“What is Valentin doing here?” she asked before she realized what it would betray. She’d recognized her grandmother’s mind because they had a telepathic pathway between them that had existed for nearly twenty-nine years, the imprint so familiar the knowledge was ingrained. That didn’t apply with Valentin.

Yet despite the fact she couldn’t even sense Valentin’s surface thoughts, his natural shield too powerful, she knew without a doubt that it was him. If anyone had asked her to explain, she’d have been reduced to saying the mind “tasted” like him.

For a Psy, that was a ridiculous explanation.

It was fortunate her grandmother didn’t ask her how she’d so quickly pinpointed his identity. “He’s the reason you’re breathing right now.” No change in Ena’s tone, but Silver turned her eyes from the closed door to the room and toward the woman who’d been the defining force in her life. She had highly competent parents who’d shared child-rearing duties when it came to Silver, but it was to Ena that Silver had always looked for guidance.

“Like recognizes like,” her mother had once said to her. “She understands you better than I ever will.”

It was true. Silver rarely had to explain her thought processes to her grandmother.

“I remember Alpha Nikolaev turning up on my doorstep with a data crystal,” she said in response to her grandmother’s statement. “Then, nothing.” The black spot in her memory brought her up short. “Did I have a seizure?”

“It wasn’t as a result of a physical ailment or degeneration,” Ena said, answering the most critical question. “You ingested a comparatively fast-acting poison.”

Silver took in the information, separated it out into its components, absorbed it. Her mind went back to her morning before Valentin had knocked on the door. Why he didn’t use the perfectly functional intercom was not a question she wasted time asking. Bears, she’d learned, often did things that were inexplicable just because they could.

Valentin had turned that into an art form.

“I ate dinner at eight the previous night, went to sleep at ten thirty. I woke sixty minutes prior to Alpha Nikolaev’s arrival,” she said, working it through. “I spent thirty minutes doing yoga.” Another exercise she’d been taught to help her regulate her naturally chaotic mental patterns, the exercise now a part of her.

“Twenty-five minutes to shower and dress for the day.” It took so long because she had to put on makeup and fix her hair in precisely the right fashion. Icily Silent or open to emotion, Psy reacted to physical stimuli the same as any other race. Silver’s appearance was carefully calibrated to trigger a certain subconscious response.

“I spent the next few minutes going through the messages that had come in during my sleeping hours, at the same time preparing a nutrient drink.” She remembered drinking half a glass before the familiar heavy knock on her door. “I placed the still half-full glass on the counter alongside my organizer not long afterward, went to open the door to Alpha Nikolaev.”

“Did you know it was him?”

“The only two people who knock on my door that early in the morning are my neighbor and Alpha Nikolaev. As Monique Ling is currently in Hong Kong, that left only him.” She didn’t say she’d recognized the knock, the psychic sense of him. “I was speaking to him, and that’s the point where my mind goes blank.”

Staying in her seated position beside the bed, her grandmother filled her in. Some of it Silver had already guessed—including that the poison must’ve been in her nutrient mix. The rest was new.

“Alpha Nikolaev saw me convulse?” Silver was Silent, had consciously retained her conditioning even as the PsyNet began to fill with emotion around her. As a result, she didn’t like or dislike things, wasn’t happy or unhappy about any given situation. Valentin seeing her while she was so vulnerable, however, changed the power dynamic between them.

That could not be permitted to stand.

Bears had a tendency to stomp their way over opposition they considered weak. Silver wasn’t about to be stomped.

“He contacted Kaleb, got you here.” Ena closed her hand over Silver’s wrist, the physical contact from her grandmother so rare that it was a severe jolt to her equilibrium. “The bear alpha also found poison in a second unopened jar of nutrient mix.”

Silver’s lashes lowered. When they rose again, she knew why her grandmother was concerned enough to breach the strict rules by which the Mercant family had functioned and survived the years the Silence Protocol ruled the Psy. Because their genetic line had never been naturally inclined toward emotionlessness.

Mercants had been warriors through time, had roared in battle, had run with “fury in the blood,” according to old documents Silver had been given access to six months earlier, when she began to take on some of her grandmother’s duties. They’d also birthed fiery poets and playwrights whose prose was lauded to this day. Their line was said to be full of passion. To Silver, passion was a mere intellectual concept, but she understood that it denoted wildness.

As a result, Silence had never been an easy fit for them. But along with passion, Silver’s ancestors had repeatedly demonstrated a steely will. That, too, was a trait that ran true in their line, and it had allowed them to not only survive but also thrive under Silence.

As a family.

An intense capacity for loyalty was their greatest strength.

“None of my security systems have been set off anytime during the past year,” she told her grandmother. “I restocked the cupboard with six new jars of nutrient mix six months ago.” They were designed to hold their food value for a number of years. “It took me much longer than usual to finish the first jar because I inadvertently bought several packs of nutrition bars with a short use-by date that I had to eat first.”

“Who has been in your apartment in that period?”

Silver held her grandmother’s eyes, knowing her words would be an anvil smashing into everything Ena Mercant had fought to build. “Family,” she said quietly. “The only people who have been in my apartment over the past six months are members of the family.” Usually, that would’ve meant well under ten people overall—likely her cousin, Ivan, who worked in building security; her brother; and possibly another Mercant or two passing through Moscow who needed to touch base for reasons of family or business, or who’d asked to stay in her spare bedroom while in the city.

However, approximately five months earlier, Silver had hosted a large meeting that focused on Kaleb’s acceptance into the Mercant family. Not as an outsider they trusted, but as one of them. He hadn’t been at the meeting, the meeting about him. The discussion had been robust, but in the end, they’d come to a unanimous decision.

Silver had always known it would go that way. Ena had already decided, and her grandmother was the one who set the course of the Mercant family. She’d also known Ena would listen carefully to all the pros and cons, on the slim chance that she’d missed weighing an important factor.

“During the meeting,” Silver continued, “I kept no track of the family’s movements in my apartment.” She hadn’t thought she needed to be vigilant; these were Mercants. Their family maxim was Cor meum familia est. My heart is family. The emotional maxim came from a time long before Silence, but they’d left it unchanged because Silence or not, it spoke to what tied their family together, what kept them strong even as others faltered and fell.