Last Guard

by Nalini Singh

  Officially, he was there to get up to date on his computronic security certifications by undertaking a highly specialized course. Unofficially, he was there to gather intelligence on the various power players in the area. A lot happened in that comparatively small region, and Ena wanted the family to have a larger presence there.

  So it wasn’t as if Canto hadn’t had a perfectly adequate residence.

  Then had come that infamous party to celebrate the mating, when Valentin and his bears decided they liked Canto. The bears had liked Ivan, too, but—according to a gossipy older member of the pack—had considered Canto’s suave cousin a bit too “slinky” for total comfort. But since the bears adored Arwen, Canto had a feeling the disconnect had less to do with Ivan’s sharp dressing, and more with the core of distance Ivan carried within.

  The bears could sense it but didn’t realize it wasn’t personal: of all the Mercant cousins, Ivan was the most remote. Canto knew the reason Ivan was how he was, but no one unaware of Ivan’s history could be expected to divine it. The only one who could get him to open up was Arwen—and that was enough. Their empathic cousin would never allow Ivan to lose himself to his demons.

  Arwen had even convinced Ivan to attend the celebration of Silver and Valentin’s mating.

  A month after the event, and Valentin had come to Canto with a proposal. “I think my Starlight should have some more of her family close to Denhome,” the bear alpha had said. “My clan is madly in love with her, but if she needs to yell about us to someone not entangled with a bear, who better than a cousin as loyal as a brother?”

  “Valya,” Canto had muttered, “Silver adores your pack. I went to see her in her office yesterday and found a naked cub in human form trying to hang upside down from a curtain rod.” Silver had worked on unperturbed, simply saying “No” when the cub tried to do a dangerous maneuver.

  The cub had stopped at once.

  And Canto had seen once again why Ena had chosen Silver as her future successor.

  “Emergency babysitting when a packmate went into early labor while shopping with her boy,” Valentin had explained, eyes of dark brown aglow with a power usually hidden beneath the force of his warm presence.

  “Canto, I know from Silver that the Mercants are as much a pack as StoneWater. I never want to cut my Starlight off from her pack—and I want our two packs to become family.” A smug bearish smile as he sat back, arms folded. “I’m charming your grandmother, you know.”

  Canto had snorted. “You wish.” But he’d accepted the offer because he understood that it had been made out of love for Silver.

  It had taken the bear clan and Canto’s family a short two weeks to put up the house according to his specifications. He’d managed the project and done all the computronic hookups, while the bears had provided manual labor, transport of materials, and engineering. Arwen had done the architectural drawings, with Magdalene sourcing the furniture, rugs, and other items to outfit the place.

  As it was, he had as many bearish visitors as Mercants.

  Such as the dark-skinned man who hauled himself up over the balcony railing just now, a small boy clinging to his back like a barnacle. Bears seemed to find using Canto’s front door optional.

  “Chaos,” Canto said. “Did you know you picked up a butt-naked hitchhiker?” His Russian was passable despite his relatively short period of study—he had a theory it had to do with being an A. The Net was a constant river in his head, and parts of that psychic river spoke Russian.

  Reaching back, Chaos pulled off his son with the casual strength bear parents used with their cubs, and threw the giggling boy up into the air. “Dima and I needed fresh air,” he said after catching his son in his arms. “He had on clothes until he decided to shift without taking them off.”

  Dima shrugged, his face mischievous. “I’m a bear. Grr.” Then he jumped toward Canto, having learned that Canto was strong enough to take his rambunctious ways. The first time they’d met, the cub had come up to him and very seriously examined his chair, then asked if they could go “zoom.”

  Canto was pretty sure Dima was his favorite bear.

  Today, he hugged the boy and said, “Hungry?” because bear cubs were always hungry. Possibly because they never stayed still.

  “Yeah!”

  Canto put him on the wooden floor of the balcony. “You know where the snacks are.” He kept a stash suitable for small bears in a lower cupboard—the assortment courtesy of Arwen. “Chaos, how many things can he choose?” He’d learned that lesson when he hadn’t set any restrictions the first time—Chaos had had to deal with one moaning and stuffed-full cub.

  “Two.” Chaos’s voice was the one Canto had labeled the “bear parent” tone. No argument. No playing. Do as you’re told.

  Dima ran inside with a big whoop.

  Grinning, Chaos hauled over a chair to sit next to Canto and held out a fist for him to bump. The bears, notwithstanding their reputation as rough and tough troublemakers, were highly intelligent and conscious of the Psy aversion to touch. They took “skin privileges” dead seriously.

  Even the drunk bear who’d ended up in his lap had asked permission. He’d said yes because he’d been worried she’d otherwise face-plant right onto the asphalt.

  Canto liked the changeling idea of skin privileges, of physical contact being considered a gift.

  Payal’s face flashed in his mind, her skin so smooth and soft looking, her lips lush.

  His abdomen tightened, his nerve endings afire. Not ready for the raw physical surge, he almost missed Chaos’s question.

  Having leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the deck railing, Chaos said, “You sure you don’t get lonely out here?”

  It was a quintessentially bear question. They lived in a sprawling den that Canto had been sure would drive Silver insane—yet his cousin was thriving in the midst of a nosy, loving, and occasionally insane pack that loved to throw parties.

  “Arwen and Pavel dropped by yesterday for lunch, day before that it was my grandmother, and now you two,” he growled as he stripped off the gloves he wore to increase his grip during manual use of his chair; they also protected his palms from constant friction. Now he flexed his fingers and said, “How the hell is a man supposed to get peace and quiet?”

  Chaos laughed, big and booming. “You do a good grumble. Almost like a bear.”

  Small feet running back.

  When Dima came around to Canto’s side, he saw that the boy held four snacks, not his permitted two. Surprised the small bear had disobeyed his father, he waited for Chaos to discipline him. But then Dima took a pack of dried apple slices from his stash and held it out to Canto. “You like apple.”

  “Yeah.” Heart stretching inside his chest, Canto took the pack, then rubbed his hand over the boy’s tight curls.

  Smiling, Dima ran over to give his father a pack of something called licorice allsorts that—to Canto—looked like tiny multihued bricks. “Look, Papa, your favorite.”

  Chaos hugged his boy to his side. “You sure you don’t want it?”

  “No, I got cookies and this.” He looked a bit dubious at his choice of dried mango strips, but determined. “I go play with Canto’s blocks now?”

  “Sure.”

  After the boy was happily involved in the play area Arwen had set up on the deck for Canto’s small visitors, Canto said, “You must be proud of him.”

  “Every day,” Chaos said quietly, so much love in his voice that it made Canto ache deep within.

  With no one in the Mercant clan currently parenting a small child—the youngest Mercant at present was sixteen—Canto had rarely even thought about children before coming to StoneWater territory. Now he knew he’d gut anyone who laid a finger on Dima or any of the other small souls in StoneWater.

  Apparently, he had more Ena Mercant in him than he’d realized.

&n
bsp; Beside him, Chaos tore open his child-sized bag of sweets. Canto did the same with his apple slices, and in the time that followed, the two of them just sat there, talking now and then, but mostly listening to the trees while Dima talked to himself as he played. It was a good feeling, sitting with a friend . . . but Canto’s mind kept being torn away to Delhi, and to a woman who appeared to have no safe haven.

  His entire body threatened to knot with rage. He’d find a way to protect her—even if he had to do it in stealth. In saving his life, she’d gained herself a Mercant knight who would always, always be in her corner.

  Before

  I dream of him every night. And yet he isn’t in my arms. I should’ve never even looked at the proposal Fernandez sent through. I should’ve listened when Mother advised me to talk to multiple others who had been in my position.

  I thought I knew better, thought I understood who I was and how carrying a child in my womb would affect me. I was wrong and I must live with that.

  —From the private journal of Magdalene Mercant

  “I’M SORRY.”

  “Why?” He made his voice hard, as hard as he was trying to make his heart. “You did everything legal. You had no responsibility to me.”

  The small woman with eyes of hazel brown and hair of moonlight gold didn’t look away, didn’t get up and leave. “It was my responsibility to ensure that no harm ever came to you. In that, I failed.” Cool, clear words, with no edge of excuse. “I am a Mercant—and no one gets to hurt our children.”

  He refused to believe her, refused to be vulnerable ever again even though he was scared and lonely and nothing in his body was working right. “Okay, fine. Can I be alone now?”

  “I deserve your rejection, but that won’t stop me from being your mother. Whatever you need, I will provide—including protection.”

  He stared out the window of the hospital suite rather than answering, his heart beating too fast and his skin all hot. “I hate you,” he bit out. “I hate you.”

  “I know.”

  Chapter 11

  Naysayers shout that Silence will favor the psychopaths among us, but they do not understand the intricacies of the safeguards built into the protocol. They stand in the path of progress out of ignorance and fear.

  —Catherine and Arif Adelaja, Architects of Silence (1951)

  PAYAL WALKED OUT of the conference room after her meeting and almost ran into Lalit. Her brother—taller than her by a foot, wide of shoulder and hard of jaw, his hair stylishly cut and his cologne crisp—stopped and did up the button on his navy suit jacket. “Agreement reached?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course. You were in charge.” He produced a smile so false she wondered how and why others fell for it.

  Payal, however, had no issue with the way Lalit chose to present himself to the world. Her issue had to do with the fact that he was a psychopath. “You’re in my way,” she said when he didn’t step aside. She made sure her voice was lacking in tone, and she didn’t break eye contact.

  Their father often denigrated changelings as “animals,” but her brother was as territorial as any animal, and he had far less reason for the violence in which he indulged whenever he thought he could get away with it. “I have a meeting with Father.”

  One side of his mouth pulled up. “Off you go, golden child.”

  She moved on without responding. Both of them knew the truth—after Varun’s execution, it was Lalit who’d become the favored child, the one Pranath Rao had intended to succeed him to the throne of the Rao empire.

  Payal had initially been a distant third in line, behind Varun and Lalit. Their father had only retrieved her from the school because he was a man who preferred more than one insurance policy. After they buried Varun, her job was to be a silent threat to Lalit. Because by then, their father had caught Lalit torturing a stray cat—and even Pranath Rao knew that to be a bad sign.

  The threat had appeared to work, with Lalit toeing the line.

  Then three senior members of the staff had caught eighteen-year-old Lalit cutting up the yet-warm corpse of a homeless human man he’d abducted off the street. To Pranath, the problem hadn’t been the act itself—but that Lalit had been distracted enough to get caught. The head of the Rao family was fine with psychopathic behavior so long as it didn’t draw negative attention to the family.

  Payal, still half-mad and with a scream at the back of her head, had nonetheless known that was wrong. She might be a murderer, but she’d acted to protect, and while the kill haunted her, she’d never go back and undo it—because that teacher had been wrong in brutalizing his students.

  As Lalit was wrong in harming his victims.

  He was the reason why there were no small domestic creatures in Vara, even though a medic had once suggested Payal would socialize better if she had a pet. Therapeutic animals were permitted under Silence in rare cases. Payal now had the power to make such decisions on her own, but she’d never bring an animal into this house.

  Lalit would use it as a weapon—and the poor creature would end up abused and dead.

  “The beggar is dead,” Lalit had said that day, his voice calm. “No one will talk. There is no problem.”

  Their father had steepled his fingers on his desk, his eyes a pale amber-brown that burned against the darker brown of his skin. Lalit had inherited those eyes, inherited most of Pranath’s features. “My investigators tell me that you’ve been less than discreet on multiple occasions. There is no way to stop the information from spreading, though I’ll do my best to ameliorate matters by buying people off.”

  Their father’s face had been a chill blank as he looked at Lalit. “Thankfully, your targets have all been human. They’re too afraid of our power to make trouble—and the others who know will keep their mouths shut if paid.”

  “We can afford it.”

  “The settlement money is just the start, Lalit.” A tone in Pranath’s voice that had Payal going motionless—the last time she’d heard it, she’d then had to witness a brother dying in agony. “If it gets out that my heir and successor is unstable, the family will lose millions upon millions. Our race does not tolerate mental instability.”

  “I’m not mentally unstable.” No change to Lalit’s tone, no hint of fear or of any other emotion. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  “I’d have let it go if you’d been discreet, but I can’t trust you now.” Pranath had shifted his attention to Payal with the speed of a cobra. “You’ll never have Lalit’s way with clients and collaborators, but at least you’ve proven capable of controlling your aberrant mind.” A glance at Lalit. “I don’t have to be concerned that she’ll surrender to the urge to torture someone midnegotiation.”

  “She’s an anchor. They’re murderers barely leashed and she’s already been blooded.”

  Pranath’s eyes boring into Payal’s. “Do you feel any urge to kill again, Payal?”

  “No, sir.” A lie. The madness inside her had constantly wanted to slam a blade into Lalit’s jugular, end his evil. But she’d been too young and untrained, and he had a predator’s instincts.

  “Payal will be my putative successor for the time being.” Pranath’s statement had rung around the room. “We can reconvene on the topic in another decade. Keep your nose clean in the interim, Lalit, and anyone who’s aware of your indiscretions to date may decide to forget them.”

  Payal had never been meant to actually take up the mantle. But then two things had happened in quick succession.

  Pranath Rao had suffered his accident.

  And Lalit had been caught by their paternal aunt doing something for which there could be no rational explanation when he was meant to be in full control of his urges: using a knife to carve shapes into the body of a teenaged maid employed at Vara for domestic duties. He’d been in an unlocked room with an old lattice window that allowed passers
by a view inside should they glance that way.

  Payal had been lucky that day—she’d happened to walk by as their aunt confronted Lalit. Using Lalit’s distraction as cover, she’d teleported to the girl, then out with her to an undisclosed location. She’d made a point of building a mental database of locations Lalit couldn’t access, including an old farmhouse that she’d bought with money from a small business venture.

  That far in the countryside, it had cost less than nothing—and the caretaker wasn’t aware it was in his name. He just knew that the owner paid him handsomely to look after the place and take care of any guests. Because while Payal hadn’t been able to save the homeless man, the maid was far from the first person she’d taken to the sanctuary of the farmhouse.

  Leaving the wounded maid to be tended to by a rural human doctor who never saw Payal, only the caretaker, she’d then made her way to her father’s secure recovery suite—a month after his accident and he was back at work, though under medical watch. He’d also already ordered renovations to the basement area he intended to turn into his long-term base of operations. She’d made her report about Lalit’s relapse while her brother was still in the midst of telling their aunt she needed to forget this for her own good.

  “I’ll be in charge soon enough,” he’d been saying when Payal last heard. “You’ll be under my control—and I don’t like people who get above their station.”

  After making her report, Payal had delivered her coup de grâce. “Lalit has so little foresight that he was recording the encounter. When I teleported the girl out, I also took the recording—I’ll forward you a copy.”

  “What do you intend to do with this information, Payal?” Pranath’s eyes were as motionless as a snake’s slitted pupils.

  “Hold it over Lalit’s head. You can make him your heir, but I’ll destroy him and the family in retaliation.” The threat had been a carefully calculated gamble, Payal all too aware of the thousands of blameless people who relied on the Rao family for their livelihoods. “He’s irrational, Father. He’ll take our family name to the gutter. Lalit is driven by his urges, not by reason.”