—From the December 2079 issue of Wild Woman magazine: “Skin Privileges, Style & Primal Sophistication”

STARLIGHT HAD FALLEN asleep.

After calling him Valyusha, which made him feel petted and adored.

Valentin had been determined to stay mad regardless, had wanted to grumble some more at her. But half a minute after he’d settled his body onto hers, and while he was still building up his growling words, she’d gone liquid with sleep under him.

Good thing he had an ego “the size of an elephant”—as per Nika—or he might’ve taken Silver’s descent into sleep as a mortal insult. As it was, he wanted to cuddle her close and kiss the life out of her. All was forgiven. Because Silver Fucking Mercant had fallen asleep under his heavy, powerful bear body.

If that didn’t betray deepest trust, he’d eat his own foot.

Tempting as it was to curl himself around her and play with her hair, stroke her body, he got up and, after pulling a blanket over her, made himself leave. If she’d reacted that badly to his hand on her flesh, she wasn’t ready to handle being tucked possessively into his body.

Valentin scowled at the memory of how she’d gone so stiff and still. “No more rushing,” he said, bear and man in agreement. “We’re going to be as patient as those stupid pandas.”

After he left Silver’s room, his plan was to head to his own room, but a loud noise had him changing direction. Pavel and Yakov were on the floor of the Cavern, apparently in the throes of attempting to murder each other.

He hauled them apart with no care for their bodies. The two were damn hard to break. “Quiet,” he said in a tone that brooked no disobedience. “Silver is sleeping.”

They gave him identical disgruntled looks. “Why do we have to be quiet?” Yakov demanded while his brother tried to fix the bent left arm of his spectacles.

He shook them. Hard. “Because Silver is sleeping. Make any more noise and I’ll pound you both flat.”

Spectacles on, Pavel straightened his half-torn shirt like it was a tuxedo. “How come you like her more than us?”

Valentin was well used to that gleam in the other man’s eye.

He pointed a finger first at Pavel then at Yakov. “I’m going to bed. Make sure the clan doesn’t fall down around us.”

Leaving StoneWater in their care because despite their current behavior, the twins were powerful and loyal to the pack—and as thick as thieves when not attempting to kill each other—he went to his room and stripped for bed. The erection he’d barely got under control after getting out of Silver’s bed returned in full force the instant he was alone.

Her skin had been so silken under his touch, her body so lithe. She smelled like darkest honey. Lush and complicated and with a hidden bite. He wanted to lick her up. Use his tongue on her until her thighs clenched on his head and she pulled his hair so hard it hurt.

No control, no distance. Just his Starlight wild for him.

Groaning but quite willing to torture himself further, he lay down in bed . . . and his mood shattered, his eyes locked on the ring he kept on his bedside table. It was a deliberate reminder to be vigilant, to never forget the blood that ran in his veins—and the terrible price it had extracted.

StoneWater had been the strongest pack in the country in his grandfather Kirill’s generation. His father’s father was now a deeply wounded man who couldn’t bear to live in Denhome, the reason Valentin saw his beloved babushka Anzhela only rarely. But in his prime, Kirill had been one of the strongest bears in a proud clan.

Back then, StoneWater had controlled such a vast swath of land that, in changeling terms, Russia had been all but theirs. BlackEdge had taken over a quarter of that territory in the time of the alpha before Zoya, the wolves becoming increasingly powerful while StoneWater crumbled.

Looking back, it was no surprise they’d lost what they had. StoneWater had been under bad management, with a resulting loss of bears to other clans leaving them shorthanded—because in the changeling world, you only kept what you could hold. A brutal law that kept the peace.

Predatory changelings were hesitant to attack any clan or pack that could protect what was their own. Conversely, clans didn’t overreach, conscious they’d get no support from fellow changelings for their arrogance. Which was why StoneWater had pulled back when the wolves started growing stronger than they’d been in previous generations. They’d let part of their territory go rather than lose hundreds of lives in a pointless territorial battle.

It all made sense . . . except it hadn’t had to be that way.

Valentin had been ten when his father made the decision not to fight the wolves. It should’ve caused Mikhail Nikolaev incredible anguish that StoneWater was weakening under his leadership, but Valentin’s father—Valentin’s alpha—had already begun to change from the man who’d taught Valentin how to track, how to semi-shift, how to do a hundred other things.

The loss of land, however, that wasn’t the deepest wound, wasn’t the one that bled and bled without pause.

Zoya had tried to stanch the flow, failed.

Valentin had come to power on the driving need to fix the worst hurt, heal his clan, but his ascension had instead led to the loss of a quarter of his people. That loss, he couldn’t ever forget, no matter what else he was doing. StoneWater’s festering wound had split families, friendships, lives.

It kept him awake every single night.

Not the land gone before he was alpha. Not the territory now held by wolves.

It was the people. His people.

Out there in the darkness all alone. Alphaless because they’d rather live broken and lost than accept Valentin and the tainted blood that ran in his veins.

Something brushed his mind, a strange awareness.

He frowned. He knew what it felt like to have Psy knock on his brain. Some idiot was always trying to be the one to break changeling shields, but this didn’t feel like that. It felt . . . gentler, a caress rather than an attack. Sitting up, he tried to follow the sensation, but it was gone, a gossamer thread whipped away by the jerk of movement.

Had Silver reached out to him in her sleep?

His fisted hand opened, his bruised heart starting to beat again. “Good night, Starlight.”

The Ruling Coalition of the Psy

“WE HAVE A leak—it has to do with the information about the necessity for human minds in the PsyNet.” Nikita Duncan’s voice was frigid as she made that pronouncement.

Kaleb leaned back in the chair in his home study, his body in Moscow while a significant part of his mind attended the Ruling Coalition meeting in a secure psychic vault. Of course, he was never totally unaware, even while on the Net—no one would ever get close enough to harm his body while his mind was otherwise occupied.

“It’s confirmed?” Anthony Kyriakus asked, the other man’s mind surrounded by impenetrable shields. As the leader of a family that had many of the world’s best foreseers, he was both extremely intelligent and extremely strong.

“Yes.” Nothing in Nikita’s psychic voice betrayed that she and Anthony had a relationship outside of the Ruling Coalition. Exactly what that relationship was, no one was quite certain.

Nikita was a former Psy Councilor, ruthless and focused on her bottom line. Anthony had only joined the Council toward the end—and he’d proven to be a rebel who’d fought for a new world order. The only thing Nikita had in common with Anthony appeared to be their blood loyalty to family.