“If you’re messing with me, I’ll put toothpaste in your hair while you sleep,” his second-in-command warned. “You know Silver Mercant is a threat as big as an elephant on steroids. She’ll have visuals of our den, of our little ones, will pick up our security system, could use it all to mount an attack. It might not be physical, but an economic attack could cripple us as badly. Especially now, with our resources split.”

Valentin rubbed a clenched fist over his heart. “I’m dead certain I can make a deal where nothing she learns would ever be used against us.” Raw animal instinct told him that Ena Mercant wasn’t a woman who gave her word lightly; if he had it, his clan would be safe.

Also, Starlight was his to protect. Yes, she’d argue about his claim, but he liked arguing with Silver. She might be pure frost, but she never shied away from picking up any of the gauntlets he’d cunningly thrown down in an effort to break through her defenses. Though perhaps “cunning” wasn’t the right word when he’d been as obvious as Anastasia’s elephant on steroids.

“Good,” his sister said now, “but the threat isn’t as bad as my first-level assessment.” Her voice was crisp, direct. “Silver is linked to Krychek, and we know from Nika’s many spies and friends that Krychek can teleport to places by locking on to faces. So if he wanted to get into Denhome, he could. But we have an agreement with Krychek—that means if Silver betrays us, she dumps her boss in it.”

“I don’t think Silver will be betraying us.” His cool blonde Starlight was working mercilessly hard to make EmNet a truly cohesive entity; she couldn’t afford to alienate one of the two largest changeling groups in Russia. “I’m bringing her in.”

“You realize certain bears will probably have a problem with her being here.”

“They’ll deal, or I’ll crack their skulls together until they find their brains.” Valentin might not want to handle Trinity negotiations on a day-to-day basis, but he understood the need behind the accord—their world had been divided too long, the fractures running deep and causing wide veins of anger and mistrust.

The defunct Psy Council had done horrific damage in the past, had murdered and stolen and broken, but the monstrous bastards had no claim on the future. Psy, human, or changeling, all three races had to take responsibility for the world they would leave their cubs. Here, in this city, it would begin with a Psy being welcomed into a bear clan.

“I’ll prepare a spare cave.”

They didn’t actually live in caves . . . Okay, they did, but they were very nice caves. He wondered what Silver would think of Denhome. “Spasibo, Stasya.”

Hanging up, he entered the recovery room after a quiet knock, making a deliberate effort to keep his eyes averted from the bed on which Silver lay so quiet and still. His bear didn’t fight him. That primal part of him understood extremely well that getting on the bad side of a female bear’s pride was a very bad idea—and as far as Valentin was concerned, Silver was a bear under the skin.

Strength and wildness and a relentless—sometimes obstinate—will.

None of that was a negative. Valentin could be obstinate himself. He needed a mate who’d refuse to take any of his shit. She’d also drive him insane, of that he was certain, but bears were lunatics anyway. It’d be fun.

All he had to do was convince Silver of that.

His bear grunted inside him, confident of its charm and ability to court the woman who spoke to both parts of his soul. Valentin decided his animal had the right idea: go in guns blazing and charm at full blast. And he had to be sneaky so she didn’t think to put up her defenses until it was too late. Not bear sneaky. Cat sneaky.

That began with making sure she ended up in his territory.

“Silver is welcome in Denhome,” he said to Ena. “Can she work remotely until the danger is past?” He was already making a list in his head of the tech she’d need. A cat would be sneaky like that, would give the woman he was courting what she needed before she even asked for it.

“I’ll talk to her,” Ena replied, “make sure she understands that family is not safe for her.”

Valentin left soon afterward, aware exactly how much it must’ve cost this proud, strong alpha to say those words.

• • •

SILVER woke to walls that were a crisp white and a ceiling that had a crosshatched pattern that struck her as a design artefact from at least six decades earlier. Her apartment didn’t have that type of a ceiling, was smooth. It wasn’t white, either, rather a pale gray. Her walls were gray, too. She hadn’t chosen the colors. They’d come with the apartment, and as the colors didn’t distract her or cause any unexpected reactions in her brain, she’d left it.

Her neighbor in the apartment next door, a human executive who was only in Moscow approximately three months of the year spread out over tens of short visits, had already had her place repainted three times in the space of four years. The last time, she’d knocked on Silver’s door and asked her favorite of three shades of cream.

Silver had stopped pointing out that she was Psy, didn’t spend time on such matters, didn’t have favorites. To satisfy the other woman, she’d just pointed to a random shade. Inevitably, it was the one Monique Ling wasn’t “loving.”

The chaos of thoughts tumbled through Silver’s brain in the space of a few heartbeats. Within those heartbeats, her telepathic senses were spreading out, evaluating the threats in the room. She didn’t get far. Her head was thick, felt foggy. But that wasn’t why. Silver could push through that, could force herself to function even when she was at less than a hundred percent.

She stopped because her psychic senses had brushed up against a mind that had once encompassed her own. She’d been a child at the time, one learning to handle violent telepathic abilities that left her vulnerable to the torrent of noise the world threw at her. “Grandmother.” Her voice came out rough, as if her throat were lined with grit.

“Here.” Her grandmother, seated in a chair beside Silver’s bed, slipped chips of ice between her lips.

Regardless of the questions pounding at her, Silver forced herself to be patient. That was another lesson her grandmother had taught her: to control her psychic abilities, Silver had to learn to leash her impulsive nature.

Ena Mercant didn’t believe in flaws or perfection. “We are who we are and we are strong” was her oft-stated motto. It was a motto that had been passed down from one head of the family to the next in an unbroken line.

As a result, the Mercants didn’t single out children for traits that would’ve had them labeled failures in many other families. Instead, all Mercant children were trained and educated according to their natural inclinations. In some cases, that meant utilizing the natural trait. In others, it meant training the child to be aware of facets that might negatively impact his or her psychic stability.

Today, Silver utilized an old mental exercise to keep her questions from pouring out onto the audible or psychic plane. At the same time, as her brain woke to its usual sharpness, she continued her psychic scan . . . and came up against a mind she couldn’t read but that was familiar nonetheless. That hard outer “shell” impervious to psychic intrusion belonged to a changeling.

The presence of a changeling wasn’t unusual. From the data she’d already gathered about her situation, she was obviously in a hospital; running into changeling or human minds was to be expected. This mind, however . . .