“Hmm.” Kaia stroked his chest, stopping over his heart.

He waited for her to say something else, but she stayed silent after that lazy sound. Bowen played with her hair, draping the damp strands across his chest. And he thought of what she’d told him about losing both parents as a child.

Then he thought of the ticking clock in his head.

That was when he realized she was feeling the beat of his heart with her palm. Guilt was a metal claw around that mechanical organ, twisting and tearing.

Lifting his hand, he closed it gently over her wrist. “I’m sorry.”

She snapped up her head, shoving her hair back from her face. “This wasn’t your decision.” Furious eyes. “It was mine.”

God, she was magnificent. “Ours,” he said. “It was ours.”

A taut pause before she inclined her head and came back down against him.

He felt whole again. His body warm. Kaia’s skin under his touch.

Sleep came softly, a warm, lazy wind.

* * *

• • •

HAVING woken in Kaia’s bed after an hour when Dr. Kahananui tagged him to come in for another test, Bowen had forced himself to move—and after the test, he’d eaten dinner with Kaia, then made himself sleep in the clinic bed that monitored all his stats.

The doctor would need those stats prior to his surgery.

He’d slept fourteen hours, waking at ten—but the frustration of losing so much time was balanced out by his increased sense of stamina and strength.

An hour after waking, he took a seat in a surgical chair and permitted George to put his head in a vise. It was to stop him from moving it—even a fractional shift could cause catastrophic problems.

Minutes after that, Dr. Kahananui said, “This shouldn’t hurt. Alert me by raising your hand at the first indication of trouble. Pain means something is wrong.”

“Understood.”

The surgical saw was far quieter than the horror show he’d been expecting. As for his hair, it turned out he already had a small—hidden—shaved patch where she’d injected him the first time. It was currently exposed courtesy of the glittery yellow and pink bobby pins that held the rest of his hair out of the way.

Cassius would bust a gut laughing at the idea of it; Bowen would have to share the details with his friend after he came through this. Because he would fucking come through this.

Belief can move mountains.

Words written by Adrian Kenner, a man who had turned the impossible into reality. Bowen had found a copy of his famous ancestor’s diaries in the family archives when he was fifteen; he’d ended up reading every single page. Adrian Kenner had been a man of peace while Bowen was fighting for the survival of the human race, but in many ways, they were the same—each determined to forge a path through infinite darkness.

“George, the injector I prepared.” Dr. Kahananui’s cool voice.

Her assistant passed over the instrument.

Bo braced himself for it . . . but he felt nothing, exactly as the doctor had promised. Far quicker than he’d expected, she was sealing the bone back up using a small device she’d told him effectively “blended” the cut part of his skull with the rest.

He felt fine when released from the vise, but the doctor insisted he go to his room and lie down. “I need the readings,” she said, “and this’ll knock you out soon. Trust me.” She glanced at George. “Can I leave you to tidy up? I’m going to escort Bowen to his room.”

“Of course, Doctor.”

“I’m not going to faint walking a few feet,” Bo said after they’d exited the lab; he hadn’t wanted to criticize the doctor’s choice in front of her assistant.

Dr. Kahananui didn’t say anything until they’d reached his room and he’d changed into a pair of sweatpants. “Lie down.”

Having begun to feel a pounding at the back of his head, Bo did as directed. Dr. Kahananui worked at the data panel before looking up, and her dark brown eyes saw far too much. “She is loved.” Quiet words that hit like a punch. “Deeply and by so many.”

“You don’t need to tell me that.” He’d sensed it in the air around Kaia, seen the way her clanmates’ faces lit up when she neared.

“But,” Dr. Kahananui continued, “though she gives her love and affection freely, none of us have ever been able to reach the part of her she locked away as a child.” The doctor began to move to the door. “If she honors you with that secret piece of herself, protect it like the treasure that it is.”

“Why aren’t you warning me off?” Bowen asked roughly.

“Kaia is like a sea storm. She’ll pick her own path.”

“Wait,” he said as the doctor reached the door, but the word slurred and then there was only sweet nothingness colored by the rich aroma of coconut oil and the fleeting scent of a creamy tropical flower.

* * *

• • •

KAIA undid her apron. She was the last one in the kitchen, as she always liked to be; there was peace in having ten minutes to herself in her domain after the chaos of the dinner rush. That dinner was long over, her crew had put the leftovers in the cooler where night owls could access them, taken care of the dishes, and wiped down all the counters.

As was her tradition, Kaia had made a special dessert for this rotation of kitchen hands—a yogurt passion fruit cake, by their choice. They’d be rotating out of kitchen duty in another three days. After eating the cake down to the crumbs, they’d begged her to put in a good word with Seraphina to get them back on the kitchen roster as fast as possible.

“Someone has to scrub the toilets,” she’d said, and received a round of groans.

“You don’t,” Scott, smart and patient and a sweet troublemaker, had pointed out. “How come?”

“Because I did my time with the toilet scrubber and in the laundry and with the window washing crew when I was your age.” It was a rite of passage in the clan: to pull your own weight and at the same time, be shown that even the smallest of them had value. The clan’s minnows could often be seen industriously “helping” at various tasks, mostly with toy tools created for just that purpose.

Now the children had all gone and she was alone except for Hex—who slept curled up in a pocket she’d sewn into this dress for him—but for the first time, she found no peace in lingering here. She’d blocked out what was happening in the lab while it was occurring, but Attie knew her well enough to have sent her a message when it was over: Successful, no complications. He’s asleep, will probably stay that way into tomorrow.

Kaia had been able to breathe after that, had been able to pretend to be her normal self, but she wasn’t and would never be again. “Just go,” she said to herself, the whisper harsh.

Leaving the kitchen, she skirted the muted lighting of the atrium to make her way toward Atalina’s lab and Bowen’s room. The door to the lab was open, and when she peeked in, she saw George working at the computer as he so often did till late into the night hours.

Not interrupting, she padded her way to Bowen’s room. Her breath came in shallow pants, her heart thundering. But she put her hand on the scanpad and the door whooshed open. And though Kaia hated hospitals, hated the machines and the sounds and the antiseptic cold of knowing life hung in the balance, she walked inside.

Chapter 31

Papa! Look! Lion! Grr, lion, grr!

—Kaia Luna (3) to her petrified father, Iosef

BOWEN WOKE TO a sense of warmth and softness all along one side of his body. He was groggy with the vestiges of a heavy sleep, but he knew Kaia’s touch, her scent. Snuggling her closer with the arm he must’ve put around her in sleep, he felt her go suddenly motionless . . . and he realized the wet on his chest was from her tears.

About to turn to face her, he became aware of a far smaller source of warmth curled up on his breastbone. Cracking open his eyes, he saw Hex’s peacefully sleeping form. So he turned his head instead, to look down at where Kaia lay with her head on his chest, her hair a dark waterfall over him.

His body told him he’d been asleep for hours, and when he glanced at one of the slumbering machines, he glimpsed the timecode: 5:57. He’d lost all of yesterday after the operation. More importantly, he’d lost time with Kaia.

“Tesoro mio,” he said, the endearment falling off his tongue as if he’d been waiting a lifetime to say it to her. “Why are you crying?”

Fingers flexing on his chest, a shaky exhale, but she didn’t speak. He stroked her hair, trying to think of what would drive his strong and fierce Kaia to tears.

“I hate hospitals,” she said at last, the words a rasp.

Bowen pressed a kiss to the top of her hair, the strands luxuriantly soft under his lips. “Were you in one as a child?” Cassius had a hatred for hospitals, too, and the roots of his hate lay in the same incident that had ended with a dead telepath and a blood-soaked thirteen-year-old boy.

“Not as a patient.” She took a deep breath, her fingers rising to gently stroke Hex’s sleeping body. “My mother was a doctor who worked in struggling clinics all over the world, places that couldn’t really pay and were often funded by charities.”

He heard no fear or hate in those words, only a soul-deep sadness. “Did you ever go with her?”

“Our whole family traveled as a group.” She placed her hand flat over his heart again. “The three Lunatics. From Africa to the Pacific to the Americas to the heart of Asia.” Her lips curving against him. “When I was an infant, then a toddler, my father would keep me with him through the day and—after I outgrew the crib—I’d spend it splattering paint on canvases while he wrote lyrics or painted.”

He could see her now, a bright-eyed child gleefully splashing in paint as the world changed around her. “Palm trees one day, giraffes the next?”

She laughed. “I met a lion once. He prowled out of the forest while I was toddling about outside after climbing out of the playpen when my poor father left me alone for one minute to use the outdoor toilet—from that point on, he started putting a leash on me and hooking the leash to something immovable if he had to step out to use the facilities.”