“Who is your contact?” Kaia was having a difficult time keeping her distance. Every part of her strained to go closer and grab hold of George, give him the comfort of clan.

“All the information is in a file on the organizer inside here.” He tapped his pack. “I thought I was dealing with a conglomerate tied to a pharmaceuticals company, people who wanted to co-opt our research.” Fingers trembling, he moved his hands from the pack. “I didn’t know it was the Consortium.”

Kaia’s breath caught, her body bunching almost before her brain processed the meaning of his actions, but George was already turning toward the rocky danger of the ravine—even a small jump would send him crashing onto the lethal edges and sharp corners of those rocks, his body gaining momentum as it careened down.

He’d be dead long before he hit the bottom.

“I’m sorry, Kaia. I never intended for anyone to die.”

Even as Kaia screamed and attempted to move fast enough to grab him, George jumped—or he tried to. Because, at the end, he’d forgotten about Bowen and that Bowen Knight wasn’t a scientist or a cook. He was the security chief of the Human Alliance and it turned out he could move a lot faster than a cerebral sea creature stranded on land.

He wrenched George from the edge, dragging the crying, screaming man back until there was no chance George could escape and make another suicide attempt. Ignoring the pack that held the data and the precious compound, Kaia all but jumped on top of her clanmate at the first glimmer of a shift. “How dare you try to end your life?” she yelled, successfully startling him into staying human. “You’re part of my family, George! You don’t get to just give up!”

George’s sobs turned even harsher and he tried to curl into himself, but Kaia was having none of that. Dragging him to her, she let him bury his face against her neck, his arms locked tight around her, and then she rocked him as he cried, a broken child in a man’s body.

Her own tears fell above his head as she watched Bowen walk to the edge of the drop-off and retrieve the pack.

Sixteen hours to go.

Chapter 59

Financial trail’s turned ice-cold. Either Trey’s wised up that someone’s tracking him, or something’s wrong.

—Message from Lily Knight to Cassius Drake

THIS HADN’T GONE anything like Bowen had expected.

There was no way he couldn’t believe every word George had said; there were no more lies left in the man. George wasn’t even holding himself together. It was Kaia who was doing that, Kaia who was stopping him from crawling into himself and never coming back out.

A glimmer of light along the edges of George’s form.

Bo had seen the same fracture of light with Hawke. And he realized what the BlackSea male was about to do. It had nothing to do with violence and everything to do with being a creature designed for the ocean on dry land—if KJ’s story about the colossal squid scared of needles was true, George could probably survive a certain time out of the water once in his other form, but it was unlikely to be a long period unless George semi-shifted to breathe air.

Regardless, once in his powerful wild form, he could propel himself over the edge, shifting back into his more vulnerable human body as he fell.

Bo reacted instinctively. “No,” he ordered using the most dominant tone in his arsenal.

He saw George flinch and the glimmer faded . . . only to reappear a second later.

This time, Bo went down on one knee beside the other man and clamped him hard on the shoulder. “No,” he ordered again. “You owe the children of those lost swimmers answers.” George had mentioned those children only by implication, but it was obvious he felt bad that a number of them had lost a parent and at least two were now orphans. “Pay your debts to them, even if you don’t believe you owe a debt to anyone else.”

Kaia pressed a kiss to George’s hair, her palm firm against the side of his face. “Don’t you dare, George,” she said, her own voice harder than he’d ever heard it. “You do and so will I.”

The last edges of the oncoming shift faded, George’s body slumping against Kaia’s. “You shouldn’t be on land,” he said, his voice a rasp. “You know you shouldn’t be on land. You’re so afraid on land.”

Kaia stroked her hand through the other man’s hair. “Did you really think I’d just give up on a member of my ohana?” Kaia shook her head. “We’ll figure this out together. Even if I have to go toe to toe with cousin Mal.”

She was magnificent, Bowen thought. Loving and strong and fierce.

It took fifteen more minutes of time they didn’t have for George to get up. His legs were shaky, his face white—but though he looked longingly toward the drop-off, he didn’t attempt to run in that direction. Pulling on the pack, Bo walked on the man’s left, while Kaia wrapped an arm around him from the right.

Hawke appeared out of the trees at that instant. He was wearing only a pair of jeans, his feet bare against the snow. When Bo went over to talk to him, the SnowDancer alpha offered them lodging and food. “Thank you,” Bo said, “but what I really need is a jet-chopper that can get us to our plane. We have to get back to Lantia as fast as possible.”

A large black chopper landed on the snowy grass only seven minutes later, the wind generated by its blades causing the snow to ripple in a dramatic pattern. Bo made sure George bent his head and that Kaia, too, was safe from the blades as he ushered them into the craft. As the pilot took off, Bo looked down and saw a pack of wolves looking up. Including a big one with fur of silver-gold.

After noting that Kaia had George in hand, the other man slumped on her shoulder with his eyes closed, Bo made contact with Malachai. As he didn’t want the SnowDancer pilot to overhear their conversation, he sent a written message, outlining the basic facts of what George had confessed and what he’d accused his mother’s uncle of doing to him.

Malachai’s response came back ten minutes later: His great-uncle was before my and Miane’s time in the leadership, but I just spent the past ten minutes talking to those older than us who knew the bastard. The general consensus is that he was a nasty man, one who preferred to keep his family isolated. We’ll talk more when you arrive. Miane and I will be back by then.

We have a timing problem, Bo wrote back. We’ll reach Lantia with a few hours to spare but it won’t be enough to reach Ryūjin by the injection deadline. The station was too far in the deep.

I can haul you down, Mal replied. We have aerodynamic shells made for that purpose. Just get to Lantia, then we’ll figure out the rest.

Sliding away the phone, Bo looked over at Kaia. His siren was murmuring to George, trying to keep the other man from slipping into shock. And in her worry about him, she’d lost her own fear—a fear the shape of which Bo now understood. His gut clenched, his skin hot. He wanted to shake her for doing this to herself.

* * *

• • •

KAIA could feel Bowen’s coiled intensity, but he said nothing when they reached the airport, simply helped her get George onboard. Then, while she continued to try to comfort her shattered clanmate, he went and conferred with the pilots. Kaia was desperate to talk to him, but George was barely holding himself together right now, the psychic damage inside him a bomb that had finally exploded with destructive force.

It was two hours later that George finally fell asleep, his head in Kaia’s lap and her hand stroking through the light brown strands of his hair as the jet cut through the clouds. Bowen, seated across from her, his forearms braced on his thighs, watched George with inscrutable focus. “Do you think Miane will permit an empath onto one of your cities?”

“I thought you didn’t like Psy?”

“I make an exception for empaths”—that dark gaze shifted to her, held her prisoner—“and for a telepathic siren.”

The rough gentleness of his voice as he spoke those final words twisted her up. “I think if it was an empath associated with an ally, then Miane wouldn’t have a problem with it.” BlackSea’s First had spoken about the empaths to Kaia the last time Miane had been on Ryūjin, the conversation part of a wider one they’d had on the fall of Silence.

Miane had sat at the counter in Kaia’s kitchen, drinking the strong Turkish coffee she adored and chatting with Kaia in between visits from other clanmates. “Miane admires what it takes to be an empath, the courage it requires to take terrible, painful emotions into themselves, but their very softness makes them suspect.”

Bowen nodded. “Be pretty easy to break an E if you were cruel enough, get them to act for certain interests.” He leaned back in his seat. “Good thing they’ve got some very dangerous protectors.”

“The Arrows.” Kaia didn’t know much about the deadly Psy squad, but Mal had mentioned the squad siding very publicly with the empaths—and that the Arrows and BlackSea were building a strong working relationship. “I still don’t think Miane would accept just any E.”

“Sascha Duncan? She’s part of DarkRiver.”

“Yes. Or—there’s an Arrow teleporter who helped find several of our vanished. I think he might be mated to an empath.” She looked down at George. “You should talk to Mal, see if he can arrange for an E to be waiting when we land.” Kaia wasn’t sure how much of George was left to save but she damn well wasn’t about to give up on him.

“I’ll do it now.” Not wanting to inadvertently wake George, Bo went to the back of the plane to have that conversation.

It turned out the BlackSea security chief’s thoughts had been running on a parallel track. “I’ve already spoken to Miane about arranging for empathic help.”

On the tiny screen of the phone, Malachai shoved a hand through his hair, his eyes that eerie pale, pale gold that was nothing human. “It all depends on whether I can get one of the Es we trust.” Glancing offscreen at that moment, he seemed to be listening to someone else.