“You don’t sound particularly concerned about Hugo,” Bowen said just as Kaia began to move again, heading out of the atrium.

Carlotta went eerily immobile. “I mourn for all our lost,” she said in a tone that held the darkness of the ocean.

In the distance, Kaia’s red dress disappeared into a large opening that he guessed led to a connecting bridge to another habitat.

“You got balls, coma-guy.” A dark-skinned man with long dreads punched him lightly on the shoulder as he passed their table. “No one messes with Kaia.”

“I heard she threatened to fillet, then fry the gonads of the last guy who tried to court her!” another voice called out from a table behind Bo.

“Or that might’ve been because you tried to court her with dead clams, you numbnut,” came a third contribution.

“Hey! They could’ve had pearls inside!” the numbnut protested. “It was romantic. I asked Aunt Rita in Wild Woman magazine about courtship. She said be unique but romantic. So I thought, why give jewelry when I could give mysterious clams?”

“And that is why you shall die a single, forty-year-old virgin!”

Laughter rippled through the atrium before people began to disperse. Across from him, Carlotta’s expression grew softer. “It’s good to hear my clan laugh.”

Bo’s own smile faded. “It must be hard to stay positive with the vanishings.”

“Yes, but our children can’t grow up in a people drenched in sorrow. It’d ruin an entire generation.” She put down her fork. “Our First has made it clear we must not permit our anguish to shatter the childhood of our young.”

“I get it.” Bowen caught a glimpse of the mustachioed walrus-seeming man out of the corner of his eye. “Human families still have to raise their children with love and affection and joy despite the shadow of psychic violation.” He’d seen the struggle firsthand on the faces of countless parents—but they kept on trying because their children deserved to know happiness and hope.

Carlotta’s nod was slow. “Yes. We all have battles to fight.” Picking up her fork again, she ate a little more of her meal while Bowen continued to keep an eye on the aggressive blond male Kaia had referred to as Alden.

The big man was staying on the far side of the atrium, but he’d shot at least three simmering glances in Bowen’s direction in the last minute alone.

Picking up her coffee again, Carlotta took a long drink. “As for Hugo and Kaia,” she murmured after placing her cup back on the table, “if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my hundred years on this planet, it’s that plans have a way of being derailed by this thing called life.”

Her words rippled a shiver across Bowen’s skin just as a large whale swept by on the other side of the seaward wall. Face crinkling into a smile, Carlotta waved. “There’s my darling Filipe. He always grumps that he’s spent half his life waiting for me to get myself ready.” A laugh, another wave as the whale swam by again. “I’m coming, dear.”

Bowen’s mouth fell open. “I know I’m not supposed to ask . . .”

Carlotta gave an exasperated shake of her head. “Yes, I am a whale. Satisfied now?”

“No.” Bowen was never going to be satisfied on this point. “Leopards and wolves, I can almost make sense of that matter differential, but how can you possibly have enough mass to become a whale?” He chugged down his coffee, put the mug on the table with exaggerated care. “No. Nope. Never.”

Carlotta laughed and it was big and husky and gorgeous. When she finally stopped laughing and stood, apparently finished with her meal, she leaned down to kiss him on the cheek. “Dear boy, I do think I like you.”

She left the atrium moments later.

That was when the mustachioed possible-walrus rose from his table and charged through the nearly empty atrium toward Bowen.

Well, fuck.

Chapter 24

Always move with purpose.

—Yamato Sensei to Bowen (17)

KAIA BREATHED A silent sigh of relief when she saw Carlotta step onto the bridge to habitat two. She’d been stuck in the spot ever since she left the atrium—courtesy of a clanmate who was one of the sweetest people on Ryūjin, but oh how she could talk. And talk. And talk.

“What an astonishing story,” Kaia interrupted when Lori paused for a breath in between rapid-fire sentences. “But I’ve—”

“Oh, but I haven’t told you the best part!” Lori put her hand on Kaia’s forearm, her bright blue eyes twinkling. “That was when—”

“Kaia?” Carlotta’s stern voice. “What are you still doing here? I had the impression you were off to meet your friends for your weekly lunch.” She frowned at Lori. “And you, Loribeth, aren’t you supposed to be teaching a swarm of young ones?”

Glancing at the large watch face she wore on a chain hanging from her neck, Lori squealed. “Oh, my God!” She began to run down the bridge. “I’ll tell you the rest of the story later!”

“Mahalo, Carlotta.” Kaia’s ears were still ringing with the sound of Loribeth’s squeaky voice. It was cute but extremely difficult to halt.

Shaking her head, the older woman said, “You have to cut her off before she gets going, Kaia. You know how guppies are—budgies of the sea, I call them.”

“I know. But she’s so sweet and—” Kaia froze at a surge of shouts from the direction of the atrium, so loud it threatened to overwhelm her sensitive hearing.

It was difficult to separate out the words until she heard Dex’s voice roar, “Alden!”

Kaia kicked off her slippers and ran, arriving just in time to see the enraged walrus close the final inches to Bowen—who was on his feet. She wasn’t going to get to the two in time and Alden’s arm was rising, his huge hammer of a fist heading straight for Bowen’s face. One blow and he could crumple bone, thrusting shards into Bowen’s brain and ending his life.

Still running, she went to scream at the others to stop him, but Alden had mowed down clanmates like bowling pins. Dex was getting up, his craggy face a creation of harsh lines and solid bone, but he wasn’t going to make it, either. No one was going to make it.

Kaia’s breath rasped painfully in her lungs, her blood a roar in her ears. Then came an almighty crash. Horror shrieked through her system. She’d flinched and closed her eyes instinctively at the moment of impact, but when she flicked them open immediately afterward, she came to a halt, unable to comprehend quite what she was seeing.

Alden was on his back on the floor with an upside-down table flat on his face. Splatters of blackberry filling and coffee and what might’ve been scrambled eggs turned his body into a bad expressionist painting. He was attempting to push the table off, but as he lay there like a stunned beetle, Bowen calmly picked up a chair and slammed it down so the point of one leg came within a hairsbreadth of Alden’s privates.

Alden froze.

Lungs burning, Kaia finally looked at Bowen’s face. “No.” She closed the distance between them in a heartbeat and grabbed his jaw. “He hit you.”

“Just a split lip.” Bowen scowled. “I’m slower than I’m used to being, miscalculated a fraction. He got in a glancing blow.”

Kaia scanned his face, searching for any other signs of injury. But his eyes were clear, his nose unbroken. Scarlet liquid welled in only the soft curve of his lower lip. “I—” she began when Dex reached them. His face was white under the tan of his skin, blood vessels sticking out on his temples.

“Atalina’s on her way to meet me for lunch.” He stomped a foot onto Alden’s chest when the walrus finally succeeded in thrusting off the table. “I swear, Alden, if you so much as fucking twitch, I will tear your stupid fucking head off your stupid fucking body.”

Alden went motionless. Hard-faced and formerly hard-living Dex was the station commander because he remained calm even when the world went to hell—but he was also a great white shark capable of doing exactly what he’d threatened.

Wide and soulfully dark eyes stared at Kaia, Alden pleading for help. But she had exactly zero sympathy for him right now. “How far away is she?”

“She messaged two minutes ago.” Dex looked at the time on his phone screen, a kind of painful desperation to him. “She’ll be here in another two.”

Kaia grabbed Bowen’s hand. “Come on!” Avoiding Alden’s sprawled form, she tugged Bowen out of the mess of fallen furniture that Dex was roaring at nearby clanmates to straighten up now.

Atalina wouldn’t be surprised at the mess, not with Alden around. But Kaia’s cousin couldn’t be permitted to see Bowen’s face. Going as fast as she thought Bowen could handle, she managed to make it to her quarters without running into Attie. She put her hand on the scanpad and pushed Bowen through as the door slid back.

And Atalina appeared around the corner. “Kaia.” A beaming smile. “I thought you were planning to have lunch with Tansy and Seraphina?”

“I forgot something.” She pressed a hand to the rapid tattoo of her heart and hoped Bowen would have the good sense to stay inside. “Just ran back to get it.”

“Did you see Dex in the atrium?”

“He was making people straighten up the furniture.” Kaia rolled her eyes. “Alden.”

“When will that boy-man grow up?” Brow furrowing, Atalina waved good-bye and continued on her way.

* * *

• • •

BO could hear the two women outside the door, but though his lip throbbed, he was far more interested in Kaia’s personal space. The room was open-plan, with the facilities tucked to the back left, a large and comfortable-looking bed in the middle, and a delicate chair set in front of a writing desk against the wall nearest the door.

The back wall was a transparent window into the black.

The bed was bracketed by tall and narrow white shelves that held physical books as well as small treasures. On the right shelf sat a ragged doll wearing a chef’s hat that must’ve come from Kaia’s childhood. Also there was a badly made mug painted with her name, and two computronic frames. One appeared to be glitching, the image on it heavily pixelated and unmoving, but the other displayed photographs of two people: a tall and lanky man with a playfulness in his smile that reminded Bowen of Kaia, and a dark-eyed and dark-haired woman of extraordinary beauty.