That darkness had turned into a malignant rot that caused the "ravening madness" of which her grandmother had spoken. It was the E-Psy, with their ability to handle even the worst emotions, who had created the Honeycomb, a golden shield against the rot. But even the Es couldn't fix everything. Because what wasn't common knowledge was that in constructing a cold world where Psy didn't mate with or love or marry humans, Silver's race had unknowingly removed a vital element from the PsyNet.
The psychic network that was the lifeblood of millions of Psy was in the midst of a slow but catastrophic collapse. Unless Psy could once more win human hearts, bringing their unique energy back into the PsyNet, the destruction of the Psy race was inevitable.
So yes, Silver agreed that the fall of Silence was a good thing.
Still . . . "Bears?" She looked out to where she knew Valentin waited. "There's a distinct chance I will go insane with no help from the PsyNet malignance required."
Her grandmother stood. "You are a Mercant. You can handle a clan of bears."
Of course she could. That wasn't the point. "What did he ask of you in return for safe harbor for me?"
"Nothing but that we will never harm the clan or help anyone else do so. Nor will we ever share anything we learn about StoneWater. I have given my word that the Mercants will honor that request."
Rarely given, Ena's word was as durable as a diamond without flaw. So was Silver's. Mercants might not believe in loyalty to anyone beyond the family unit, but contrary to the popular perception of their family as cold-blooded and mercenary, they also did not betray those who'd assisted them in such ways. Honor still meant something to Silver's blood. "That's all?"
"It appears this particular bear is not cutthroat." Ena paused. "That could be a problem."
Silver knew this was her out; she could convince her grandmother that Valentin was too softhearted to provide any real protection against an external threat--but that would be a lie. Silver did not lie to her grandmother. "StoneWater bears have a reputation for not starting the brawls they're involved in."
The latter was part of why the clubs kept letting them back in. "However, once the fight is on, they will not back down. They're also fiercely territorial and overprotective of those they consider under their care. Should I accept StoneWater's offer of safe harbor, Valentin would tear off the head of anyone who threatened me."
"Excellent." Ena turned toward the door. "Get dressed. You'll be weak--an unfortunate side effect that can't be ameliorated by anything except time--but I want you safe before someone not bound by confidentiality realizes what's happening." A pause. "Trust no one, Silver. Especially not any member of our family."
After her grandmother left the room, having first pulled the privacy curtain around Silver's bed, Silver got up with care. Her muscles felt like jelly, her entire body aching, but she could stand as long as she was careful about it. Upright, she reached for the items folded neatly on the bedside table.
They were the clothes she recalled putting on that morning, all except for her panties. Those were still on her body. But since her bra was missing, she thought the medical staff must've had to cut through it to get to her chest. The bruising around her chest area when she opened the hospital gown seemed to bear that out.
Grandmother, why am I bruised on my upper half? she asked telepathically as she took off the gown.
Your heart didn't stop, but the doctors were afraid it might, so they prepped for resuscitation. They say the bruising appeared fifteen minutes after they pumped your stomach. A side effect of the poison.
Silver didn't know of any poison that would do this, but toxins weren't her field of expertise. I'll need the medical files.
They're already waiting for you in your secure PsyNet vault.
Thank you. Silver finished buttoning up her white shirt, reached for the cloud gray of her skirt. As she pulled it on over her hips, she consciously regulated her breathing to keep herself from passing out.
If half a glass had put her close to cardiac arrest, then a full glass would've ended her life. Had Valentin not interrupted her breakfast, he would've broken down her door to find a dead woman.
She paused.
Why had she immediately thought that he'd break down the door? As if it were a given.
His sense of smell, no doubt, she told herself. He'd have scented the first signs of decomposition. She didn't know if any such scent would be present so soon after death, but why else would she have thought he'd break down her door?
A door that was built to withstand earthquake forces.
Not a determined alpha bear, however.
Silver had a healthy respect for the ursine sense of determination--and also their occasional lack of common sense. Wolves she could negotiate with. Selenka Durev thought like a predator, and so did Silver. They understood each other.
Bears, however . . . Even after all this time, Silver did not understand bears.
At least Kaleb appeared to have the same issue: it had taken him twice as long to come to an understanding with StoneWater as it had with BlackEdge. The bears weren't actually politically aggressive, except in protecting their territory, but neither were they open to sensible negotiations. No, they'd refused to take Kaleb seriously until he'd "have a beer" with them.
Kaleb had instead teleported in with a ten-foot-tall cask of beer and told them he'd be teleporting it into the nearest volcano unless someone sat down and discussed the territorial situation with him. According to her boss, it was only the threat of so much beer going to waste that had caused Zoya Vashchenko, the former alpha of StoneWater, to agree to a meeting.
The negotiations, of course, had taken months.
Because . . . bears.
They might be the most illogical, most wild, and most impossible to understand changelings in the world. And she was about to go live with them. With Valentin. Who called her Starlight and asked her out for ice cream when he wasn't attempting to aggravate her into an emotional reaction.
Grandmother, I think I'd rather start wearing head-to-toe body armor and chemically testing my food.
Think of it as an opportunity, Silver. How many other Psy can say they've lived with bears?
The answer was none. No rebels, no defectors, no one had ever infiltrated a bear den after Silence came into being.
That's because most Psy would come out permanently discombobulated, she pointed out to her grandmother. Did you know the bear idea of courtship is to kidnap their mates off the streets?
Surely not.
Surely yes. If the kidnapped mate happened to be a bear, it wasn't a major issue--bears expected that type of behavior. For all Silver knew, they encouraged it. But the last time it happened in Moscow, the chosen mate had been a human whose parents had called Enforcement and filed kidnapping charges.
Valentin had turned up to personally explain that their daughter was being courted and in no danger whatsoever. He'd confirmed she was free to come home at any time. The parents had thought him mad. Until their daughter returned, glowing and happily mated to a bear who'd dressed up in a suit and tie for the occasion; he'd also permitted his mate to give him a haircut.
Silver didn't think she'd ever seen a bear so neatly pressed and polished.
"I wanted to make a good impression," he'd said with a sheepish smile when interviewed by a local comm station. "I don't want my in-laws to be mad at me for our entire mating."
He'd had no need for concern. The last time the parents spoke to the media--having gained a local profile after the kidnapping--they'd gushed over how much their daughter's mate adored her, and how the bears were "just the loveliest people you could imagine."
The bear ability to be forgiven for their actions appeared to be a mysterious law of nature. One to which Silver had no intention of falling prey.
If it gets to be too much, send an SOS, her grandmother said, her tone solemn. I still trust some people without question. I'll get you out.
Having finished dressing, Silver looked f
or her shoes before realizing she was in no shape to balance on four-inch heels. I can survive bears, Grandmother. I'm a Mercant. Family legend said they had once been the loyal knights of a king. Whether that was true or not, they were a family that had never lost sight of itself, no matter who flexed their muscles in the PsyNet.
A clan of bears wouldn't defeat her.
Neither would their alpha.
Chapter 5
Mate. Family. Clan. That is our heart's heart.
Loyalty. Honor. Courage. StoneWater.
--Words carved into the ceiling of the entrance to Denhome
SILVER WAS A fucking queen, Valentin thought when she opened the door of her hospital room and stepped out. Not a princess, dewy-eyed and soft. A queen, regal, and with a way of looking down her nose at him that said he was a lowly peasant. He felt like one, too, though he wasn't only taller and bigger than her; he was wearing heavy work boots while she was barefoot.
Her feet were narrow and pale, her toenails polished and squared. As polished and precise as she was. A neatly tailored suit jacket lay over the white shirt she'd tucked into her skirt. Notwithstanding the fact she'd almost died mere hours earlier, she now had her hair back in its usual neat coil--and damn but he'd go down on his knees and beg if she'd promise to let it down for him. Then he'd tumble her into his lap and--
Focus, Valentin.
Aside from her bare feet and the paleness of her skin, Silver could've been about to step into a work meeting. Except his Starlight would never go anywhere in clothes that were wrinkled, and these bore inevitable marks from the medics' hasty removal.
"You'll need more clothes," he said, trying to figure out how to get her to agree to his exit strategy. No one else was going to see Silver Mercant with bare feet, that much he knew.
"I'll ask my grandmother to arrange it." She glanced down the hallway, the elegant line of her throat making him want to nuzzle her, draw in the ice and fire of her scent straight from the source. "When did she leave?"
"A couple of minutes ago. Said she had plans to put in motion." Telling his bear to settle down until they had Silver in StoneWater territory, he scratched his jaw, only then realizing he'd forgotten to shave. If--when--he courted Silver into a kiss, he'd have to see if his stubble was too rough for her skin. "You have anything but suits in your closet?"
"No, I sleep this way and wake up perfectly pressed."
Grinning at the cool comment that made him want to kiss her until she melted, he put his hands on his hips. "Tell your babushka to pack jeans or other tough pants, T-shirts, sweaters, stuff suitable for a little rough and tumble."
"I don't intend to rough and tumble with anyone." Those extraordinary eyes, so clear and frosty, pinned him to the spot.
A lesser man, or one who had some sense in his head, might've flinched.
Good thing Valentin was big enough to take her, and stupid enough to keep banging his head against a wall of Silver Silence. "No choice in a clan," he said with a shrug. "Bears are handsy." They hugged like it was going out of business and threw each other around for fun. "Adults will respect your personal space, but I can't promise the same for the littlest cubs. Your suits won't survive."
"Noted." Silver tugged her shirt cuffs into perfect alignment. "You need to find me some shoes."
Yes, definitely a queen. "Any particular kind?"
"Low heels that won't clash with this suit."
"I have a better idea." He'd already sweet-talked a wheelchair from a changeling-pony nurse; now he pointed at it. "Sit. We'll hide your legs under the blanket from your bed, and you can wear this hoodie to hide your hair and face."
Picking up the hoodie from the chair where he'd placed it after buying it from the hospital gift shop while Ena was with Silver, he prepared to argue with her over his plan. She never accepted anything at face value. She always had to question it down to the bone.
It was as if she'd been born an obstinate bear and was only faking being Psy.
But today she just said, "A good solution," and sat in the wheelchair.
"We need to get some food into you." He held out a bottle of nutrient drink he'd found in the vending machine at the gift shop; maybe it was the Psy idea of a get-well-soon present.
Not taking it, Silver said, "My stomach and throat are raw."
Valentin didn't give up; he knew how to get under her skin. "Want to be weak instead?"
A dangerously calm look before she held out her hand.
Unscrewing the lid, he gave her the bottle, waited until she was done. After throwing the empty bottle in the nearest recycler, he handed her the hoodie, then ducked inside her room while keeping an eye on her, and tore the blanket off her bed. The sight of her moving slowly as she worked her way into the dark blue of the hoodie, it did all kinds of things to him.
*
IT was odd to wear something Valentin had bought for her. She'd offer to reimburse him, except she knew he'd take that as an insult. As she'd told her grandmother, bears were intensely protective of their people. The more dominant the bear, the more overwhelming the protective urge.
She wasn't one of Valentin's people, of course, but she'd fallen under his protection the instant she accepted the offer to stay with StoneWater. He'd fight to keep her safe, his big body merciless against any enemy who dared come at her. That body had to burn a significant amount of energy. She wondered what he ate to retain his strength.
That last thought had her freezing in the act of pulling on a garment she would never normally wear.
She was reacting to him.
Again.
Silver did not react emotionally to anyone, her Silence pristine in the subtle Mercant way that worked with each individual mind rather than being a blunt hammer. She hadn't reacted to Valentin the first time he'd come to her apartment or even the second or the third. She'd been impressed by him in an intellectual way, had found crossing words with him an interesting exercise.
So yes, perhaps there had been a reaction there--it was unheard of for her to allow anyone to interrupt her, not just at home but also at the office, again and again. But that reaction had been muted, tightly in control. This wasn't. And it hadn't been for at least six and a half months. The math wasn't hard to do: the Honeycomb had come fully into being only weeks before her responses began to change.
That the empathic construct would bleed emotion was no surprise. The once starkly black-and-white landscape of the PsyNet was now overlaid with a fine golden net that was as powerful as it was delicate, and the sparks of color created by the minds of the E-Psy could be found far and wide.
Like all Psy who preferred to stay sane, Silver was linked to the Honeycomb, the connection made via an E-Psy she trusted without reservation. Regardless of that, no empathic sparks should've infiltrated her shields, not when those shields had been modeled on the martial shields of the deadliest men and women in the PsyNet.
And yet, Silver was reacting to Valentin Nikolaev in a way that defied Silence.
*
WALKING out of the recovery room just as Silver had gotten herself into the hoodie, Valentin waited for her to get into the wheelchair, then he put the blanket over her legs. While she settled the blanket as she wanted it, he reached over to zip up the hoodie and pull forward the hood to shadow her face.
He pretended not to see the look she shot him, the one that said he was crossing boundaries. Being innocently oblivious to silent reprimands was a skill he'd cultivated as a curious bear cub with three older sisters whose stuff he'd liked to nose about in. Not because he wanted it. Just because it was there. "Suits you."
"It swallows me," was the cool response.
"That, too." Mentally plotting how he could swap out the gift-store hoodie for one of his own once they reached Denhome, he began to push the wheelchair manually rather than using the hover capability. Silver was inches from him, and she was about to enter his lair.
As far as the bear priorities in life went, he was pretty much set.
Of c
ourse, he thought with an inward snarl that was more mangy wolf than extremely civilized bear, the only reason she was coming to Denhome was because someone had tried to poison her.
Grandmother Mercant had been explicit in saying that his job was to protect, hers to unearth the traitor within the family. That was her right as alpha of the Mercants--but he'd make it clear to her that should she need someone to rip off a head or two, Valentin would be delighted to take care of that pesky problem for her.
No one was allowed to hurt one of Valentin's people and get away with it.
"You're rumbling. It sounds like muted thunder."
Valentin's hands tightened on the handles of the wheelchair. "Hazard of being a bear. We aren't good at not showing our mad."
A passing physician gave him a wide berth at that instant. "No one will hurt you again," he told Silver as they exited into the parking lot. "I'll make certain of that." It was an alpha's promise.
Silver's back stiffened. "I'm not yours to protect."
Valentin stopped by the powerful four-wheel-drive vehicle he'd had a clanmate in the city pick up from near Silver's home and drive to the hospital lot. Going around to face Silver, his hands on the arms of the chair, he said, "As long as you're in Denhome, you're one of mine, Starlight."
What he didn't say was that he intended to charm her into making the move permanent. Cats did the suave overconfident thing. Bears knew taking a woman for granted just led to a fall right on your smug face. In this, he'd take the bear approach. Charm first, be smug later.
First, however, he scooped her up and put her in the passenger seat before she could even think about stepping onto the asphalt in her bare feet.
The Human Alpha
BOWEN KNIGHT, SECURITY chief of the Human Alliance and its effective leader, looked at the latest update on his screen with grim focus. Alliance medical investigators and Ashaya Aleine, Psy rebel and brilliant scientist, continued to agree: the chip in his brain, the one that blocked Psy from violating his thoughts, was continuing to degrade.