Silver pulled at his hair again to make him pay attention. His displeased rumbling had zero effect on her. His mate would never fear him. His bear swaggered around like an asshole, pleased with his choice of this strong, sexy woman.

“I’ve been feeling more and more,” she said, her eyes locked to his. “And I’ve been trying to justify my responses in various ways.”

Valentin couldn’t hide his hurt. “Why would you do that, Starlight?”

Her hand on his jaw, a petting caress. “Don’t you understand, Valyusha? I was justifying it to be with you, to do things with you. I couldn’t explain why when my emotions were meant to be gone.”

“Bears are stubborn fools,” he said with a baring of his teeth. “The mating bond wasn’t about to let go.” It was anchored in a part of the psyche so primal even the operation couldn’t sever it.

“Neither was I. You’re mine.” Flat, no room for argument.

Hurt retreated under a wave of smug pleasure.

“I want no confusion about that.” Silver’s fingers gripped his jaw hard. “I want no one believing we might not be a unit. Not our clan, not your family, not mine. And never, ever you.” Her gaze was pure steel. “If that means embracing emotion, so be it.”

Happy as he was, Valentin worried. “Your audio telepathy?”

“Nonexistent, though I’ve clearly reaccessed my emotions far faster than anyone could’ve predicted.” Playing with his hair again, Valentin’s dangerous, beautiful mate said, “I’ve always had a sense of it at the back of my mind. That sense is gone.”

“And physical contact?” he asked, remembering how she’d overloaded in his arms. “Not just skin privileges with me, but tactile contact with the clan. Since you and I, we’re forever”—it was hard to breathe through the joy crashing through him—“we need to protect you from overloading.”

“There’s no need,” Silver replied. “My time in Denhome taught me that I can manage the impact—our bears are baffled by but respectful of a clanmate who needs time alone now and then.” Fingers still in his hair, her touch proprietary. “And I have a strong feeling the mating bond helps, too. We balance each other.”

Valentin’s happiness threatened to explode out of his skin. “I can’t wait to grow old with you—and to see you turn into a hard-ass like Ena.”

She didn’t smile. “I hurt you. I’m sorry.”

Not liking the pained guilt on her face, he shifted onto his back again and hauled her up on his chest so he could cuddle her close. “It was tough having you distance yourself from me, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

He tangled one hand in her hair. “Partly because I was too fucking stubborn to believe you when you said you didn’t want me, didn’t want us, but mostly because you were always right here.” He tapped a fisted hand against his heart.

Silver propped her chin up on her hands, looked inside her mind. There it was, the primal bond that connected her to Valentin. It dared anyone in the PsyNet to touch it, just dared. She hadn’t thrown a shield around it this time, and following her lead, neither had Arwen.

Silver had a feeling anyone who got too close would get a riled-up bear’s welcome. “I don’t know where our bond was hiding all this time,” she murmured, “but I have my suspicions.”

The lazy-eyed bear who was now stroking her back, all the way down to her buttocks and back up, demanded a kiss. She gave it, demanded another one herself. “The PsyNet is alive in a way most people don’t understand,” she told him afterward.

“Of course it is.” Her bear rolled his eyes. “All those brains in one big psychic network. If it wasn’t going to become a sentience of its own in some way, what else was it going to do?”

Silver narrowed her own eyes and moved until they were nose to nose. “You’re much, much smarter than you like to make out, Mr. I. M. A. Medvezhonok.” Not that she hadn’t known that from day one.

Smiling at her in that smug bear way, he fondled the side of her breast. “Tell me more about this sentience in your PsyNet. What do you think it did?”

“I think the NetMind and its more erratic twin, the DarkMind, make decisions for the good of the entire network.” The majority of Psy didn’t know about the NetMind’s dark twin, but Silver was a Mercant. “And—Oh.” She scrambled up to sit astride him.

Hands firmly possessive around her hips, Valentin scowled at her. “Now my chest is cold. Aren’t your pretty tits cold?”

“Focus.” She glared at him, but her body missed his, too, so she snuggled back down. “I’ve just realized something.”

“What?”

“We know the PsyNet must need changeling energy, too, even if at a lesser level than it needs humans.” Their world had always been a triumvirate. “But we’ve been thinking that means pulling others permanently into the PsyNet.”

She shook her head. “There would’ve been Psy like me in the past, Psy who needed to remain in the PsyNet. I see it, Valyusha. I see how it was meant to be.” Excitement was a heated river inside her. “Bonds across networks were once the norm. The energy can flow from one to the other.”

Valentin frowned. “I know I have a bond with my seconds and my healers that you’d probably see as a psychic network, but what about humans?”

“Humans fight and die for those they love,” Silver whispered. “Bowen Knight put his body in the path of a bullet to protect his sister, put a dangerous implant in his brain for the sake of his people.

“We’ve been so arrogant all this time,” she said, furious with herself for falling into the same trap. “We’ve assumed that because we can’t see a human psychic network, that means it doesn’t exist. Stupid when there’s so much evidence that it does.”

“Fascinating.”

She dug her nails lightly into the chest of the bear whose hands were lazily mapping her body. “It is fascinating.”

“Not when you’re naked and my cock is hard and I want to eat you up like candy.” A slow smile. “I missed you, Starlight. Come be with me.”

Silver had no chance against this bear. Never had.

• • •

“SOMETHING’S happening,” Valentin said an hour later, while the two of them were lying sweaty and boneless in each other’s arms. “There’s a commotion in the Cavern.”

Silver got up with him, quickly pulling on clothes as he tugged on his jeans. Bare-chested, he took her hand and the two of them walked out. Valentin froze partway to the Cavern. “I can scent her,” he whispered, eyes wild. “My mom.”

“Good, I’m glad I didn’t have to carry through my threat of stunning her with my telepathy and dragging her back to Denhome.”

Valentin’s mouth fell open. She waited to see if he’d be angry at her interference, but he threw back his head and laughed that huge, generous laugh. “Silver Fucking Mercant.” A hard kiss, her body crushed to his. “She’s going to be pissed at you for the next decade.”

“I don’t care.” It had never been about her. Only him.

His expression when they walked into the Cavern and he took in the dirty woman with long, tangled black hair who sat wrapped in a blanket . . . it was everything.