He felt the joy and sorrow and wildness and endless ocean of her smash into his soul in crashing waves, and in the onyx of her eyes, he saw the creature who was her other half and he felt it swimming in his own bloodstream.

“Kaia.” Arms locking around her, he drowned in the wonder of it.

She had her own arms around him just as tight, the two of them holding on for dear life. “You’re mine. Whatever happens after the third injection, you will always be mine.”

Kissing her in a rage that turned into piercing tenderness, Bo didn’t remember stripping off her clothes or his, but there, hidden in the deep, far beyond either the denizens of the surface or those who swam in the blackness below, they loved each other as only two mates could love. It was disorienting at times—he could feel her pleasure and her need as well as his own, the mating bond yet settling in place—but they rode the waves until there was no Bowen and no Kaia. Only them.

Together.

One last time before the final spin of the wheel.

Chapter 62

It’s time.

—Dr. Atalina Kahananui to Bowen Knight

THE OPERATION WAS done.

Bowen’s skull sealed back up.

Hours had passed without a response.

Bowen Adrian Knight existed in an unnatural sleep even his mate couldn’t penetrate.

His chest rose and fell.

Pressing her fisted hand against her abdomen, Kaia blinked back the burn in her eyes, and she waited.

Chapter 63

I still have no trail. They’re both off the grid and Heenali’s now twelve hours past the date she told Domenica she’d return.

—Message from Lily Knight to Cassius Drake

IT WAS THE dull thud, thud of sound that first reached him, but it took Bowen almost a minute to realize what it was.

His heart.

Mechanical. Strong. Human.

Exhaling on that understanding, he opened his eyes . . . and looked into those of an inky black he’d never mistake for any other. “Hello, Siren.” His voice was a rasp, but the words sounded as they should.

A brilliant smile, sunlight over a turbulent ocean. “Bo, it’s done,” she whispered. “You made it through.”

Bo flexed his fingers and toes. “My brain feels . . . fuzzy.”

“That’ll pass.” Dr. Kahananui’s crisp voice. “You’ve been out for eighteen hours.”

Bo wove his fingers through Kaia’s, held on to this heart of his that lived outside his body. “Success?”

Dr. Kahananui looked up from the data panel. “You’re rational and appear to have full control of your faculties, but we won’t know if there’s any neurological damage until after we run the full battery of tests.”

Bo nodded, and in the long hours that passed, he cooperated with every test the doctor had for him—from completing childish jigsaw puzzles to solving high-level logic questions. When he did hit a glitch, it was on random questions to do with entertainment celebrities. “Not info I’ve ever had, Doc.”

Dr. Kahananui, who was still very heavily pregnant, grinned. “Just checking if you’re awake.” She shifted in the comfortable chair Dex had brought in for her. “It’s been a long day.”

It grew longer yet.

Kaia was a constant presence through it all, both in his room and deep inside him in the way of mates. She disappeared only for short periods—and would always return with food or drinks. When the doctor told him to get some sleep and that they’d continue the next day, he and Kaia spent the night wrapped around each other.

They didn’t speak of the inevitable tomorrow.

But tomorrow did come and with it, Dr. Kahananui’s conclusion that the experiment had been an unqualified success. “I feel confident I can repeat the procedure on the others of your people who have the chip.” A stroke of her belly. “After a slight delay.”

It turned out she’d been having contractions all morning.

Dex almost lost his mind when she finally told him. The couple disappeared into the black with the healer only minutes later. Heart thundering and his head crystal clear in its precision, Bo stood at the seaward wall with Kaia. “Is it usually quick?”

“Sometimes, sometimes not.” She leaned her body into his. “The next submersible arrives in three hours.”

Bowen’s blood froze. “Not yet.” A harsh repudiation.

“I heard you talking to Lily—and I’ve seen the reports in the media. The Alliance is beginning to fragment at the edges.” Her face lifting up to his, her fingers petting his hair. “They need you.”

“You need me, too,” he said bluntly. “As badly as I need you.” Leaving her would shatter him.

“If you stay here,” Kaia murmured with a chiding shake of her head, “you’ll slowly begin to despise yourself.”

That, too, was true. Bo had made promises, given his word that he’d lead his people from the darkness. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he betrayed that trust by walking away. “I don’t know how to be without you.” He’d been self-sufficient for so long, but now he had a need for her that nothing else would ever quench.

“I shouldn’t have mated us.” Human eyes meeting his, her other self sliding away in a shame he felt as starkly as if it were his own. “You would be free without the bond.”

“Siren, I haven’t been free since the day I first opened my eyes and saw you.” He kissed her, right there in the heart of the atrium, with the sea a silken darkness beyond and her clanmates watching.

He kissed his mate who knew him to the core and whose love was a fierce force of nature. “I will never regret our bond.”

“Visit when you can,” she said against his lips, the desperation of her need as potent as his. “I’ll watch for you.”

He crushed her to him—and over her head, he saw Alden’s red face. But the other man didn’t approach, didn’t try to intrude, didn’t bring up Hugo’s name. He just stood there with angry eyes as Bowen held the woman who was his forever.

* * *

• • •

KAIA swam up alongside the submersible in her human form, her gills keeping her alive. It was somehow fitting that he’d press his hand to the window when the light from the surface began to spear through the water, and she’d press back before fading away into the deep, like the creature of the black that she was.

He walked silently from the submersible to the jet-chopper BlackSea had arranged to take him to the island runway, the sea too turbulent today for small craft. As it lifted off, he watched the water for her even though he knew she’d stayed in the deep. Kaia had her hand around his heart, and the higher he flew, the tighter she gripped. But the jet-chopper kept lifting and lifting until he could see the city from above. But Bo wasn’t interested in the startling view of waves crashing up against a glittering and green oceanic city that was a marvel of engineering.

He was interested only in the siren who rose up out of the ocean below the jet-chopper, her face lifted toward him. Bowen pressed his hand to the window. She was his and he was leaving her behind because he’d made promises he had to keep . . . promises she wanted and needed him to keep. His mate understood that if he didn’t, it would be a toxic poison inside him.

But keeping those promises meant leaving Kaia and that was unacceptable. So he’d figure out a way to change things. Bowen wasn’t about to lose his mate at the first fucking hurdle. “I’ll come for you,” he promised, his jaw set. “You’re mine, Kaia, and I’m not about to let you go.”

Chapter 64

This is weird. I’m getting pings again. If he keeps to his current route, Trey is heading back into Italy.

—Lily Knight to Bowen Knight and Cassius Drake

BO’S SISTER RAN into his arms the instant he got off a jet-chopper that had landed on top of a Venetian building. The Alliance craft had been waiting for him when he disembarked the plane. Heart wrenching at seeing Lily alive and well after the horror of their last moments together—though she was far too thin—he lifted her up and spun her around. “Looks like you missed me,” he said, putting her down on her feet.

“Maybe a little.” She hooked her arm through his, her smile huge, and led him away from the chopper.

Turning, Bo sent the pilot a thank-you salute. The other man returned the gesture before taking off to make the journey back to his base at the airport.

Bo almost flagged him back down. He’d left part of himself in the deep, and how the fuck was he supposed to function without his heart?

His lungs tight, he drew Lily to the edge of the roof so he could look out over a Venice gilded by the gold of the setting sun. The glorious hues of the buildings dusted with snow, the winding canals, the gondolas, the buskers, it was all so familiar and it had always before soothed his soul. Today, however, he strained to glimpse the ocean that was Kaia’s home.

“Do you think it’d be difficult to shift Alliance HQ?”

His sister threw him a startled look. “Well . . . we’ve been here a long time. The land the HQ stands on belongs to the Alliance and because we’ve been here so long, we have intricate security measures in place that it would take years to re-create in another location.”

He could feel her examining his face with those big gray eyes that had been so bleak and stunned when his parents first brought her home. “Is it Kaia?” A gentle question. “You always smile when you talk about her.”

“Yes.” Bo blew out a breath. “She’s my mate, Lily. And she’s a world away.”

“You could run a lot of things remotely. Our comm center is strong, and—”

“And our people need to see me here, in the thick of things.” He shook his head at her, this sister of his who’d back him in any decision. “We’re still so fragile.” Like the finely blown glass out of Murano; a single crack could destroy everything. “Heenali?”

“Still nothing.” Shadows drifted across Lily’s face, the gold of the sunset eclipsed by an inner darkness. “It’s not looking good for her, is it?”