IT was odd to wear something Valentin had bought for her. She’d offer to reimburse him, except she knew he’d take that as an insult. As she’d told her grandmother, bears were intensely protective of their people. The more dominant the bear, the more overwhelming the protective urge.

She wasn’t one of Valentin’s people, of course, but she’d fallen under his protection the instant she accepted the offer to stay with StoneWater. He’d fight to keep her safe, his big body merciless against any enemy who dared come at her. That body had to burn a significant amount of energy. She wondered what he ate to retain his strength.

That last thought had her freezing in the act of pulling on a garment she would never normally wear.

She was reacting to him.

Again.

Silver did not react emotionally to anyone, her Silence pristine in the subtle Mercant way that worked with each individual mind rather than being a blunt hammer. She hadn’t reacted to Valentin the first time he’d come to her apartment or even the second or the third. She’d been impressed by him in an intellectual way, had found crossing words with him an interesting exercise.

So yes, perhaps there had been a reaction there—it was unheard of for her to allow anyone to interrupt her, not just at home but also at the office, again and again. But that reaction had been muted, tightly in control. This wasn’t. And it hadn’t been for at least six and a half months. The math wasn’t hard to do: the Honeycomb had come fully into being only weeks before her responses began to change.

That the empathic construct would bleed emotion was no surprise. The once starkly black-and-white landscape of the PsyNet was now overlaid with a fine golden net that was as powerful as it was delicate, and the sparks of color created by the minds of the E-Psy could be found far and wide.

Like all Psy who preferred to stay sane, Silver was linked to the Honeycomb, the connection made via an E-Psy she trusted without reservation. Regardless of that, no empathic sparks should’ve infiltrated her shields, not when those shields had been modeled on the martial shields of the deadliest men and women in the PsyNet.

And yet, Silver was reacting to Valentin Nikolaev in a way that defied Silence.

• • •

WALKING out of the recovery room just as Silver had gotten herself into the hoodie, Valentin waited for her to get into the wheelchair, then he put the blanket over her legs. While she settled the blanket as she wanted it, he reached over to zip up the hoodie and pull forward the hood to shadow her face.

He pretended not to see the look she shot him, the one that said he was crossing boundaries. Being innocently oblivious to silent reprimands was a skill he’d cultivated as a curious bear cub with three older sisters whose stuff he’d liked to nose about in. Not because he wanted it. Just because it was there. “Suits you.”

“It swallows me,” was the cool response.

“That, too.” Mentally plotting how he could swap out the gift-store hoodie for one of his own once they reached Denhome, he began to push the wheelchair manually rather than using the hover capability. Silver was inches from him, and she was about to enter his lair.

As far as the bear priorities in life went, he was pretty much set.

Of course, he thought with an inward snarl that was more mangy wolf than extremely civilized bear, the only reason she was coming to Denhome was because someone had tried to poison her.

Grandmother Mercant had been explicit in saying that his job was to protect, hers to unearth the traitor within the family. That was her right as alpha of the Mercants—but he’d make it clear to her that should she need someone to rip off a head or two, Valentin would be delighted to take care of that pesky problem for her.

No one was allowed to hurt one of Valentin’s people and get away with it.

“You’re rumbling. It sounds like muted thunder.”

Valentin’s hands tightened on the handles of the wheelchair. “Hazard of being a bear. We aren’t good at not showing our mad.”

A passing physician gave him a wide berth at that instant. “No one will hurt you again,” he told Silver as they exited into the parking lot. “I’ll make certain of that.” It was an alpha’s promise.

Silver’s back stiffened. “I’m not yours to protect.”

Valentin stopped by the powerful four-wheel-drive vehicle he’d had a clanmate in the city pick up from near Silver’s home and drive to the hospital lot. Going around to face Silver, his hands on the arms of the chair, he said, “As long as you’re in Denhome, you’re one of mine, Starlight.”

What he didn’t say was that he intended to charm her into making the move permanent. Cats did the suave overconfident thing. Bears knew taking a woman for granted just led to a fall right on your smug face. In this, he’d take the bear approach. Charm first, be smug later.

First, however, he scooped her up and put her in the passenger seat before she could even think about stepping onto the asphalt in her bare feet.

The Human Alpha

BOWEN KNIGHT, SECURITY chief of the Human Alliance and its effective leader, looked at the latest update on his screen with grim focus. Alliance medical investigators and Ashaya Aleine, Psy rebel and brilliant scientist, continued to agree: the chip in his brain, the one that blocked Psy from violating his thoughts, was continuing to degrade.

The rate of decay had slowed from initial predictions, but it was going inexorably in one direction. He’d been the first chipped, would be the first to fall if they didn’t find a solution. He’d come to terms with that when Ashaya Aleine first made the devastating diagnosis. But now that all of the chipped were past the safe-removal zone—including his sister, Lily—he found his anger spiking into red-hot frustration.

I’m not sorry for the choice I made.

Lily had said that to him when he’d asked her to consider getting her chip out while extraction was still possible. He’d known what her answer would be before he ever asked the question, but he’d had to ask, had to try to protect the woman who’d been his small, big-eyed shadow in childhood.

Switching off the screen, he was about to return to work when there was a knock on his door. As the rest of his team were coming in late after a long night when they’d all pulled punishing hours, he should’ve been the only one in the building.

He palmed a weapon before saying, “Come in.”

He wasn’t expecting the man who walked through the door. Raising an eyebrow, he said, “Polite of you not to teleport right into my office.”

“Sahara is attempting to teach me manners.” Kaleb Krychek slipped into a seat on the opposite side of Bo’s desk.

Not about to be fooled by the cardinal’s casual attitude, Bo leaned back in his own chair. “Why is a member of the Ruling Coalition in my office?” The Alliance didn’t have any kind of relationship with the new rulers of the Psy race. The Coalition’s predecessors had been murderous evil, while this new group included an empath and an Arrow, both of whom had saved countless lives, Psy, changeling—and human.

Krychek had done the same.

That was why Bo was listening to him. Because the Ruling Coalition also featured Nikita Duncan and Anthony Kyriakus, who, like Krychek, had been part of the defunct and vicious Psy Council. Word from those who’d know—and who Bo trusted—was that Anthony had always been a rebel in the shadows, while Krychek was the one who’d brought the Council crashing down.