She found herself giggling. “I did really want to do some head-bashing-in.”

Their eyes locked and laughter filled the air.

When he picked her up in his arms and swung her around, she didn’t even care that she was in a stupid hospital gown that flapped with the rush of air. She felt like a warrior princess with her prince, a woman with bruises earned in fighting for herself—and to return to her mate.

She was strong. She wasn’t afraid.

“I’m going to come to land with you,” she vowed to him when he finally stopped spinning her around and pressed her up against the wall.

Smile erased, her stubborn mate shook his head. “No.”

But Kaia had spent the time in the infirmary well. She cupped his face. “Listen.” Scowling at him when he glared instead, she said, “The root of my fear has always been this terror of losing the people I love on land.”

Arms braced on either side of her, he continued to glare at her. “A trauma that deep doesn’t just disappear, Kaia.”

“I asked the healer. She said it happens rarely, but shock can work both ways.” Pressing her hand over his mouth, she said, “Don’t you see, Bo? I was so afraid of losing you on land, but I was taken in the blue.”

Her words hung in the air, a potent ripple.

“I was taken in the blue,” she repeated. “Far, far from land. If the kidnappers had killed me, you would’ve lost me in the blue. Nowhere near land.” That truth had struck her deep in the heart while she sat in a locked room trying to regain her bearings so she could take apart the frame of a bunk. “I lost my parents on land, but land didn’t kill them. A disease and a bunch of selfish people did. Those exist everywhere.”

Kissing her palm, he tugged away her hand. “It’s easy to be logical, baby, but God, it fucking tears you up to be on land.” His voice turned to crushed stone. “I can’t bear to see you in pain.”

“Bo.” She kissed him, sweet and deep and with all of her. “Let me try. If it doesn’t work, if it hurts, I’ll be honest about it with you and we’ll do this the slow way.” It was possible she was simply euphoric in the aftermath of holding her own against armed aggressors who wanted to harm her . . . but Kaia didn’t think so.

She felt different inside in a fundamental way.

“Venice is surrounded by water.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “The Adriatic isn’t far for my other form.” She could swim powerfully as a human, too, but her dolphin form was a sleek knife in the ocean. “Let me try.”

“No, it causes you too much pain.” Intractable resistance. “We’ll find another way.”

But Kaia held his heart in her hands and she was determined.

Which was how, two weeks later, Bo found himself moving into a home big enough for two—and that had a kitchen that passed Kaia’s stringent standards. The one thing on which he hadn’t budged was that the home have as many water views as possible. The Venetian lagoon lay on their doorstep, while the Adriatic was close enough that—from the top of the house—they could see the masts of large yachts heading out of Venice and toward the sea.

The house was also connected to a biosphere below the surface, an entire lower floor surrounded by transparent walls that reminded Kaia of Ryūjin. That was to be their lounge, a welcoming space for both humans and water changelings.

Her aunts, uncles, friends, cousins—Malachai included—and Miane turned up to move them in. Miane’s elderly grandmother, an unexpectedly sweet and gentle woman who obviously adored her dangerous granddaughter and who made her home in Venice, sat in an armchair and supervised.

Dr. Kahananui and Dex had been disappointed to miss out on the impromptu gathering but had eagerly accepted an invitation to visit once the baby was a little older. Lily and Lily’s doctor beau were also in the thick of things, along with Cassius and the other knights.

Bowen’s best friend wasn’t too good around strangers, but it was clear he liked grumpy Taji. Together, the two of them muttered about how baseball was going to shit these days and how they couldn’t stand morning people. Teizo and Tevesi quipped about calling him Tassius now that he was an honorary triplet.

The most surprising person on the team was Heenali. She’d turned up silent and grief-stricken, and hadn’t left Kaia’s side for more than a few minutes all day. It had been that way since BlackSea consigned Hugo to the sea in a haunting song-filled ceremony that said nothing about his crimes against BlackSea.

Miane had made that call.

“Whatever his mistakes,” she’d told Bo as they stood on the windswept deck of Lantia, “he gave up his life for the clan. We will honor that.”

As a result, Hugo’s family had been able to mourn him as a hero.

As for Kaia, under her own grief, she was pure light. No hint of the phobic pain that had followed her through time. The same couldn’t be said of her family and alpha. Not a single member of BlackSea looked anything but grim—until they realized this home was partially submerged, the first two floors below what was a permanent floodline.

Kaia loved the presence of water so close. Especially when, on the day they took possession of the keys, he told her of his overhaul of the original front door; it was sandwiched in between the dry top part of the house and the biosphere-shielded bottom floor. Except for one protected passage to allow them to reach the first floor, the second floor was reinforced and permanently flooded—something to do with how the biospheres and houses were kept stable. A delicate but steady balance. “I had engineers go down, fix the door, and create an airlock so you can swim in and out safely.”

All but jumping up and down, she’d made him put on a wetsuit and breathing gear so they could go explore their home and the surrounding waterways. Bo was a basic scuba diver at best, but he’d signed up for extensive lessons. If his mate was going to be swimming out into the blue and into the deep, he’d be coming with her until the fear clawing at his heart let go.

She saw that fear, kissed him deep in the night with her palm over his heart, and didn’t try to stop him from coming along on her swims—even though he was slow and clumsy at his current level of skill. Kaia understood such fear intimately, though she no longer seemed to feel any terror of land.

Bo wanted to believe the change was real, but he’d witnessed the horrific depth of her pain, couldn’t bring himself to accept that an act of violence had brought her happiness instead of agony. The only thing that would fix that was time—which they had now, thanks to Dr. Kahananui’s experimental treatment.

Cassius, implanted second, would begin his own treatments in a week.

“Do you know you two are linked on the psychic plane?” Kaia said to him one night in bed after meeting his best friend—and charming him as much as anyone could charm Cassius. That she’d brought along his favorite pecan pie hadn’t hurt.

“Doesn’t surprise me.” Curious, Bo asked her how she knew.

It turned out that as a changeling telepath, her brain didn’t work the same as Psy brains apparently did; she couldn’t see the network to which she was connected, but she could feel it.

The mating bond had pulled her out of the network she’d been blooded into as a child when her clan realized she was a telepath and needed that psychic network to survive. “Good thing Bebe’s so old,” Kaia whispered. “She knew exactly what was wrong when I got sickly as an infant.”

Eyes glowing with light, she sat up to look down at him, a siren with hair that cascaded over his chest and perfumed the air with hints of coconut and tiare flowers. “Want to know how many humans are connected to you?” Her fingers weaving in the air, as if she could sense hundreds . . . thousands of threads. “So fragile, so fine, not like changeling bonds, but there are so many of them that they’ve become unbreakable.”

Bo had spent much of his life hating telepaths, but all he felt at that moment was wonder. “How is that possible? Cassius and the knights I can understand. We’ve been through hell together. But so many others?”

“They acknowledge you as alpha.” A soft murmur, her face kissed by the moonlight pouring through the window of their new home. “Even if they argue with you, they see you as their leader.”

Despite the switch in networks, Bo had no fears about her psychic health; he could feel her bright with life inside him. Yesterday, she’d met a Psy child in the street and the little girl had taught her a telepathic game. “Pippi couldn’t believe I was a grown-up and didn’t know.” Throwing back her head, she’d laughed. “Also, apparently my telepathy ‘smells’ different. Wild.”

As wild as her.

As for Bowen’s parents, they were ecstatic at both the result of the experiment and that Bowen had fallen in love. Having stayed with Bo and Kaia for the past couple of days, they’d quickly come to adore Kaia.

Life was more beautiful than Bo could’ve ever imagined . . . but for one dark cloud.

“Bo,” Kaia had asked in the aftermath of their reunion in Lantia’s infirmary, “what did you barter to get Krychek’s help?”

She still hadn’t forgiven him for what he’d done, especially since Krychek hadn’t called in his psychic marker. It was a sword that could fall at any moment.

Epilogue

ϯぁ8ʐѯ9i

—Entry tagged: Malachai Rhys (image attached)

KAIA SAT IN the gondola as Venice, a stately lady dressed up for the night, glittered past on either side of the canal. Music whispered over from some of the restaurants, conversation and laughter from others. She’d thought about opening a restaurant here, because of course the idea of simply sitting on her hands was ludicrous.

And cooking was a love for her, a delight.

Then Bowen had turned up with a petition signed by all of his knights demanding he offer her a position as the official Alliance HQ chef. She’d had them all to dinner by then, and it delighted her that they’d loved her cooking so much—they certainly needed to be well fed; it was obvious none of them ate particularly well.