to explode onto her tongue before lowering her voice to a level only he'd pick up. "I'm not her." Not the woman he'd fallen in love with, not the woman he'd mated, not the woman who'd ridden on his bear form through the forest. "I'll never be her again."
Shifting forward, Valentin grazed her cheek with his knuckles. "I know," he said, his voice gritty and that huge heart of his in his eyes. "You're alive, Starlight. Everything else is secondary."
> She felt the truth of that in every syllable; for her life, Valentin Nikolaev would do anything.
"But," he added, "I can't just let go. Give me the nine more dates you promised me. After that, I'll only bother you once in a long while when the urge to see you, scent you, becomes overwhelming." A faint smile, too faint for a man as brash and as wild as Valentin. "You can get security to kick me out."
Silver knew she'd never do that. Not to this man who had given her sanctuary and who'd helped save her life. "You ordered enough waffles for a herd of bears."
Appearing mortally insulted, he picked up the fork she'd dropped onto the plate. "Bears are never in a herd, Starlight," he said censoriously. "That's for the four-legged leaf eaters." He shuddered. "Have another bite."
Silver acquiesced. By the time they left the cafe, she was receiving a steady stream of telepathic alerts on pieces in the human/changeling media about her and Valentin's "adorable breakfast date." The PsyNet Beacon had printed a curter description but had given it more space than she'd expected, especially in light of the news on Bowen Knight.
When she mentioned that to Valentin, he shrugged. "We're the bright, sunny life-interest story to balance out the dark." Amber retreating from his eyes, his next words were harder. "Stasya messaged me while you were in the restroom. It's touch-and-go with Bo."
"That's not good news for world stability." Keeping an eye on the PsyNet for further news on the topic, she said, "How have you explained why I'm no longer living in Denhome?"
Valentin touched his hand to her lower back as she got into his monster of a vehicle. She should've reminded him of her earlier comment, but it seemed a petty response to what she was certain had been an unconscious act on his part. Valentin touched the people he loved; it was part of his nature.
Asking him to stop was like asking a tree to stop giving shade under its branches. Impossible.
"Our clanmates think you're staying in the city because you need to work on a big EmNet project that makes it hard for you to be at Denhome," he said. "They just assumed and I didn't correct them." He closed the door and came around to get into the driver's side. "We'll keep that going for a while, then I guess . . . I'll have to tell everyone we've separated because you're really mad at me."
Silver blinked. Changeling mates didn't separate. "No."
"No?"
"To effectively say you were unable to court your mate back to you, it'll damage your standing in the eyes of not only your clan but other changelings. StoneWater doesn't need that." It was the stability of the region, she told herself, that was driving her decision. "We'll think of something else."
"Silver Fucking Mercant." Valentin began to drive on those admiring words. "I'll leave the solution up to that beautiful brain of yours." Even as Valentin said that, even as he played with her as the puppy inside him wanted to do, he was scared.
It wasn't an emotion with which he was familiar. He was an alpha bear, had been born that way, confidence flowing through his veins. Even when Silver had been in the operating theatre, he'd been grimly hopeful, not afraid. He'd flat-out refused to feel fear.
But this Silver, she was different in ways he'd never expected. She blazed as bright, her intelligence cutting, but she wasn't the woman who'd kissed him, who'd been so patient with Dima's tendency to cling to her, who'd admitted she loved her brother and that she'd lay down her life for her grandmother.
Neither was she the woman he'd courted and teased at the start. That woman had been ice, but he'd felt the warmth of the fire beneath, his bear drawn to the heat. This Silver was endless ice, no hint of the fire. Even when she'd reacted to his challenge with the waffles, he hadn't been able to feel her.
It was a staggering blow.
Part of him--a huge part of him--had been convinced the strange dormant mating bond between them would speak through the massive changes in her brain. Not once had he allowed himself to so much as consider that he'd have to let her go after their ten promised dates.
He swallowed the tearing hurt that wanted to grab him by the throat, permitting himself to feel only a fierce pride and relief. Everything he'd said to her was true: for her life, he'd accept any pain. In the years and decades to come, she would change the world, and she'd do it without being crippled by an unwanted ability that had caused her so much pain it had driven his tough Starlight to cry.
For that outcome, man and bear both would accept a lifetime of the most intense loneliness if that was what awaited at the end of this road.
"Am I allowed to suggest one of the nine remaining dates?"
"As long as it's not staring at matching organizers while drinking tasteless concoctions." In truth, he'd do exactly that if she asked; both parts of him just wanted to be close to her. Some of the dates he planned would be for the bear, so it could sit next to her, drink her in. Later. Not yet. The bear was still too hurt to act rationally in her presence.
Silver didn't reply for two long minutes. "My apologies," she said afterward.
"Telepathic call?"
"A developing situation in Bahrain. A landslide that may have done major damage." She checked something on her organizer. "Ripples are also beginning to develop from the attack on Bowen Knight."
Anger boiled in his blood once again at the fact a good man had been taken down by a mudak who couldn't even look him in the eye. Bears did not have any time for those who murdered from a distance. "I'll get you to your office." Moscow traffic wasn't bad, with the majority of commuters choosing to use the sleek skytrains that crisscrossed the air high above the streets--it was the drivers who were insane.
Like the man who'd just stopped his vehicle in the middle of the street to exchange insults with a pedestrian. Creative insults, too. Someone's mother was apparently a goat. No, a goat who ate shit.
Normally, Valentin would've found it funny. Not today.
Getting out of his vehicle, he went to lean one arm on the roof of the insult-spewing driver's car. "My mate needs to get to work, and you're in the way," he said in a very reasonable tone of voice.
The bearded driver gulped. "Alpha Nikolaev." It came out a squeak. "I'll move."
"Spasibo."
Silver shot him a thankful glance once he got back in the vehicle and they continued on their way. "I'll be liaising with my team about the situation in Bahrain for most of the journey."
Saving hundreds, possibly thousands of lives in the process. Being Silver Fucking Mercant. His mate, and the most incredible woman he'd ever known.
Bringing the vehicle to a stop by her office, the area in front a strip of green planted with evergreens that spoke of the city's changeling influence, he went to open her door. She swiveled around and stepped out. "Spasibo." A pause. "The date I intended to suggest? It was to go out for ice cream." Eyes of clear silver held his. "It seems only right."
His bear rubbed against his skin, wanting out, wanting to wrap itself around her. "We'll save that for last."
Silver nodded. "I have to go--it looks like there's been a second slip in a more remote region." With that, she was striding into her office in those ridiculous heels she wore as if they were boots--so stable on them that he wanted to pounce on her just to see if she'd wobble.
He didn't think she would, not his mate.
The Unknown Architect
THE ARCHITECT OF the Consortium looked at the reports feeding out through the media. Bowen Knight had been shot. Some of the articles said he'd died at the scene. Others, that he was critically wounded. No official confirmation either way from the Human Alliance. A grainy video taken by a tourist was the only available visual.
It showed a knot of people around what must be Knight's body. His sister, Lily, was the most recognizable, her hands on her brother's chest and her wet hair hanging around her face as she either did CPR or tried to stem bleeding. Reports said Knight had been shot in the back, however, so that'd be the exit wound. Unless, of course, the latest report out of Venice was true and the bullet had been designed to fragment inside h
im, causing catastrophic damage.
Chances of survival in the latter scenario: close to zero.
Knight's violent death hadn't been in the Architect's plans. Yes, Knight had to die, but it was meant to be a stealthy elimination that could be put down to an accident or natural causes. The Consortium wasn't a radical organization out for notoriety. It was a shadow organization designed to secure maximum gains for those in the group. Had the Architect's plans gone as intended, no one would even be aware of their existence.
However, that was done. What was important now was keeping as low a profile as possible while they brought the rest of their plans to fruition.
Did one of us order the recent high-profile hit?
The Architect sent out the message via the anonymized chat room they currently used to communicate. It was clunky and old-fashioned, but it was also close to impossible to hack.
Each of the members would've received a phone alert of the Architect's posting.
No confirmations.
That didn't mean it hadn't been masterminded by one of the group. The Architect had made an excellent decision in bringing together the world's most ruthless and power-hungry people, people who cared nothing for morality or peace when those things didn't serve their bottom line, but there was an inherent weakness in any such group: these individuals could not be trusted. They were also fully capable of taking an action that went against the better interests of the group if such an action would help them on a personal level.
The Architect was particularly interested in the possible motives of one member of the Consortium. He'd been approached to join the group not simply because of his position of power, but also because of his vocal dislike of racial integration on any level. He wanted Psy, humans, and changelings in their separate worlds.
It was only during Silence, he'd said, that humans had come to any kind of power.
However, the outspoken male was by no means the only possible suspect. Others believed Bowen Knight was dangerous and should be removed from the playing board. He'd proven too effective at uniting the human race into an ever-bigger financial juggernaut.
More and more family groups and businesses were adding the Human Alliance logo to their own. Bowen Knight had also managed to build strong relationships with a growing number of powerful changeling packs--and, crucially, he'd begun to meet with Psy family groups to see if business cooperation was possible between the two disparate races.