“I’m stubborn.” Kaia would watch over the soldier her friend had loved, a gift to his memory. “I wish you could’ve known him, Bo. I think you’d have liked him.”

“Tell me about him.”

So she did, and at times they laughed at the memories and at times she cried again. But she shared her friend with Bowen, and in doing so, she kept him alive a little longer. “I’m so happy to be here with you,” she whispered. “I feel myself again.” No frantic agitation, no sense of claustrophobic imprisonment inside her own skin.

“It took you a long time to swim here.” Grim words, his embrace tighter. “I’ve been waiting for days—I’m fucking proud of you, but I’m not sure my heart can take it.”

“I’m built for the water and for swimming long distances.” Kaia rose up on her elbow to look down into his face, the hard lines and angles of it so precious to her now. “I know it might be dangerous, but I’m so tired of being afraid.”

“What do you need me to do?” Unwavering devotion.

Kaia fell in love with him all over again. “Give me time enough to find my wings again.”

“Not even a question, tesoro mio.”

She felt like his treasure, adored and cherished. “I was driven by raw emotion this time.” Sighing as he played with her hair, she petted his bare chest. “My return trip will be a conscious choice.” It wouldn’t be easy and she’d have to break her journey into many segments in order to beat the fear, but this time around, she was playing for keeps. “I’m going to start with the blue and work up to land.”

Bowen reached to cup the side of her face with one big hand. “Are you hurting now?”

Kaia wanted to lie, wanted to tell him she’d conquered her demons, but he was her mate and he deserved nothing but the truth. “It’s starting to build.” The ugly churning, the flashes of cold and heat, the erratic heartbeat.

Running one hand down her back, Bowen cradled her close. “Go,” he whispered roughly. “I’ll see you soon.”

For Hugo’s funeral.

Her scarred heart stretched despite the pain. Because this man, he’d never surrender, not even to her fear. “I’ll swim for a day, then catch a high-speed jet from one of our cities.” Both so she could be there when her friend was laid to rest and so she could see her mate again.

“Call me as soon as you hit a BlackSea city.” A hard kiss. “I’d microchip you if I could.”

Kaia laughed but she held him, too, as afraid for the dangers he faced daily as he was for her swimming alone in the blue. “I’m going to buy you a bulletproof coat.”

* * *

• • •

KAIA dived high out of the water for Bowen as she swam out. She saw him raise his hand, and part of her wanted to swim right back to him. But she was determined that the next time she came to him, she’d do so with enough strength to last the night, then to last the day.

She’d speak to the healers and to Bebe and she’d contact Ivy Jane Zen again.

Most of all, she’d lean on the mating bond. Her mate wouldn’t mind.

Hope and determination a winged being in her heart, she made her first waypoint several hours later and shifted to call Bo. Her friends on the small floating town waved her off thirty minutes later. Two more waypoints. Two more calls. Two more kisses blown across an ocean to her mate.

She was halfway through the longest stretch between towns, her next stop where she planned to catch a jet, when something shimmered in her vision.

Fear, visceral and cold, tore a scream from both parts of her nature.

Then the net was closing around her and cutting into her skin and she fell into a nightmare.

Chapter 69

How many of our vanished are dead, Mal? How many of my people will I never be able to bring home?

—Miane Levèque to Malachai Rhys, one dark rainswept night

KAIA HAD LEFT in the middle of the night, a strong, beautiful woman who’d waded out into the water without fear. Standing submerged up to her hips, she’d turned and whistled at Bo in a complicated pattern. He’d done the same in return and she’d grinned with utter delight . . . then dived. Only to reappear far in the distance, her dolphin form arcing over the water to splash back in.

Bo had watched until there was no hope of seeing her again. Going back to Venice afterward, he’d waited for her to call in from the waypoints she intended to pass. His siren was a wild creature, but she understood his worry, had laid out her entire path back home so he could track her on the massive map of the world’s oceans that he’d put up on his office wall.

The first call had eased the fist clutching his heart, Kaia had sounded so joyously delighted in herself for making the trip alone. The second and third calls left him smiling. He waited for the fourth one, when she’d haul herself out of the ocean and get on a jet.

It never came.

Lungs in a vise, he called Malachai. “Kaia should have reached Miraza by now.” He’d marked the floating city on his map. “She hasn’t called in. She’s only half an hour overdue, but I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Fuck.” Malachai hung up on that single harsh word.

He called back minutes later to confirm that Kaia hadn’t made it to Miraza—nor had she been spotted by the city’s long-range scouts.

BlackSea was initiating a search.

Bo thought desperately about what he could do. BlackSea was better equipped to search the deepest parts of the ocean. So he’d search the areas closer to land. Commandeering a small boat, he began to crisscross the water starting from the beach and heading along the route she’d told him she was taking.

Yes, she’d made three waypoints before disappearing, but perhaps by following her trail he’d find a clue to what had happened. Maybe he’d run across a yacht or ship that had seen another vessel on her tail.

Kaia might’ve surfed the bow wave of a ship, could’ve been caught on camera.

“It might have nothing to do with the Consortium,” he told himself. “KJ is gone.” But the security chief part of his brain asked, if KJ was the dangerous central mole, what had he left in BlackSea’s computer and comm systems? Back doors where others could listen in or download data? Kaia would’ve tagged her family from the waypoints, too, likely given them her intended route. What if the enemy had a way to monitor comms? Or could be they had spotters near the cities and they’d figured out Kaia’s likely path.

When a dorsal fin appeared in the distance, he felt his heart skip a beat, but it proved to be a shark. That shark turned out to be huge and it swam alongside him for long enough that he realized it was changeling—and it was searching to his right. So he went left. And when other creatures of the sea appeared out of nowhere, he was very careful with where he piloted his craft.

Together, they all searched, Bowen’s heart leading him deeper and deeper into the blue. The mating bond told him Kaia was alive, and that was all that kept him sane.

Malachai called back four hours later, his hair damp and his upper body clad in a black T-shirt that had patches of wet on it. “No sign of her and we’ve got hundreds of people in the water looking. You?”

“Nothing.” Not even a hint of a familiar playful dolphin. “Is it possible she took a detour?”

“With the vanishings, we’ve got strict rules in place for all our people. She was mad when she left Bebe’s island, but when she ran across Armand just off the island, she told him exactly where she was going. And she filed her return path at the first settlement she hit after leaving Italy.” Malachai shoved a hand through his hair. “She knows exactly how terrified we’d all be if she went off-route.”

Bowen’s mind chilled to Arctic coldness. He couldn’t afford to feel fear right now. “Are those filed routes on a networked system?”

“No.” Malachai folded his arms. “I isolated that data to a local unit at each city or town; those units are accessible only by me, Miane, and the commanders of the cities. Griffin’s at Miraza—he’s as loyal to BlackSea as I am, and he considers Kaia a close friend.”

Bo took Mal at his word; the other man knew his people. But . . . “No one new in Griffin’s life?” Bo would’ve never thought Heenali would do what she’d done.

Mal’s face tightened. “No. Trust me, Bo. None of the commanders along Kaia’s route could be turned—we’ve lost too many people to be anything but fucking suspicious.”

Bo shifted tack. “Humans have pleasure and race boats all over the place,” he said. “They know not to go into BlackSea territory”—a command he’d reiterated after his return, with any accidental incursions to be immediately reported to him—“but Kaia’s route home would’ve taken her through areas where humans might’ve spotted her in the distance.”

“Sea is a vast place, Bo,” Malachai said bluntly. “It’s ours, but I’m not arrogant enough to turn down assistance. Canvass your people.”

That was when Bo asked a question he didn’t want to ask. “Mal, what does it mean if a mating bond is patching in and out like a bad signal? Still there but strong one second, flat the next.”

“I’m not mated but I know who to ask.” Returning a minute later, he said, “She’s either unconscious or drugged is the best guess.” Ruthless lines on his face. “Can you get to her?”

“I can feel the general direction.” Like a homing beacon in his chest. “But it’s far, and the signal keeps switching off.” The first time it had happened, he’d almost thrown up, but a moment of panicked concentration and he’d realized she was still inside him but “quieter.” “I’m going to get in a plane, try to trace it.”

“The call of the mating bond isn’t always that specific,” Malachai warned. “But if you can narrow it down to a general wide area, we can at least focus the search.”