Allegiance of Honor

by Nalini Singh

  “Worth it, sir,” she’d said when he’d shaken his head at her afterward. “I didn’t want any rumors out there, just the cold, hard facts. You don’t deserve to have anyone questioning your actions.”

  Hugging her against his chest, one hand cradling her head, Lucas had pressed a kiss to her hair. “You’re going to be trouble, but it turns out this pack likes trouble.”

  She’d left with a dimpled smile, Rina by her side. The twenty-four-year-old DarkRiver soldier was helping the younger girl settle into the pack, and it wasn’t a chance partnership. Rina had made more trouble than most of her yearmates combined before Lucas put Dorian in charge of her training and development. Faced with a trainer who accepted zero bullshit, she’d exceeded all expectations without losing the edginess that made her Rina.

  Lucas knew she’d be good for the high-spirited ocelot soldier.

  “A bloody room,” he said to Dev now, “wouldn’t normally put off the kind of mercenaries who kidnap children.”

  “Maybe not, but the idea of having their entrails clawed out and tied into knots in front of them, or having their dicks cut off while they scream, or their eyes plucked out before they’re released, just so you can hunt them and tear them apart with your teeth, isn’t sitting well with most. Especially when the failed attempt to snatch Naya has skewed the risk of capture into the ‘ninety-nine-percent certainty’ category.”

  Lucas stared at the other man. “Knotted entrails and dicks being cut off? Blinding people so I can hunt them?”

  Cheeks creasing, Dev angled his head. “Yeah, I didn’t think that was your style. Looks like someone’s been embellishing on your behalf and doing a damn good job of it. You’ve now got a reputation as a scary motherfucker with no limits when it comes to your kid and your pack.”

  The Forgotten leader leaned back against a tree. “Oh, and the rumors make it clear you’re also brutally intelligent and your pack has the smarts to dig out financial connections, no matter how deep a mercenary team might bury those connections in an effort to avoid retaliation.”

  Dev smiled at Naya when she padded over to growl playfully at them before making her way back to her playmates. “It’s also gotten out that you confiscated the captured assault team’s money—mercenaries hate working for free even more than they do being subjected to torture.”

  Lucas had put that money into a trust for the ocelot children, with the unanimous agreement of the adult ocelot survivors. He’d have put all four million of SkyElm’s money into that trust, but the survivors had been adamant that they wanted to contribute to their new pack, so one million had gone into the DarkRiver fund used for the education of cubs.

  None of the adults had wanted to take any of the remaining million, but he’d made each one accept an amount that would give them room to breathe while they settled into their new lives. The rest, at their request, would act as the capital for a scholarship for young inventors. Named the SkyElm Grant, it would ensure the pack’s name lived on as part of something good, not simply in memories of horror.

  “Huh,” he said in response to Dev’s revelations about his own apparent reputation for meting out horrific torture.

  Lucas would savage the world for those who were his own—but he wasn’t into torture. Never had been. Still, it was a useful reputation to have if it helped protect the most vulnerable members of DarkRiver. “That explains the sudden wary respect I’m seeing in the eyes of Psy corporations we’re working with on business deals.”

  “Business gone down recently?”

  “Up. Appears the Psy respect that kind of merciless retribution.” Lucas smiled, his panther amused as it realized the identity of the person most likely behind his new reputation.

  Nikita Duncan was more than deviously intelligent enough to figure out how to protect her daughter and grandchild long-term and what would scare even the most hardened men and women. The fact that his reputation would also protect other children was a side effect that wouldn’t matter to her, but it mattered a heck of a lot to Lucas.

  “So it’s done?” Dev asked. “The trail ended with the ocelots?”

  Lucas shook his head. “No, the alpha was just a useful weapon to point in our direction. Someone else was driving the operation.” Hopefully, the captain of the ship Dorian had pinpointed would provide further intelligence.

  Jamie was leading the op to intercept the ship in question, which involved taking a flight to one of BlackSea’s floating cities in a craft capable of water landings. Miane had made one available for their use after DarkRiver and SnowDancer allied with her pack. From that point, Jamie would get on a BlackSea underwater craft and sneak up on the ship, then climb up and into it with a small team of water changelings.

  It seemed an appropriate operation for a cat who’d taken up deep-sea diving.

  “We’ll get them,” he said to Dev. “Sooner or later, we’ll find the people pulling the strings.” It was the unyielding promise of an alpha—and of a father.

  Letters to Nina

  From the private diaries of Father Xavier Perez

  May 7, 2075

  Nina,

  He’s trusted me with his name, the Psy soldier. I won’t write it here—if my letters are ever found, I don’t want to betray my friend.

  I know you must be thinking that this is surely a double cross, that he’ll betray me. I thought the same until I realized he had no reason to approach me, or to want me with him. I’m no one, a broken fragment of a lost village. At the time he and I first met, I was a drunk, a fool who was more hindrance than help.

  No, my new friend had no reason to take me into his confidence except that he saw I needed a mission, a reason for being. In giving it to me, he has given me more than he’ll ever know. For the first time in an eternity, I feel like Xavier again. I feel like the man I was before the day murder stained our village and I saw you jump into the water.

  At times, I even glimpse the rare flame of hope.

  Your Xavier

  Chapter 34

  IT WAS VASIC who Miane Levèque most often contacted now with updates on the Leila Savea situation and Zaira with whom the BlackSea alpha met with simply to talk—one dangerous woman to another, their friendship a growing thing. As leader of the Arrow Squad, Aden might’ve been expected to be dissatisfied with that state of affairs, but he felt the opposite: his mate and his best friend were building powerful bonds of their own.

  Should the worst ever happen, should Aden be assassinated, Vasic would have the skills and contacts to step in and Zaira . . . No, Aden couldn’t predict what Zaira would do except seek vengeance. And after that was done, he had the haunting conviction that she’d choose to join him. So he’d have to stay alive. That was all there was to it.

  The thought echoed in his mind as he grabbed a handhold on a rock face not far from the RainFire aeries and swung over and up. A couple of meters from him, Remi, the alpha of the small leopard pack, was doing much the same. They were dressed similarly, too, in dark outdoor pants and T-shirts, boots on their feet and gloves on their hands; the only real difference was that Remi’s T-shirt was white, Aden’s olive green.

  “So,” Remi said, his biceps bulging as he attempted a particularly difficult crossing over a jagged gap in the rock face, “since the wolves are keeping Ming busy for now and Trinity hasn’t collapsed, what’s on your mind?”

  Aden held his position until he saw that Remi had made it safely. They were climbing separately but acting as each other’s spotters, ready to send out an alert in case of an accident. Such an accident was highly unlikely, not with Remi having claws with which he could hook into every tiny crevice and Aden a far more careful climber than his more instinctive friend. However, taking things for granted got people—and Arrows—killed.

  “Did you know BlackSea holds regular gatherings of its people?” he asked after they’d both begun climbing again. “They come from every corne
r of the globe.” He pushed off with his feet, caught an overhang, kicked up so that he was in a crouched position vertically for a second before he managed to get himself on the overhang and ready for the next part of the climb.

  Remi whistled. “Nice move.”

  “Zaira taught me that one.” His lover was currently “cat climbing” the internal RainFire rock wall. She’d been press-ganged into it by the smaller, less powerful cats who wanted to know how she did it without claws.

  Them, Zaira could’ve resisted. But when little Jojo had jumped up and down at the idea of watching Zaira do another climb, well, his tough commander had a mile-wide vulnerable streak there. How’s the climb going? he telepathed to her, the connection flawless at this range.

  Fairly uneventful. I threw in a semi-slip to make it more exciting, but now that I’ve done it once, it’s not a true challenge.

  Because Zaira climbed as much with her mind as with her body, would’ve remembered every grip, every successful move. Don’t show up the cats too badly.

  Soft laughter along the black-on-black bond that connected them, his lover’s firelight hidden within the black. The entire squad needed her fire, thrived on it, whether she accepted her importance or not.

  Their honor is safe with me. Zaira rarely laughed aloud, but mind to mind, he was becoming addicted to the sound of her happiness. Are you done?

  Halfway.

  They disconnected without need for good-byes. He and Zaira lived in each other’s minds, never intrusive, just . . . present. He loved being able to feel her blade of a mind at the edge of his consciousness, liked knowing that should she need him, he could respond within split seconds.

  “Sounds like our pack circle events.” Remi’s voice brought him fully back to the here and now. “All packs have gatherings, and as different as BlackSea is, they’re still changeling, still a pack.”

  “The goal is to reinforce pack bonds?” Aden was still rebuilding his own “pack,” trying to heal his broken family, and he wasn’t so proud as to ignore advice from a race that was all about family. Especially when the man giving that advice was a self-confessed “remedial” alpha who was learning right alongside Aden.

  “Sure,” Remi said, as above them, an eagle flew with stately grace, circling the rock face, as if taking in their activity. “But it’s also about celebrating important events like matings, births, the achievements of our cubs.” He hauled himself over a near-smooth section of rock. “Why? You thinking of a gathering?”

  Aden nodded when the other man glanced over, Remi’s shaggy brown hair damp with sweat and pushed off his face. “If a pack whose members often swim alone can do it, why not the squad?” Ivy Jane had already begun the process by inviting Arrows to her home for dinners. She’d even held an informal party of sorts—though with a guest list made up mostly of Arrows that party was never going to be raucous. However, it would take a coordinated effort to get the majority of his people home for an event.

  “Hell, Aden,” Remi said, “from what you’ve told me, your people deserve a seriously epic shindig.”

  Aden and the leopard alpha were now side by side, having come closer as the rock face narrowed. Meeting Remi’s eyes, the color a clear topaz striated with light, he said, “I don’t think my Arrows, child or adult, are ready for such an unstructured event.”

  The reason Ivy’s party had worked was because it had been small enough that she’d been able to have one-on-one contact with her guests, easing their way into the gathering. Any bigger and Arrows would start to withdraw behind an instinctive protective shielding. They’d bury their newfound emotions, fall back on decades-long training designed to turn them into remote, inhuman machines.

  For to be an Arrow was to live within a strict set of rules.

  Aden could soften that but he couldn’t erase it. Not when the people in his family were some of the deadliest on the planet—the rules and structure gave them a chance to have lives, and now, to have families. A telepath who wasn’t terrified of destroying a child’s mind with a simple slip made for a far more stable and happy parent, as did a telekinetic who didn’t have to worry he’d crush a child’s windpipe by being unaware of his strength.

  Those mistakes simply did not happen inside the squad.

  Silence had been an ugly construct, but it had taught the squad some good along with all the bad.

  “Hmm.” Remi took a grip, then grinned. “Let’s talk about it at the top. See you there, Arrow.”

  They began to climb with single-minded focus. As a changeling, Remi’s greater strength and flexibility gave him a natural advantage, but Aden had mapped out the entire climb in his head before he ever started. He didn’t need to pause or to rethink. As a result, they were evenly matched—and pulled themselves over the edge at the same time.

  Laughing, Remi slipped out the bottle of water he’d carried strapped to his thigh. “Fuck, that was impressive for a man with no claws.”

  Aden took a drink from his own bottle. “You didn’t use your claws.” Remi’s gloves were undamaged.

  The other man put aside his water to tug them off. “Yeah, well, it’s only fun if it’s a fair fight. Now if you’d been like your friend, the Tk, it would’ve been no holds barred.”

  “Vasic has only one arm.” Samuel Rain’s attempts at making Vasic a working prosthetic continued to fail—the last one in spectacular fashion. “The newest iteration of the prosthetic currently in play shorted out in a shower of sparks that set fire to Ivy’s new tablecloth.”

  Aden had been at the orchard during the incident, so he knew firsthand that the empath had not been happy when she saw the damage. “She took a hammer to that particular prosthetic.” And if there had been a little too much force in her blows, well, even empaths needed outlets for grief.

  Not cognizant of the sadness that had driven Ivy’s incensed reaction, Remi’s shoulders shook. “Vasic might have only one arm, but he’s a telekinetic. They move in a way that’s almost like a changeling but different. Can’t explain it.”

  Aden didn’t need more of an explanation; he’d seen Vasic climb, knew exactly what Remi was trying to describe. “Yes, he’d beat both of us, even with only one arm.”

  “Talk for yourself.” Remi’s tone was mock-insulted. “But the party thing—you need an excuse to give it structure. Anything good happen that you want to celebrate?” A pause. “I know your squad lost an elder recently. It’s even more important that you celebrate joy in the aftermath, that you show your Arrows that life, it’s got a lot of different faces.”

  Aden thought of the children’s achievements, decided their confidence was too new and fragile yet to put even under a celebratory spotlight. Then he sensed Zaira at the back of his mind, happy in whatever she was doing, and knew. “We’ve had a number of bondings. Matings.” The squad had picked up and begun to use the changeling term, and they weren’t the only ones in the PsyNet.

  “Ivy and Vasic had a wedding,” he continued, thinking back to an orchard dressed in sunshine and scented with spring blossoms. “As did Abbot and Jaya.” Held in the Maldives, the traditional Indian wedding had been a feast of color and sensation that made Aden doubt very much that the vast majority of Jaya’s family had ever truly been Silent. “The rest of us had no familial or cultural need to celebrate that way.”

  “A mating or a long-term bonding is a big thing,” Remi countered. “It should be marked and celebrated.” The alpha’s eyes were leopard when they met Aden’s. “Your cubs have to follow rules, as do mine, but we have to balance that by giving them a chance to run wild.” A slight grin. “Your kids are probably far better behaved than ours, but give them an opportunity to realize the rules have been relaxed and I predict sweet mayhem.”

  Aden couldn’t imagine the children under his care ever causing mayhem . . . but then he thought of how little Jojo had “attacked” him on his last visit, growling and snarling playfull
y without so much as scratching him, and knew he wanted his tiny Arrows to feel the same freedom even as they continued to learn how to control their violent abilities.

  “An event to celebrate the bondings in the squad.” He nodded, his eyes on the sprawling vista of trees and mountains visible from this vantage point. “I’m going to speak to my senior people, see what we need to do to pull it off. Thank you for the advice.”

  Touching his water bottle to Aden’s, Remi said, “I knew I was the brains of this outfit.”

  Aden felt his lips curve at the leopard alpha’s statement, right as another mind touched his. “Vasic just asked if I have time to meet him for a sparring session.” The request had been between friends, rather than Arrow to Arrow. “I’ve invited him to join us instead.”

  “Hell, yeah,” Remi said. “I want to see him climb.”

  Vasic ’ported in at the bottom of the rock face ten minutes later, having returned home first to change into clothing and boots suitable for climbing.

  Instead of telepathing—that would shut Remi out of the conversation—Aden yelled down his and Remi’s climbing time. “See if you can beat that!”

  Vasic’s wintery eyes were brilliant in the early evening sunlight when he looked up and pointedly raised his single arm. Aden shrugged, as beside him, Remi said, “Minimal use of your telekinesis permitted—just enough to compensate for your other arm!”

  Vasic’s eyes narrowed. Stepping back from the rock face, he looked at it carefully for several minutes before returning to take his first grip. Aden could tell within minutes that Vasic was actually using far less Tk than would’ve been permitted under Remi’s rule. “He’s utilizing pure muscle and intelligence.”

  Remi whistled. “I told you. Man moves like a cat.”