“You want my help?” Pavel asked at one point. “I’m not on shift for another four hours.”

About to say no out of habit, Silver abruptly realized that would be foolish. “Yes,” she said. “That screen over there—can you collate the emergency data coming in and give me a précis every half hour?”

“Summarize?” Pavel pulled up a chair, his eyes already on the screen. “I don’t like to brag,” he bragged smugly, “but I was the king of last-minute summaries for school essays.”

She’d been concerned the gregarious bear would keep on speaking, but that was all he said, his focus on the work. She should’ve remembered that while bears could be rowdy, StoneWater wouldn’t have become a power if they weren’t also capable of intense concentration on things that needed to be done.

He turned out to be as good at winnowing the data down into manageable bites as he’d boasted. “Are you in the market for a permanent position?” she asked after the first hour.

“Yasha would cry if I left him.” Pavel kept his eyes on the screen in front of him, even as he spoke. “But maybe if you throw in your scrumptious brother as my bonus.”

“Arwen should be coming to see me again soon,” Silver replied. “If you’re half the bear you claim to be, you’ll get his call code from him.”

“Oooooh, that was a burn as cold as Siberia!” Pavel thumped his fist onto his chest, shooting her a dimpled grin over his shoulder at the same time. “I can melt a Mercant, just you wait. I’m a bear.”

With that, they returned to their work and to the dark reality of an emergency that could have no happy ending.

Valentin didn’t reappear after showing her to the tech room. It wasn’t a surprise. She hoped he was catching some sleep but knew it was unlikely; as the alpha of a large and powerful pack, he had multiple calls on his time and attention. Which made it even more extraordinary that he’d come to see her at her apartment so many times.

Regardless of all that, part of her listened for him.

• • •

VALENTIN’S heart was a pulsing ache when he returned from the part of StoneWater territory the dissenters called home. No matter how many days passed, the pain remained as hurtful as the day he’d first felt it . . . the day a quarter of his bears had rejected him to walk out into the cold. But despite the freshness of his hurt, time had passed. He’d soon have to make a final decision.

His bear hung its head, its big body no shield against this wound.

“Mishka!”

Halting at the sound of that childish cry, he immediately tracked a fresh trail of scents to find three unsupervised cubs, ages six, six, and seven. All tiny gangsters. He scowled and folded his arms. “What is Arkasha doing?” he asked, nodding at the furry butt hanging out of a hole in a stone formation.

It was hard to keep a straight face as those little legs kicked and the butt wriggled.

“He’s stuck!” Sveta cried. “We were going to explore the cave, but the hole’s too small.”

Biting the inside of his cheek to choke off his laughter, Valentin raised an eyebrow at the other miscreant. “Why is Arkasha so shiny and slick?” His fur looked like it had been slicked down with hair conditioner, but that wasn’t what Valentin’s nose was telling him.

Fitzpatrick Haydon William, tiny owner of a very long name, took his hand from behind his back to reveal a familiar wrapper. “We thought if we rubbed him with butter, he’d slide in,” he admitted.

“Did you ask Chaos for that butter?”

Two shaking heads, while the butt went still, Arkasha in full listening mode.

“Hmm, we’ll talk about that later.” Valentin hunkered down by Arkasha’s small body. Patting his furry back to make sure the boy wouldn’t get scared, he considered their options. Despite his antics in hanging upside down on the tree the other day, Arkasha was too young to have fully mastered semi-shifting, or Valentin would have asked him to shift parts of his body to his smaller human form.

Which left only one option.

“I’m going to crack the stone,” he told the boy. “Close your eyes and duck down your head. Kick your left paw when you’re ready.”

The kick came nearly at once.

Slamming the side of his fist against a section of stone that appeared the weakest, Valentin created a crack, then carefully wrenched off a piece. It left that edge ragged, and he had to act quickly to clamp his hand on Arkasha’s side to protect him as the child wriggled free.

Plopping down on his back, the cub lifted his paws to his face . . . and sneezed.

Valentin couldn’t hold in his laughter any longer. Cracking up, he sat down with his back against the hole and opened his arms. Arkasha crawled into them at once, Sveta and Fitz slamming their bodies against Valentin’s the next second. He held all three, calming the butter-covered cub and his friends from their fright.

And his heart, it hurt a fraction less.

When he returned to the den with the gangsters—after first blocking up the newly enlarged hole with stones they wouldn’t be able to move—he marched them to the kitchen to confess their butter thievery. Chaos, hands on hips, gave them his patented glare. “No dessert tonight for any of you.”

“But it’s gonna be medovik!” Arkasha said, his body clad in Valentin’s checked shirt. The cub had destroyed his own clothes when he’d shifted from boy to bear, and hadn’t wanted to be a “naked criminal.” The sleeves Valentin had folded, but the tails dragged on the floor, giving him a woebegone look.

“Yeah!” his friends said. “We love medovik!”

Valentin loved the layered honey cake, too.

Remaining unmoved, Chaos said, “That’s why it’s a punishment.” The clan’s chief cook rubbed his jaw. “Or you can wash dishes all day.”

Sveta gulped. “All day?” A big-eyed whisper.

“Yes. Or no cake.”

All three cubs looked at one another, with Sveta the one who spoke. “We’ll wash the dishes.”

They swarmed Chaos, wrapping their arms around his legs. “We’re sorry for taking your butter, Mr. Chaos.”

Chaos’s lips twitched above their heads at the attempt at formal address, his hands going down to rub the top of their heads. Valentin knew the imps would likely be asleep in a corner within ten minutes of starting their dishwashing sentence, and that Chaos would care for them with utmost gentleness. But every time they woke, he’d make them wash an unbreakable dish or two—in their cub minds, that would equal an entire day of hard labor.

It’d be the talk of the tiny gangster circle for months.

Right then, Arkasha tripped over the tails of Valentin’s shirt and fell over onto his butt. “Ouch.”

“Come on.” Valentin hauled the cub up onto his back. “Let’s go get you some proper clothes before you do your day in the salt mines.”

“What’s a salt mine?” Arkasha asked, while Chaos put the two other felons to work at the sink. They had a bench to stand on—this wasn’t the first time StoneWater had had to deal with miniature-sized gangsters.

Valentin explained the concept of salt mines to his felon, got him dressed, then—after a stop to grab a fresh shirt for himself—dropped Arkasha off to serve his sentence. His heart lighter, he was about to find Silver, aggravate her just so she’d play with him in that icy Psy way, when Pieter found him.