Bowen wanted to purr like a damn cat.

“What’s this tattoo?” she asked as she worked.

“Which one?”

“This.” She touched the design just below his left shoulder. “No, wait. I’ve seen this before . . .”

Wondering if she’d recognize it, Bo closed his eyes and surrendered to the bone-deep pleasure of her hands on his flesh, strong and competent, with the odd patch of roughness from her work in the kitchen.

“It’s the emblem of the Peace Accord.” She traced the lines with a fingertip.

Fighting back a shiver, he said, “My first tattoo—got it when I was fifteen.” After reading all of Adrian Kenner’s journals and earning enough money to pay for the tat himself; he’d known his parents wouldn’t give him permission, but Cassius was friends with a guy who knew an artist who didn’t ask for ID.

It had been stupid teenage luck for Bo that the artist was excellent at what he did.

“Why do you have it?” A wild curiosity in the question that told him he wasn’t only talking to her human side, her body close enough that he could feel the lush warmth of her against him. “Humans don’t often care about the Peace Accord.”

Bowen knew it was mostly changeling blood that had drenched the land in red, changelings who’d fought so brutally that they’d ended clans and devastated packs. The Peace Accord had forever altered their history. “Do you remember the name of the peace negotiator?”

“Of course. Adrian Kenner is one of the most respected men in our history.”

“He had a middle name.”

“Adrian B. Kenner, yes.” Her hand paused on his back. “Bowen? You were named after him?”

He nodded. “My full name is Bowen Adrian Knight.” It was a heritage he wore with pride. “A lot of humans respect him as deeply as changelings do.” Kenner had stopped a war that had caught nonpack humans and Psy in the crossfire, turned rivers red with blood; he’d left a legacy of peace that stood to this day. “He was my great-great-many-times-over grandfather.”

“You have a proud history.” Kaia began to smooth the gel into his skin once more. Bowen closed his eyes again, his focus on her touch alone. Only when he heard her screwing on the lid of the jar did he turn.

She stood her ground, though he was far too close, her breasts a bare inch from brushing his chest. Shoving the jar against his breastbone, she said, “I have to get back to the kitchen.”

“A couple of your clanmates cornered me earlier.” Bowen had listened politely to the older women while his muscles bunched one by one. “Said it was a disgrace I was taking advantage of you when your future mate wasn’t here to protect you.”

“I don’t need protecting.” Kaia scowled.

“Is he? Your mate?” Bowen had shrugged off Alden’s comments and reasoned his way out of Carlotta’s earlier ones, but the words had built silently inside him until he needed Kaia to tell him her heart didn’t belong to another man. “Is that why you’re pulling away?”

“If I had a mate,” she gritted out, “if I felt that way about a man, I sure as hell wouldn’t have shared intimate skin privileges with you!”

He’d insulted her honor, he realized too late. “Jesus, I’m a fool.” Knowing he was playing with his life, he kissed his enraged siren and she went straight to his head.

Chapter 34

Lover.

Friend.

Laughter.

Mate.

—Unknown poet (circa 1763)

KAIA FELT THE punch of Bowen’s kiss right down to the bone. She’d been tempted to lie about Hugo—she could fight her compulsion to go to Bowen if he was keeping a cold distance from her. It wasn’t as if her clanmates wouldn’t support her; half the station and the city thought she and Hugo were a meant-to-be pair.

But Kaia wasn’t a liar.

And Hugo would only ever be a friend she thought of in the same breath as Mal and Edison and Armand and the others. A brother, even if they were unrelated by blood. He’d never terrified her as Bowen terrified her, never come close to smashing through the defenses she’d erected desperately as a young girl who’d watched her parents’ chests rise and fall accompanied by the hush, hush of the machines.

It was as if Bowen had a key to her psyche he could use at will.

He had the key to her body, too. It had gone tight and hot the instant she walked into the room, and then she’d touched him, indulged herself in the living steel of him. Her breasts ached, threatening to overflow the confines of her peach lace bra, hunger a dark, glowing heat in the pit of her stomach.

Still furious with him, she bit down hard on his lower lip. He hissed out a breath but didn’t pull away, giving her the pound of flesh she damn well deserved. Kaia dug her nails into his chest even as she laved her tongue over the hurt she’d caused.

With him, she had no reason, no logic, no walls.

When he grabbed the plas jar she held between them and threw it on the bed, she didn’t resist. She swiveled with him when he backed her into the wall and sank his body against her own. Moving her hands up his chest, she luxuriated in his lean strength, her heart thumping in time with his.

Except . . . his heart wasn’t like her own. It was mechanical. And it was inside him because he’d been shot. But that didn’t matter, wasn’t important. His heart would outlast hers. His brain, however, hung on a knife edge.

The being inside her cried in remembered sorrow.

Ripping away her lips, she deliberately didn’t look at Bowen. He saw too deep, caught too much of her with those penetrating eyes. “Off.” She pushed hard at his chest. “I don’t have time to play tongue hockey with you.”

“How about no tongue and all naked?” Bowen’s voice was rough, his body a wall of luscious heat.

Kaia’s toes curled. The other part of her, sad but as compelled by him as the human side of her, nudged at the inside of her skin, wanting to swim with this strong, intriguing man in deep water. It liked him. But it was hurt, too, so when Kaia pushed again then slid away from Bowen, she didn’t have to fight it for control.

“Kaia.”

She paused at the door, glanced back. A red flush kissed his cheekbones, his eyes glittering. “I’m supposed to put the gel on again tonight,” he said with a slow smile that hit her right in the crazy “bad boy” gene.

The other side of her being laughed, delighted with him.

“The shower brush should be in the bathroom,” she said, the fight for control very much real now. “Or you can use the toilet brush.”

Deep and warm, his laughter followed her out the door.

Kaia braced herself with one hand against the corridor wall a second after the door closed; she hadn’t been prepared for Atalina to step out of her lab and catch her. Nudging her head, the white-streaked black of her hair gleaming in the simulated sunlight, Attie stepped back inside the lab.

Kaia followed, shutting the door behind herself. “Don’t ask.”

Of course, the cousin who was a big sister to her didn’t bother to listen. “You appear thoroughly kissed.” A pointed look. “In fact, I’ve never seen you so mussed.”

Kaia had never felt so mussed. Or so deeply scared. “Why do you look happy about that?” she asked, her heart yet racing and her palms damp.

“Because, Cookie”—Atalina cupped her face with warm and slender hands—“I see that he reaches you where no one else can.”

Kaia’s throat was dry; she couldn’t breathe. “He’ll leave me.” It came out a broken keen.

Immediately cradling her close, Attie rocked her. “I know you’re afraid. But I’m happy you’ve tasted this depth of joy.” A kiss on her temple. “Whatever happens, you know now what awaits on the other side.”

Attie didn’t understand.

She thought this was a passionate love affair, the loss of which would hurt but not permanently damage. But Kaia was feeling things that reached through her human skin to her wild heart. This wasn’t as simple as passion or attraction or even love. It held the whisper of a visceral bond that only came along once in a changeling lifetime.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Kaia locked herself in Attie’s embrace and tried to drown out her own mind, her own heart.

Chapter 35

You are my hunter, Mal. Hunt down the truth. Find out if the humans have been playing us for fools.

—Miane Levèque to Malachai Rhys

BO HAD TO take ten minutes to come down from the high of Kaia’s kiss before he could pull on his shirt and call Lily and Cassius.

What they had to tell him erased any hint of a smile from his face.

“There are irregularities in the Fleet data.” Lily tucked a wing of hair behind her ear, her eyes still smudged with purple bruises. “A few of our ships have strayed into BlackSea territory.”

“One or two and I’d blame it on bad driving”—Cassius, his arms folded across his chest, his biceps bulging—“but it’s more than that and Lily says the data was buried.”

“Someone attempted to overwrite the reports sent in by the ships,” Lily confirmed. “I was able to find the ‘ghost’ images of the originals.”

Bo swore low and hard. “If the captains sent in undoctored reports, they didn’t think they were doing anything wrong.”

“Means they had orders,” Cassius agreed. “This is coming from the top.”

“Heenali?” Bo forced himself to ask.

“We can’t pinpoint anyone yet.” Lily glanced at Cassius, the two having been in the same office when Bowen called. “Cassius is handling the offline investigation.”

“All I have so far is that Heenali and that guy she was dating broke up and she’s in a shitty mood.” His expression was flat, unreadable—the vagaries of the human heart had no claim on Cassius and he didn’t understand how others were so broken by it.

Bowen knew the other man took lovers but his relationships were purely physical. He’d never had a girlfriend, never bonded with any woman past the shallow link forged by physical attraction devoid of liking or intellectual fascination or even just plain old interest.