Last Guard

by Nalini Singh

  “This is Payal Rao. I need to talk to the director at once. It’s an emergency.”

  The assistant was well trained, because he made no attempt to divert Payal or block her access to Silver. “She is currently in a meeting, but I’ll break in. Please hold.”

  Silver came on the line five seconds later. “Payal,” she said in her crisp, clear tone. “What’s the problem and what resources—”

  “You need to check on Canto,” Payal interrupted. “He may have flamed out after an anchor emergency.” And Payal couldn’t teleport to him after her own energy output. She’d flatline halfway through, end up in a random location for which her brain had an image.

  It might be a safe place—or it might be the middle of a freeway.

  Silver hung up without a response. Payal was fine with that. She’d rather the other woman move with rapid speed than be polite. But her stomach ached as she worried and wondered. Would Silver think to call her back? She had no reason to do so. Payal was nothing to the Mercant family.

  Silver’s name flashed on her phone screen.

  Payal couldn’t answer fast enough. “Is Canto all right?”

  “Groggy but conscious. He did flame out, so he’ll be crashing soon.”

  Relief smashed into Payal, obliterating what control she’d achieved.

  “You’re an A?”

  When Payal confirmed that, Silver said, “He won’t be able to assist with the A network for twenty-four hours at least—it could be up to forty-eight. I’ve never known Canto to flame out—do we have to prepare for a collapse?”

  “His anchor point will hold.” Payal pushed her hair behind her ears. “Being an A is who we are, flameout or not. I’ll handle any more active issues while he recovers.” As he’d watched over her, she’d now watch over the interwoven system he was working so hard to create.

  Payal would make sure the As didn’t fall while Canto was down.

  * * *

  • • •

  AFTER hanging up with Payal Rao, Silver sat in her office and thought about the past few minutes. It was pure luck that she’d known Pavel was heading out to visit Canto, even better that he’d had his phone—he tended that way now that he’d talked Arwen into playing with his thoroughly disreputable bear self.

  As it was, Pavel had almost reached Canto’s place when she got in touch, and he’d been able to confirm that Canto was okay but “wiped.” Not a surprise given what she was hearing about the most recent assault against the Net. No official reports yet, but the Beacon livestream had eyewitness statements that seemed to point to a group of Scarabs doing something so dangerous they’d basically exploded their brains.

  She’d ask Canto for the details of his involvement when he woke. She’d grown up with him in her life, but their relationship wasn’t of siblings. Older by nine years and scarred by life as a child, he tended to ask more after her and Arwen than speak on himself. Only today did she realize how little she knew about the technical aspects of his base designation.

  Then there was Payal Rao. Ruthless operator, cardinal Tk who’d never been in the Council’s control, and major CEO. Also an anchor. One friendly enough with Canto to get him emergency assistance. Mercants. Always had to keep a few secrets. Valentin was right. Sneaky was in her family’s DNA.

  Lips curving at the thought of her bear mate—who’d nuzzled a kiss into her neck this morning before he’d let her leave for work—she picked up the phone and called Pavel. “Did you talk him into bed?”

  “Am I a bear?” was the insulted response. “Of course I talked him into bed. Even if he is the grumpiest Mercant alive.” A rustling. “I’m sneaking into his room. Yep, he’s down for the count. Let me throw a blanket over him.”

  After stepping back out, he said, “I’ll hang here until he comes out of it. Yasha’s happy to cover my security shift. Is there anything special I should do?”

  “Have a nutrient drink prepped for him for when he wakes, but that won’t be for hours yet.” She bit back the next question she wanted to ask, well aware it’d be a serious invasion of Canto’s privacy.

  Ethically, it was the right choice, but her protective instincts were a far more primal element of her psyche, and they struggled with it. Canto had protected her for years, even more so after she became the head of EmNet—Grandmother thought Silver didn’t know that her oft-scowling cousin with reclusive tendencies was the computronic genius who’d hacked his way through half the world to keep her safe.

  It was time for Silver to balance the scales, have his back. Because Payal Rao was a shark with great big teeth. A woman cold-eyed, merciless, and with zero loyalty to kin.

  Then Pavel said, “Hey, looks like you don’t have to worry about Canto so much. He’s had company.” The way the bear drew out the last word made it clear the company had been female.

  “Family?”

  “No. I know the Mercant scent—you all share a thread. This is new.” A deep breath. “Different. Layers to it. None of them are Mercant layers.”

  Which meant whatever the relationship, it wasn’t one that involved physical intimacy. “Tell me if he wakes,” she said before hanging up.

  Silver would talk to Canto directly about this, warn him about the predator with whom he was tangling.

  But when she mentioned her decision to Arwen later in the day, after he dropped by Denhome, her brother threw back his head and laughed so hard that he fell back on her and Valentin’s bed. He’d followed her into the bedroom when she went inside to take off her jewelry.

  “What is so amusing?” she asked in her iciest tone.

  It had zero effect on her empath brother—he knew she loved him down to the bone. “You. Mated. A. Bear.”

  “You’re currently playing with one,” she pointed out.

  “I’m not the one thinking of poking my nose into Canto’s business.” Sitting up on the bed, his fashionably cut black hair tousled but the pale blue of his shirt still crisp against the dove gray of his suit jacket, Arwen raised an eyebrow. His eyes were the same silver as hers, but uptilted sharply at the corners, his bones striking. “Do you really think Canto can’t handle himself against Payal Rao if something is going on?”

  “He has no experience dealing with people like her. Not when it comes to a personal relationship.”

  “Bear.” Arwen pointed. “Alpha bear.”

  Silver gave him a quelling look, but she got the point. She’d keep from interfering. But she’d also do some research on Payal Rao that wasn’t about the business or the work, but about who she was as a person. Because while Canto might be grumpy and nonsociable, he was family. He was also one of the rocks on which she stood—one of the quiet foundations of Mercant power.

  Silver would cut Payal Rao to pieces before she allowed her to harm Canto.

  “What if she’s Canto’s person?”

  Silver stared at her brother. “Payal Rao?”

  “Bear.”

  “Be quiet. I’m your elder.”

  “By ten minutes.” Laughing, he came over to hug her from the back, her brother with his snobby taste in clothes and a heart huge enough to contain the world. “But what if, Silver?”

  Putting aside her need to protect, Silver made herself consider the question. “I want Canto to have what I have,” she said at last. “He has such aloneness inside him. If Payal can reach him in a way I don’t think even Grandmother has . . . then I’ll back her all the way.”

  “And they call me the empath.” Arwen squeezed her tight. “I want that for him, too. He’s one of the best people I know—his heart, Silver, it’s a thing of courage and loyalty and stubborn will.”

  “Payal Rao took over five corporations last week in a bloodless coup.”

  “Alpha bear who can break you in half with his hands.”

  Silver took off her bracelet. “I’m still going to spy on her.” Just i
n case.

  “It’s the Mercant way.”

  Chapter 26

  A well-read bear is a dangerous creature.

  —Unknown bear philosopher

  PAYAL WAS GOOD at putting things in boxes, at shutting off parts of herself so the others could function. But though she crashed that night, a single need pulsed continuously at the back of her mind when she woke the next day. She kept on wanting to reach out to Canto even knowing he wouldn’t hear her.

  She was all too aware it was dangerous to be so distracted, especially when she was summoned to a meeting with her father. Lalit was already in the room, as smooth and polished as ever. Neither one of them spoke as they waited for Pranath’s attention.

  “Payal,” Lalit said when their father continued to ignore them, “you’re hiding out a lot in your room lately. Being overwhelmed, are you?”

  Before Payal could point out that they were here to discuss a major deal she’d negotiated, Pranath lifted his head from the organizer on which he was working. “This is work, Lalit. If you wish to play games, do so on your own time.”

  Lalit took a step forward, his hands in his suit pockets. A shove of telekinetic power pushed him back past Payal. That was . . . unexpected. Their father was a Tk, but not at the level evidenced by the strength of that shove. Which meant he had guards who were watching the goings-on in this room.

  Watching, not listening.

  Pranath Rao would never permit strangers to listen in on private family business. But those mirrors behind his bed? Yes, they could be one-way. Good to know.

  Lalit stopped before slamming into the far wall. “That was unnecessary, Father.” He hitched his jacket back into place.

  “Just a reminder that while I may be in this bed, I am the Rao king.” He made eye contact with them both. “You are only pawns on the chessboard.”

  “You seem to forget that I bring in billions every year,” Payal said with cool pragmatism. “Shall I add up the value of my most recent deals?” She didn’t care about credit—it was about being seen as powerful rather than weak.

  “You bring in those deals because I allow it.” Pranath’s voice was poisonous silk. “How long would you survive should I withdraw my protection?” A subtle reminder of the life-giving medicine that allowed him to act the puppet master.

  “As for you.” He swung the pale sharpness of his gaze toward Lalit. “You have no self-control. That makes you a waste of time except for the fact that you’re my secondary heir.”

  Was it any wonder, Payal thought, that Lalit regularly tried to find ways to assassinate her? Their father would like nothing more than for his two oldest living children to be vicious pit bulls straining at the leash to attack each other. Unfortunately, the psychological manipulation had taken with Lalit.

  “Did you bring us here for anything useful?” Payal took no pleasure in any of this; her brother was a psychopath and had probably been born so, but the way they’d been raised hadn’t helped when it came to his pathology. Perhaps if he’d been given therapy in childhood, he’d have become a garden-variety psychopath instead of a serial killer in training.

  Pranath tapped his organizer. “I’ve been approached by the Jannik-Kao Family Group with a possible opportunity. Lalit, I want you to run the financials. Payal, I want you to look at the overall possibilities. Sending information to you now.”

  Then he dismissed them.

  As they exited the rooms, Lalit murmured, “He created us both, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Undeniable,” she said, keeping it to the facts because she’d long ago realized there could be no common ground with Lalit. If he ever reached out, it was to dig up her weaknesses.

  Only once had she fallen for it: she’d been five at the time.

  She’d ended up with burns all up one leg as a result. They hadn’t been of the worst degree and had mostly faded after all this time, but her skin was just a little tight there. Just enough to remind her to never trust any olive branch he might hold out. That branch would always be coated with poison—or broken shards of glass.

  “Don’t you want to murder him sometimes?”

  Did he really think she was foolish enough to answer that? “I have work to do, and so do you.” Turning right, she left him at the crossroads of the hallway, and she knew he was staring. Thinking again if he could take her.

  She halted, looked over her shoulder, made sure he met her eyes.

  His mouth tightened at the silent reminder that she was a cardinal, but he shifted on his heel and went the other way. That didn’t mean she was safe. It just meant he’d be cunning when he came after her. But then, she’d known that nearly all her life.

  Canto.

  His name was a beat inside her, but she could do nothing about it. What she’d done yesterday had drained her. If she teleported now, she’d make it to him—but only just. She’d have to stay with him until she recovered.

  Her step hitched, her craving a current dragging her out into deeper and deeper water. But she couldn’t give in. She needed to stand sentinel, watch over the newly healed damage until he woke.

  Things calmed further and further as the hours passed.

  Until it got to the point that there were no more ripples and night had fallen over Delhi. Alone in her apartment, the Substrate stable, she couldn’t fight the urge any longer. She teleported to Canto . . . and came face-to-face with an unknown male with skin of mid-brown who had to have moved with predator speed to get to her in the heartbeat since she’d teleported in.

  She teleported to another area before the man could slam into her, only to realize he was frantically pulling back his punch and wobbling on his feet as he attempted to shift his center of gravity.

  “Izvinite!” he yelled, his head swiveling to where she’d gone, before switching to English accented in the way of someone who normally spoke a Slavic tongue. According to her quick Net search, izvinite was “sorry” in Russian. “Didn’t know it was you.”

  Payal had no major business interests in Russian-speaking locations and had never met this man with a compactly muscular build, his eyes a stunning aqua green behind wire-rimmed spectacles. Yet he knew her. She’d have asked him how except that her body swayed.

  She’d miscalculated what the anchor work yesterday had taken out of her. This was what came of being irrational, of going with emotion.

  Yet still, she said, “Canto?”

  “Fine. He’s in the bedroom.” Shoving the mahogany-colored strands of his choppily cut hair back from his face, the stranger walked closer on cautious feet. “Put your arm around my shoulders.”

  Because he’d asked instead of taken advantage of her obvious weakness, she did as he’d suggested, and he helped her walk to Canto’s bedroom doorway and look in.

  Long lashes shaded Canto’s cheeks as his chest rose and fell in an easy rhythm.

  “You want the other side of the bed?”

  Startled, she looked at the stranger . . . and saw eyes that were glowing just a little behind the clear lenses of his spectacles. A ring of amber encircled the aqua green, shooting light through his irises. Wild. Changeling. Sense of smell. Knowledge of Payal in Canto’s space. It added up to a conclusion of intimacy for him. “No,” she said. “The sofa.”

  He frowned but didn’t argue. He just helped her to that sofa and, after she lay down, found a blanket and opened it over her with gentle hands. Panic was metal on her tongue. “Who . . .”

  “Pavel. Friends call me Pasha.” He crouched down to meet her eyes. “Bear. Madly in love with a Mercant who’s leading me on a dance.”

  Madly in love with a Mercant.

  He wouldn’t hurt Canto.

  By extension, he wouldn’t hurt Payal—because he thought she belonged to Canto. And still the panic threatened to strangle her. He was an unknown, a threat. Heat built under her skin, her breathing turning j
agged.

  She had to stay awake.

  A brush across her mind, a sense of Canto wrapping her up in his arms. Sleep, she heard on a level beyond telepathy. I’ll keep you safe.

  I’m going mad, but it’s a beautiful madness was her last conscious thought before she slipped into sleep.

  * * *

  • • •

  PAVEL got a call from Silver not long after Payal’s arrival. “Stay home,” he told his alpha’s mate. “You just pulled a big day with that EmNet meeting and I’m set here.” Silver had already dropped by that morning to check on her cousin—and bring Pavel a change of clothing.

  Food wasn’t an issue; Canto had an open-cupboard policy for hungry bears.

  “Pasha,” she said very precisely, “there’s an unfamiliar cardinal telekinetic in Canto’s house.”

  “She’s asleep. Super scary.” He grinned at the sound that came down the line. “Seriously, Siva,” he said, using the name Dima and the other cubs called her, “she was more worried about Canto than anything. You rest. I’ll keep you updated.”

  Silver argued for two more minutes before she interrupted herself with a huge yawn and finally admitted to her exhaustion. Not that it would stop her. Soon as she woke, she’d be driving over.

  Still, it was better than nothing.

  That sorted, he grabbed a spare unsecured organizer of Canto’s that he knew the other man was okay with him borrowing, and went out on the deck to finish a book he’d started earlier. He wasn’t a total barbarian. And Arwen had a thing for men who read.

  Tucking one arm behind his head, he dived in.

  It was an hour later that he tiptoed in from the deck. He’d heard the cardinal’s breathing drop into an intensely slow and deep rhythm, wanted to check she wasn’t in trouble. The last thing he needed was for Canto to tear him a new one because he hadn’t looked out for Canto’s woman.

  The damn Psy was as prickly as a grizzly right out of hibernation.