“No.” Bo turned his gaze back to his city. “Cassius is on her ex’s trail?”

“Yes. He checked in a couple of hours ago, is following the new financial trace I picked up.” She slipped her hands into the pockets of her coat, her breath frosting the air. “We’re fracturing, Bo. It’s good you came back now. Any longer . . .”

“The first thing I’m going to do is set up a stronger line of succession.”

“It won’t work.” Lily’s eyes appeared like Malachai’s pale gold in this light. “We’re too young in our current incarnation. Someone has to be the anchor for every new creation—and you’re ours.” Her sleek black hair was gilt under the sunlight. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to have love. We’ll figure this out. Venice is the least landlocked city in the world. Kaia could swim out to the ocean anytime she wanted. Lots of water changelings call it home.”

Bo thought of his siren with her need for the safety of the black around Ryūjin, of her heart so tied to the blue, and shook his head. “She’s a creature of the deep, Lily. It would be like trying to cage a butterfly.”

* * *

• • •

KAIA didn’t cry. She lavished her love on her newborn clanmate. She made treats for the entire station. She swam until her breath was lost and her heart thundered. And she spent every night dreaming of a human tied to her by a bond that would never break but that was stretched painfully thin across the vast distance that separated them.

The creature inside her swam in agitated circles, unable to think.

Nothing was right. Nothing was as it should be.

Bebe took one look at her four days after Bowen’s departure and said, “Well? I told you your time would come. Make your choice, girl.” Harsh words, but her hand was gentle where it patted the back of Kaia’s. “You either fight or you curl up and die. Only two choices.”

* * *

• • •

TEN days after his return and Bowen was still missing two of his senior people. Heenali remained off the grid while Cassius continued to track her surprisingly slippery ex. Added to that, the slew of recent media stories about the Alliance crumbling from within meant Bo had to show his face at certain events when he’d far rather be alone.

He was also going out of his mind missing his mate, though he could feel her inside him in a way he couldn’t explain. He just knew that Kaia lived and that he’d realize at once if anything happened to her. But he couldn’t reach out and touch her, couldn’t kiss her, couldn’t dance with her on the streets of his beloved Venezia while a busker played a love song.

Releasing a rough exhale, he glanced at the comm. He called her every morning and every night, and she sent him little messages throughout the day, but today, the comm was silent. She hadn’t been on the station when he called—probably out for a swim in the black—and he hadn’t yet received any messages.

“Bo?” One of his knights appeared in the doorway to his office. “We still on for the meeting?”

Bo forced himself to look away from the comm. “Yes.” And he got to work—the stronger he could make the Alliance, the more time he could spend away from the HQ without devastating consequences for the organization he’d spilled his lifeblood to grow and keep strong.

It was around two o’clock that he decided to comm Ryūjin again, but he got an alert on his phone before he could get to the comm. A jet-chopper was about to land on the roof: ID pings as BlackSea.

Bo left his office at a run, taking the stairs three at a time. It was unlikely to be Kaia, but he swore he could feel her closer than usual. Then he was at the door to the roof and pushing it open against the wind of the chopper’s landing. One look at the machine’s sleek profile, along with the wave sigil on the door, and he confirmed it was a BlackSea craft. He couldn’t identify the pilot from here, but he felt his siren.

Waiting only until the jet-chopper was safely parked, though its blades continued to spin, he ran toward it. The door opened before he reached it, Kaia jumping out into his arms. He crushed her to him, his entire body a buzz of delight. Above them, the chopper’s blades began to slow before coming to a standstill.

“I missed you.” Kaia’s lips on his, her hands on his face, her scent swirling around them. “God, I missed you so much.”

Having identified the pilot by now, Bo fell into the kiss like a starving man, the need in him an endless ocean. “Kaia.” Another kiss, another wave of piercing rightness. “What are you doing here?” He grabbed her shoulders. “You took the fucking meds.” The healer had told him exactly how bad those meds were for her system long-term.

“Stop scowling.” She poked a finger into his chest. “I’ve been working with the healers and the counselors and Ivy Jane Zen. I hitched a ride with Mal for a short test, to see if anything’s working.” A deep breath, another. “I am on the meds, but it’s a lighter dose. I have you deep inside me now and it’s changed the balance.”

“How?” he asked roughly.

“I can lean on you.” Simple, powerful words. “You might get a backwash of my fear.”

“Throw it all on me if you can.” He’d shoulder every ounce of her pain if she’d let him.

“It doesn’t work that way, but”—a determined smile full of affection— “let’s see how I go.”

“I still want to shake you.” Bo gripped her by the upper arms. “You’re in pain.”

“No pain, no gain.” Then she leaned in and nipped playfully at his lower lip.

Unable to hold on to his protective anger in the face of her innate mischief and his joy in seeing her, Bowen led her out from the shadow of the jet-chopper and toward Malachai, who’d gone to stand on the edge of the building.

“Mal.” He shook hands with the BlackSea security chief. “How long can you stay?” How long could Bo keep his mate close?

“Only a couple of hours.” Malachai’s eyes were human today, but his presence remained that of a serious power. “I figured we might as well hold our meet in person.”

That meeting was so Bo could update Malachai on what was going on with the hunt for the traitor in Alliance ranks. Bo continued to refuse to give Mal a name, but he’d shared all other data—trust took two, and Mal had already done his part. “I’m not going to argue.”

Lifting his and Kaia’s clasped hands, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles right as his phone buzzed. He took it out of his pocket to glance at the screen. “It’s Lily.”

He answered the call audio-only, while Kaia walked over to the edge of the building to look at the view. Their hands entwined, Bo moved with her. “Lil, if it’s not urgent—”

“Trey Gunther’s been spotted in Venice. Sending through the image—Cassius took it half a minute ago.”

Kaia turned to smile at him just as he lowered his phone to look at the surveillance shot. Her smile faded. “Bo, let me see that.” She tugged down his hand to get a better view of the screen.

Alerted by her response, Malachai moved so he, too, could view the image. Bo saw no reason to hide it—Heenali wasn’t in the shot, though she had to be close; she was as well trained a hunter as Cassius and while she wasn’t using Alliance tech resources, she knew Trey Gunther better than all of them.

“Bo”—Kaia’s voice shook—“why do you have a picture of Hugo on your phone?”

Chapter 65

I fucked up, baby. I really fucked up.

—Message from Trey Gunther to Heenali Roy

KAIA’S BRAIN STUTTERED as it tried to absorb the unexpected new input. “When was this taken?” she asked before Bowen could answer.

“Less than a minute ago,” he said grimly, then returned to his call for a short moment. “Lil, send me the location.”

Malachai stirred as Bowen hung up. “I think you’d better explain.”

“We know this man as Trey Gunther.” Bowen’s words made no sense. “He was deeply involved with one of my lieutenants for months.” Her mate’s hand tightened around hers. “She’s the one we suspect of directing Fleet ships your way—and she’s currently AWOL, searching for Trey.” His voice had turned ice-cold during the briefing, the glance he shared with Malachai filled with something Kaia didn’t want to see.

“No,” she said. “No.” There was no way Hugo would’ve sold them all a lie.

Bowen caught her gaze. “I don’t know what’s going on, Siren, and I’m not going to judge your friend before I meet him—but we find out the truth today.” His phone pinged.

One glance and he was moving, tugging her along with him while Malachai prowled at their backs. “His hotel is within walking distance.” Shoving through the door, he began to head down the stairs. “He had to know we’d spot him once he entered Venice. It’s almost as if he came here on purpose.”

Kaia, her heart pounding a staccato beat, could only think of one thing. “Hugo’s alive.” Her other half dived in a dance of joy. “He’s alive.”

Bowen led her out a door and onto the snowy cobblestones of Venice. She’d never before visited this city full of water that many of her clanmates loved, and for a moment on the roof, she’d wondered . . . but now, she barely glimpsed anything of what they passed, the sun glittering off the snow to shatter brightness against her irises.

Hugo was alive.

But there was a dark thread in the joy that she couldn’t ignore. If Hugo had escaped his captors, why hadn’t he let anyone know? And why did Bowen say his name was Trey? Surely that had to be a mistake.

Her breath coming in rough pants, she barely managed to keep up with her mate as he took them through the streets and alleys of Venice. Water and snow sparkled around her. She’d read that Venetian canals had been filthy once upon a time, but that had been more than a hundred years earlier. The residents of the city had funded a massive system that meant you could swim in it without coming to harm.