Her heart slammed into her rib cage, memories that had once been flat suddenly taking on color and texture and depth. She wet her throat. “We’ll talk later.”

“Kiss me later,” he dared in a whisper for her ears alone. “Prove you can keep your distance. Prove you’re Silent.”

It wasn’t a playful challenge. It was deadly serious.

• • •

ENA didn’t say anything until they were outside, strolling along one of the gently curved walkways. “You made a request of me for Valentin’s sake.”

“He’s my mate.” The possessive claim was instinctive . . . and it ran bone-deep. “I’ve decided to have children with him.”

Her grandmother took her time answering. “An intelligent choice. It will strengthen your position as the head of EmNet. Pity Valentin doesn’t have human blood, or you’d have the trifecta.”

“Grandmother, you have human blood. As do I.”

Ena came to a full stop, looked at Silver with an unblinking expression. “Of course, I do,” she said after almost thirty seconds. “And the reason for glossing over that fact no longer exists.” She began to walk again, her calf-length coat a camel shade that suited the copper of her tunic and wide-legged pants.

“I will allow it to leak that your great-grandfather was a human engineer who chose to remain with his wife even after Silence came into effect, and she did everything in her power to subjugate her emotions. The idea of true love running in the Mercant line will further boost your credibility with the emotional races, while your track record will reassure the Silent.”

“I did some research as a teenager.” Silver stopped herself from looking over to where Valentin was no doubt roughhousing with their clanmates. “I believe your parents did indeed experience true love. They were together since they were fifteen, and she was twenty-five when Silence went into effect, too old for Silence to ever truly take.” Ena had been, for that time period, a late-in-life baby.

“My parents were never disciplined for breaching the Protocol,” her grandmother said. “I certainly never witnessed anything of the kind.”

“Yes, but when I dug through the physical archives below your residence”—a place Silver had spent a lot of time in as a teen, Ena the only one in the family who could teach her the telepathic skills she needed to know—“I found an old diary kept by a human relative who maintained bonds with them throughout her life.”

“That would be my aunt Rose, my father’s youngest sister. She bequeathed me her estate.”

“I always wondered how the diary ended up in the archives,” Silver said before continuing on with her original topic. “Rose wrote that though the two followed the rules of Silence in the hope it would help their violently psychic children, they shared the same bedroom all their lives.”

Ena nodded thoughtfully. “For me, that was simply the way it was in the family. I never thought to question it through the lens of Silence. I know for certain they slept in twin single beds, a foot of distance between them.”

“Yes,” Silver said, “but, according to Rose, when they died”—Ena’s parents had died at the same time, though only her father had suffered a long illness—“they were discovered holding hands, as if they’d reached out to one another in their final moments.”

As a teen, Silver had been intrigued by the report, but she hadn’t actually understood the gift of love and the sacrifice of her ancestors’ lives. That she did today told her a lot about her own emotional state . . . and the choices she had to make.

Her grandmother’s voice broke into her thoughts. “I was never told that. It would’ve been erased from any official record.” A heartbeat before Ena spoke again. “You should digitize the relevant parts of the diary if you haven’t already. Your great-grandparents’ love story will make excellent media fodder.”

“I’ll get you the whole diary.” Silver saw nothing wrong with Ena’s request or with how mercenary it sounded—her grandmother had been protecting the family for decades. All her thoughts were about how to achieve that aim. “Grandmother?”

“Yes?”

“Now that Silence has fallen, are you ever tempted to experience emotion?”

“Temptation is an emotion,” Ena said, her voice as difficult to read as always. “I would, however, choose to experience it for the simple reason that information is power. Ignorance is the opposite. The problem, of course, is that emotion and Silence are not things that can be switched on and off. To become Silent is a long and arduous process. Emotion is naturally chaotic.”

The words made Silver think of the foam balls that had been thrown around the play area that day, of how the cubs had gleefully attacked Valentin. She wondered if the exhausted cubs had curled up into furry snoring balls on the ride back with Anastasia and Yakov, or if they’d found a second wind and the ride had been full of noise and belly laughter.

“I have a request of Valentin,” Ena said without warning. “Let us speak to him.”

Dangerously ready to see Valentin again, despite how problematic he was to her equilibrium, Silver accompanied her grandmother to the central green space. The wolves had all left—perhaps because there were too many bears, or perhaps so the bears who lived in the city could be free with their alpha. Silver had noticed that though the two sides were never friendly, they were respectful. It was the only way a complex like this could work.

“It appears we have a problem.” Her grandmother came to a stop on the edge of the path, just before the grass.

Silver went to ask what, then realized it. “Oh, Valentin is that very large one with the scar on his left ear.” She pointed him out where he sat in the center, his clanmates around him—the physical description had been for Ena’s benefit; Silver knew Valentin whatever his form. “The bears here don’t see him as often as those in Denhome.”

“I will take but a moment of his time.” Her grandmother stepped onto the grass and walked straight toward Valentin, ignoring the other large bears in her path. They, in turn, lumbered out of her way when she would’ve otherwise had to go around them.

As Valentin had said more than once, Silver’s grandmother was an alpha; she demanded respect by her simple presence. Silver, too, was an alpha personality, but when she stepped onto the grass to make her way to Valentin so she could hear what her grandmother intended to ask him, the bears didn’t get out of her path.

They came to her instead.

One midsized bear leaned up against her, would’ve pushed her over without meaning to if she hadn’t set her feet apart to steady her balance . . . and if she didn’t already have another bear on her other side, his warmth heavy against her. Her hands rose, rested on their fur. They leaned a little deeper into her.

She stroked.

It was her responsibility as Valentin’s mate to see to the welfare of clanmates who needed contact from their alpha pair.

When she lifted her gaze, she found the largest bear in the clan looking at her. The sense of pride that burned in those eyes was a rough kiss.

The connection broke only because Ena had reached him. He turned to her grandmother, listened to whatever she had to say, then gave a single nod. Ena inclined her head in return and began to walk back. When she reached Silver, she said, “I will be accompanying Valentin to Denhome. I wish to see where my grandchildren will spend much of their time.”