“Why do bears like knowing things so much?”

A narrow-eyed look. “Probably the same reason you do, Ms. Silver Spy.”

Silver doubted it. From all she knew, bears were inquisitive down to the bone. For her, knowledge was power. And she didn’t have anywhere near the depth of knowledge she wanted on the bears. That placed her in a quandary.

Valentin put on an act of not being particularly subtle or intelligent, but only half of that was true. He was about as subtle as a baseball bat to the head, but he was ferociously intelligent. All alphas were. Strength alone might be accepted in a changeling soldier, but never in a high-ranking member of a pack or clan.

It was a lesson many Psy still hadn’t learned.

So she knew Valentin wouldn’t give her any information unless it was an equal trade. “Silence suits me,” she said in answer to the question he’d asked. “The calm orderliness it gives to my mind makes me very efficient.” Not a lie.

“You remember what it was like before you were Silent?”

As she’d thought—he was clever. He’d picked up the secondary layer of meaning in her response. “My answers aren’t free.”

A laugh that built in his chest, filled the vehicle. “Ask what you want, Starlichka,” he said, “but first you answer my question.”

Again, he proved his acute intelligence; he knew Silver would avoid answering the question if she could. It wasn’t as if she’d given her word.

“Yes,” she said. “Conditioning begins during childhood, but it doesn’t ‘take’ for several years.” It had never been difficult for Silver to talk about Silence because she’d never been conditioned with dissonance—a pain loop designed, among other things, to stifle dissemination of information about the Protocol.

“What were you like as a kid? A feral beastie?”

“Feral beastie?” Silver stared at him as she repeated the English words he’d slipped into a conversation otherwise undertaken in Russian.

A shrug. “My great-grandfather was Scottish. He used to call me that. He liked me a lot.”

Silver realized that, in bear terms, “feral beastie” was probably an endearment. “My telepathic powers are significant—I’m classified at 9.3 on the Gradient.”

“Goes to 10?”

“Nine point nine. Cardinals are off the scale.”

“You must be able to speak telepathically across the country.”

“Further.” Officially, Silver was what was termed a “pure” telepath, her skill to do with communicating over vast distances.

It wasn’t so simple, of course, and pure telepaths could be taught to use their abilities in all kinds of ways—including how to use their minds to break those of others. However, thanks to Mercant muscle, the Psy Council hadn’t got their hands on Silver. She’d never been groomed to be a torturer.

In truth, though telepathy was her primary ability, Silver wasn’t only a pure telepath—but as her secondary ability was a useless one that had saddled her with a vulnerability without an advantage to balance it out, she never factored it into her psychic skillset.

“As a cub”—Valentin’s bass timbre—“you must’ve had a chaos of voices coming at you.”

“My family protected me while I was an infant, but they eventually had to teach me how to shield myself, and part of doing that meant lowering their shields and allowing me to feel what awaited if I didn’t learn to protect myself.” The crashing wave of sound had literally put her flat on the floor, the roar of it a horror that threatened to crush her brain.

Valentin’s eyes were a primal amber when he glanced at her. “How young were you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, intrigued at this glimpse of the bear that lived inside him. “It had to be done.” She’d had to understand the danger on a visceral level so she’d know why she had to practice so hard with her shields—and with her Silence.

Valentin went as if to reach out, touch her in that tactile changeling way of interacting, wrenched his hand back partway. “I don’t understand why you had to lose your emotions to gain psychic control.”

“The coming generation of children will test whether emotions can coexist alongside control.” Silver would do everything in her power to assist those innocent young minds. “Going backwards isn’t an option for me.”

“Why?”

Silver took a leaf from Valentin’s own book. “Because I say so.”

A deep rumbling sound from his chest that sounded very much like the bearish version of a growl. “That wasn’t very nice.”

Silver wasn’t about to get into an argument with a bear, especially over something so nonsensical. Unlike Kaleb, she didn’t have a keg of beer and a volcano handy with which to call a cease-fire. “How did you become alpha?”

The grumbling rumble was still in his voice when he answered. “You’re asking a very big question.”

“So did you.” If he was trying to intimidate her with his rumbling, he’d have to try a lot harder. “We had a deal. Answer the question.”

“I killed all the other challengers.”

She blinked, stared at him. And realized something. “You’re lying.”

A totally unrepentant grin. “You made me mad.”

Another wave of exhaustion slammed into her. Her head spun. But Silver wasn’t about to enter an unknown situation asleep and vulnerable. “Keep talking,” she ordered.

When Valentin didn’t dispute her right to give that order, Silver knew she must look in bad shape indeed.

“I became alpha because that’s who I am.” A shrug, broad shoulders rippling with a strength that would outmatch any other man in the city, likely in the country. “I always knew I was born to care for a clan. Since I didn’t fuck up and turn into an asshole in the interim, the clan accepted me when Zoya decided it was time for her to step down.”

Silver caught a hidden undertone in his statement, was certain he wasn’t telling her the whole truth. “If she’d evidenced a desire to remain in her position, you’d have challenged her?”

“I respect her too much for that. I’d have left to found my own clan.” Shadows fell on the car from the heavy tree canopy above them, old trees with thick trunks lining both sides of the narrow road. “It’s hard for two adult alphas who’ve both come into their power to share the same space.”

“That changes once one cedes power?”

A nod.

“It must be difficult,” Silver said quietly, “to cede power after a lifetime of leading.”

“You’re thinking of Ena.”

Since he’d clearly already intuited the Mercant line of succession, she saw no harm in answering his question. “The idea of my grandmother handing over the reins is one I struggle to accept.”

The heavily forested road turned into a dirt track in front of her.

“I don’t think she’d do it for just anyone, but for the granddaughter she’s taught herself? I think when the time comes, moyo solnyshko, she’ll be proud to take a backseat so you can shine.”

The emotional interpretation gave her pause. The truth was that while Silver embraced her responsibility to be her grandmother’s right hand, she wasn’t sure she wanted Ena to cede power anytime soon—her grandmother lived and breathed the Mercant family.