“I just wanted to see if you were doing okay.” His hands itched to touch her, but even Valentin wasn’t that pushy.

Okay yes, he was when it came to Silver, but he knew how to control himself. “Can I—”

“No.” Silver put down the bottle on the bedside table Valentin had built with his own hands.

“You don’t know what I was going to ask,” he protested.

“You’ve been staring at my hair when you haven’t been staring at my face. You want to touch my hair.”

Valentin tried to think like a cat again. Sneaky. After all, Lucas Hunter had a Psy mate. If a leopard could do it, a bear could do it better. “I’ll shift and let you pet my fur in return.”

Silver froze in place, unblinking.

Bear and man both held their breath . . . and then she shook her head. “No. I have no rational reason to need to touch a bear changeling in his bear form.”

Valentin wasn’t the most subtle of creatures, but neither was he stupid. He’d caught the hesitation, filed it away. One of these days, he’d talk his Starlight into believing she really did need to touch a bear’s pelt. And then he’d pet her skin. An even trade . . . even if he was getting pleasure from both. He smiled inside, smug.

See, he could do sneaky as well as any cat.

“What I do need is an organizer and a phone,” Silver said, her thoughts clearly not on the same track as his. “I can have the funds for the items transferred into your pack’s account.”

Valentin didn’t take offense at her offer to pay—that was how Psy functioned and Silver liked to follow the rules. “Hold on.” Stepping out of her room, he made sure to leave the door nearly closed as a sign to his lingering clanmates that they weren’t to go barging in—oh, they’d be cheerfully friendly about it, just ducking their heads in to say hi, but there’d be a hundred of them in under a minute if he gave them the least leeway.

Silver would also end up with enough food for a year.

His bears thought food fixed every hurt. Most of the time, that food came with hugs and loud agreement if you were angry at something. Two weeks earlier, quiet Pieter had said “Hell yeah” while Valentin released his hurt and anger and frustration with what was happening in the clan.

Pieter and Zahaan—currently out on long-range patrol with Taji and Inara—were the only ones he allowed to see him that way; he and Zahaan had been best friends from the cradle, Pieter a natural fit for their small group when he and his family moved to StoneWater while Pieter was a child.

While Valentin trusted Stasya with his life and with the clan, her position as first second never in any jeopardy, she wasn’t only the most dominant individual in the clan after him. She was also his eldest sister, their relationship subtly different from that he had with his other seconds.

Her instinct would be to comfort her baby brother while getting angry on his behalf, while Pieter and Zahaan understood that he just needed to let off steam. But Silver wasn’t ready for the bearish version of sympathy and comfort, so Valentin scowled at the clanmates who were oh-so-casually hanging around outside her door.

“You all look like you need extra duties.”

“Aw, come on, Valya. We just want to welcome her to Denhome.”

“You can do that later.” He put his hands on his hips and glared.

Dragging their feet, they began to slink away.

More than one shot him a dirty look over their shoulders.

Valentin wasn’t surprised by their behavior. To have Kaleb Krychek’s famously icy and searingly competent aide in Denhome? His bears were beside themselves with curiosity. There had been a few raised eyebrows and three quiet asides to Valentin about how safe it was to have her in the clan’s heart, but no one had been angry.

Most understood that this was a time of change, that to stay strong going forward, StoneWater had to form friendships and alliances across the spectrum. Zoya, part of the old guard, had been recalcitrant about breaching the careful isolation that had kept StoneWater safe since the clan was first created. That is, until Valentin pointed out that the wolves were already in the process of coming to an understanding with people like Kaleb Krychek.

Zoya had only moved forward because she couldn’t stand that the wolves might end up in a stronger position. But the upshot of her decision to take that first step was that StoneWater was adapting to this changing new world. Not too fast, however. Valentin had turned down good opportunities because StoneWater wasn’t ready for too much change. His wounded clan needed time to heal.

So did its alpha.

He blew out a painful breath, shoving aside the thought for this extraordinary moment when the most beautiful, intriguing woman he’d ever met was in his territory. His ungrateful bear grumbled that he should’ve put her in his bed.

Valentin scowled. “She’d have turned my brains into liquid.”

Going to his own room, he found the package he’d asked Pavel to prepare yesterday evening as part of his plan to be sneaky-like-a-cat.

Picking up the sleek computronics carrier along with a toolbox in which he already had the necessary spare lock, he returned to Silver’s room. “Here, Starlichka.” He put the carrier on her bed. “All the gadgets your heart could desire. I can give you the code if you want to Send using our systems, but I’m guessing you’re hooked up to a Psy satellite?”

He was opening his toolbox as he spoke, having set it down by the door. Be nonchalant, he told his impatient self. Don’t stare at her to see if she likes the gift. Cats don’t stare. Cats just kind of prowl along until they prowl themselves right into their lovers’ beds. Be the cat.

Silver spoke to his back. “My family has a personal communications satellite, but thank you for the offer.” A pause. “What are you doing?”

“Fixing your busted deadbolt.”

• • •

SILVER found herself staring at the wall of Valentin’s back as he began to remove the broken lock from the door, his physicality an intrinsic force. “Do you have replacements just lying around?”

A grin shot over his shoulder before he returned to his work. “It is a bear pack.”

Her eyes lingered on the shift of heavy muscle and tendon in his back and arms under the dark blue of his T-shirt, his words triggering a question she’d been meaning to ask. “Do bears metabolize alcohol faster or better than other changeling groups?”

Valentin’s shoulders shook as his laughter filled the air. “Yes. It pisses off the wolves.”

That explained the bear liking for alcohol a little more—it wasn’t simply the drinking they enjoyed, but the fact they could take it better than the other predators in the area. It put paid to her belief that bears were unsubtle. Bears, it appeared, could be subtle. They were just very, very clever about it, hiding the subtle under the blunt edge of an axe.

And Valentin was their alpha.

She stared at the button-collar microphone and paired receiver, the paper-thin organizer, the satellite phone, and the slimline computer that had been in the padded carrying case he’d handed her. Each of the latter three items was of the exact make and model that she preferred. “You’ve spied on me.”

Having removed the broken lock, Valentin put it down beside his toolbox. “I notice everything about you, Starlight.” The holes in his jeans exposed part of his lower thigh as he shifted to drill in a piece of the new lock. “If, hypothetically speaking, we did do any spying, it’d be only fair.” A very bearish smile. “Can’t have you be the only one snooping around.”