No longer disposable pawns but opponents worthy of respect.

Bo didn’t regret the choice. He’d taken on the task with open eyes and a passionate heart. He would split his veins to keep the Alliance strong. It was as much—more—a part of him as the mechanical heart that beat in his chest.

But every dream, every ambition, had a price. He’d become an adult too early. Had never chased girls or stolen a kiss in the rain or snuck out at night to throw pebbles at a crush’s window. While other boys did exactly that, Bo and Cassius had hounded Bo’s father for information about the Alliance and picked up after-school jobs so they could pay for hand-to-hand combat training. They’d also pitched in with hard physical chores around his parents’ small farm far more than was expected, doing everything in their power to become stronger.

Neither one of them would ever again be an easy target.

But in all that drive, all that coldly burning anger, Bo had buried a part of himself so deep it had taken a siren to awaken it. That part was young and painfully hopeful and scared.

Bo could control many things, but not the chip or the compound.

“Why so quiet, Tall, Dark, and Handsome?” Kaia’s smile was mischievous as they left the habitat, her onyx eyes dancing. “Plotting something nefarious?”

“Always.” Bo rubbed at his jaw like a B-movie villain, felt the scrape of stubble against his skin.

Dropping his fingers from his jaw, he ran the back of his knuckles across Kaia’s cheek and down her throat. “I need to shave,” he murmured. “I’ve marked you.”

A whistle sounded down the connecting bridge to habitat one.

Kaia’s eyes jerked that way, as did Bo’s.

It was Mr. Dead Clams—currently wearing gray coveralls with a station logo on one breast, and carrying what looked like an engineer’s tool kit. “Putting the moves on our favorite chef,” he said when he got closer, good-naturedly enough for someone who’d struck out with Kaia himself.

“Good luck, man.” He slapped Bo on the back of one shoulder as he passed, his midnight skin gleaming blue-black under the simulated moonlight. “I wouldn’t want to be you when Edison and the others find out.” A glance at Kaia. “Did you warn him?”

“About what?” Kaia said with a scowl.

Walking backward down the corridor, Dead Clams called back, “You’re a cruel woman, Kaia Luna, but you make the best pierogi in the universe.” And to Bowen, “Watch your back. They hunt as a pack.”

Bo hadn’t needed the warning; he knew what it was to be a protective older brother—he’d run a background check on every single man Lily had ever dated. He’d also had more than one talk with said men. The last time Lily had found out about the latter—back when she was sixteen—she’d threatened to brain Bo with her softball bat. Not that it had stopped him. He’d just gotten sneakier about checking up on the men who wanted to lay hands on his baby sister.

Kaia had grown up with her cousins; they might as well be her brothers.

She rolled her eyes now. “I don’t know what Junji is going on about. Mal, Eddie, and the others wouldn’t dare interfere in my private life. It’s hardly as if they’re monks.”

Oh, shit. Mal and the others clearly had sneaky down pat.

Junji was right: Bo had better watch his back.

* * *

• • •

DESPITE the warning, Bo was still taken by surprise midmorning on the fifth day following Junji’s caution. He was running on the track in the central habitat when he found himself surrounded by five sleekly muscled men with brown eyes that ran the gamut from a near-hazel to close to black, brown skin both darker and lighter than his, and damp black hair that went from slick straight to thick and curling.

The odd droplet of water gleamed on the skin of more than one. All five wore blue jeans, and T-shirts of various shades that stuck to the dampness of their bodies, their feet bare.

“Kaia’s cousins, I presume.” The family resemblance with Dr. Kahananui was startling despite the range of their looks. “Where’s Mal?”

“Busy,” said the biggest one, his voice quiet. “He gave me his blessing to beat you twice if necessary. Once for me. Once for him.”

“Nothing political, you understand,” said the one in the tight black T-shirt whose hair was actually combed rather than just towel-dried and left at that. “This is about family.”

The five of them began to herd him toward a quiet part of the habitat; the section was drenched in shadow as a result of the trees that shaded it. All five Kahananui males moved with a predatory grace that said they’d had training, but Bo was a security specialist—he could’ve extricated himself ten times over. However, he decided to allow this to run its course. If the roulette wheel in his brain stopped at the thin five percent wedge, then he’d have to deal with Kaia’s cousins the rest of his life.

Might as well start things off on a good footing if he could.

Having been backed into a corner, he leaned up against the transparent wall. “Bowen.” He held out a hand. “And I happen to think your cousin is the most fascinating woman I’ve ever met.”

All he got in return were gimlet stares and folded arms.

Dropping his hand, he attempted another tactic. “I have a sister, too,” he said, in case Malachai hadn’t already shared that information. “I understand the protective instinct, but it’s not necessary here.”

A kind of a rumbling sound from the cousin closest to him, one of two in white T-shirts. “Kaia doesn’t know how to protect herself from men like you.”

“Men like me?”

“A human who sees her as a trophy or a curiosity. A notch on his bedpost to boast about—that time I bedded a mermaid. A fucking human fantasy.”

Bo straightened up from his relaxed position, his shoulders squared. “First of all, Kaia’s too fucking smart to be taken in by the kind of asshole you’re describing. And secondly, speak like that about her again and I’ll rearrange your nose until you forget it was ever straight.”

The cousin in question took a step forward, his feet pressed up against Bowen’s shoes. “Do you really believe you can take me, human?”

Bo slipped past the other man, twisted his arm behind his back, and kicked out his knees to send him slamming into a kneeling position before the dark-haired male knew what was happening. “I could’ve twisted your head back to snap your neck,” he said quietly, “but Kaia likes you.”

He released the man. “You are not getting in the way of my courtship.” The continued hunt for the traitor within the Alliance combined with Dr. Kahananui’s tests and scans and recalibrations sucked up most of his time, but he’d talked Kaia into a dance in the kitchen late last night, after which they’d gone swimming in the otherwise deserted pool.

He’d been her sous chef one day, learned why her cousins called her Cookie.

Another day, he’d joined in while she babysat the “minnows.”

She went swimming in the black while he was in the lab, so they’d have as much time together as possible. But she still mischievously refused to confirm her animal, laughing and telling him he had to figure it out from the clues. “I have faith in you, security chief.”

Her playful words had hurt him—because he couldn’t honor the deeper faith she showed in him, not in the way he wanted to honor it. He couldn’t make any promises until he knew if he’d be whole at the end of the experiment, but he could show Kaia what she meant to him. She’d have that if nothing else. She’d know it hadn’t been a waste or a mistake but a brilliant, blinding moment of joy.

He’d permit no one to obstruct the memories of happiness he wanted for her.

Not even the five men who stared at him with eyes gone obsidian. Inhuman.

The one he’d taken down reached up to massage his abused shoulder, but it was the quiet and watchful one with a scar along his jaw and the pale brownish-hazel eyes who said, “He could look after Kaia.”

Bowen’s blood cooled. “Are you worried about a specific threat? Give me the details.”

Kaia’s cousins grinned.

A second later, he was being hugged, the back of his shoulder slapped—a little too hard by the cousin he’d taken down—and his hand shaken.

“Kaia has a soft heart,” the quiet one said afterward.

“Marshmallow soft,” added the one with the combed hair as straight as Lily’s and the black T-shirt. “Don’t bruise it.”

“Or we’ll beat you dead,” the remaining three said in concert.

Bo knew Kaia was far stronger than her cousins realized. The same no doubt applied to Bowen and Lily. But Bo would be running security checks until he was dead—and Kaia’s cousins would protect her to their last breath. “Did you just swim down?” he asked now that the formalities were over.

One of the younger three thrust his fingers through hair that was straight and thick except for a curl at the edges. “Had to. We got word that you were putting the moves on Kaia.”

“I’m starving,” another added. “Let’s go raid the kitchen.”

Bo finally got their names on the way to the kitchen: Edison, Armand, Teizo, Tevesi, and Taji. Last name Kahananui. Middle name Suzuki. The latter came out when they commented on the genesis of his name and asked about Adrian Kenner—Mal had apparently mentioned that connection at some point.

Because of course the other security chief had ferreted out the information.

“Mal’s not big into signs and omens,” Edison said in a measured way that was already becoming familiar. “But it meant something to him and Miane and the rest of us that you were a direct descendant of Kenner’s.”

Bowen hadn’t known until right then that his ancestry had helped BlackSea decide to trust him. It made the current state of suspicion and dangerous doubt even more troubling. Bowen silently reaffirmed his vow to fix what was fractured, returning the Alliance and BlackSea to the path they’d been following before Hugo’s dossier and Bowen’s chilling realization that Alliance Fleet ships had indeed breached BlackSea’s borders.