He gripped the ends of the chair arms to keep from tearing away the straps so he could rise, wrap her up in his embrace.
When the kaleidoscope finally blinked out ten minutes later, Kaia lifted the top of the scanning equipment and pushed it back behind his chair. "I have to get back to the kitchen," she said with a glance at the time, "but I'll pop in again when Attie has the results--if you don't mind."
Bo caught her hand. "No secrets between us." He'd give her everything he had, even knowing that he had only a five percent chance of giving her freedom from the fear that ten more tomorrows was all they'd ever have.
Leaning in, Kaia ran her fingers through his hair, then kissed him with a wildness that left him shaken. He was still trying to catch his breath when she walked out the door. She'd never be an easy lover, his siren. But she'd love fiercely and she'd light up his fucking life.
"You adore her."
Bo looked at Dr. Kahananui. "I'd lay the world at her feet if I could." He wasn't about to play games or hide what he felt for Kaia. "Still five percent?"
"Unfortunately." She rose, arched her back, and winced.
Having gotten up, Bo hesitated. "Um, do you want me to do . . ." He held out his palms awkwardly.
She laughed. "My mate would sulk for days. You're not a cousin yet--and I did send him out."
Bo swallowed his sigh of relief; he'd have massaged her back if she'd said yes to his offer, but it wasn't exactly an area in which he could claim any expertise. "So, what's next?"
It took a further three hours to complete the full battalion of tests, with Kaia coming in with coffee, hot chocolate, and snacks about fifteen minutes before Dr. Kahananui was satisfied she had all the data she needed. Bo ended up standing with his hand on the back of Kaia's chair afterward, both of them focused on the results.
"As I told you," Dr. Kahananui began, "there's a risk the compound is altering the effectiveness of the chip in your head, but I can't be certain of that without running a test you'll no doubt find deeply uncomfortable."
Having drunk half his mug of coffee, Bo put it aside with a frown. "I haven't said no yet." This wasn't only about his future--no matter how fucking badly he wanted that future. Lily, Cassius, Heenali, Ajax, Zeb, Domenica, so many lives, so many brilliant minds, rode on the outcome of this study. "What's the test?"
Dr. Kahananui's next words were stark. "A telepathic attempt against your mind."
Every one of Bo's muscles bunched, his knuckles turning white from the force of his grip on the back of Kaia's chair. He was conscious of her turning to look up at him, her hand rising to touch his. "It won't be so bad," she said with a soft smile that hit him right in the solar plexus, it was so full of light.
He smiled back at her because he couldn't help it. Even when what her cousin was suggesting was his worst fucking nightmare. "Yeah?"
"Atalina has access to a telepath she trusts without question."
Bo felt an unexpected chill whisper across his skin. "I haven't heard of any Psy defecting into BlackSea."
"We don't need a Psy." Eyes dancing, Kaia got up and put her hands on his chest. "I can do it."
Time stood still, the world frozen in place. Bo could see every separate lash shading Kaia's eyes, the air coming out of his mouth a slow burst of particles and the beat inside his chest a bass of sound.
It all crashed in a massive boom inside his skull. "What?" The word came out harsh, rough as crushed granite.
Eyes of primal onyx locking with his own, the playfully secretive curve of her lips fading to be replaced by deep grooves between her brows.
"How can you be Psy?" He closed his hand over her wrist while his blood ran hot, then cold, then back again in a chaotic cycle that was a roar in his ears.
"I'm BlackSea." Kaia's response was firm, her expression guarded. "Both my great-great-grandmothers mated powerful telepaths. I also have multiple other Psy ancestors on both sides of the family tree." She shrugged, as if she hadn't just shattered Bowen's sense of reality. "I'm hardly unique. Plenty of changelings have Psy ancestry."
So did any number of human families, but this was very, very different. "You're talking about attempting to hack my mind." As another telepath had once done, shoving her cold mental fingers into Bowen's brain. "That's not a small genetic quirk."
"One of Kaia's direct ancestors was a cardinal, the other a hairsbreadth from cardinal-level power." Dr. Kahananui looked from Bo to Kaia, her eyebrows drawn together. "My parents did a gene map for Kaia when she turned sixteen--their idea of a birthday present." A slight smile. "While predicting psychic strength on the gene level remains a murky exercise, Kaia appears to have inherited every single Psy gene floating around in the familial gene pool."
Bowen's confusion crystalized into a single blinding thought.
Tightening his grip on her wrist, he said, "Are you sick, having headaches?" His heart might be bionic, but it felt as if it would explode from the pressure within. "The Psy have a psychic network that provides the biofeedback they need to survive. Are you in a network?"
"I'm fine. You don't have to play knight in shining armor." A pat of his chest with her free hand, her lips curving up a little.
Bo thought of the packs that did have Psy defectors. Those defectors were alive and thriving, so changelings--BlackSea included--must have some way of providing the energy needed by strongly psychic minds.
But now that he knew Kaia was safe, he could no longer ignore the crushing wave of betrayal that had slammed into his heart the instant he understood she was a telepath. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"It never came up." Her fingers curled into his chest. "It's a part of me. Like my arm or my leg. I don't go around telling people I have an arm--and there are no other telepaths on Ryujin. My telepathy is a dormant limb nearly a hundred percent of the time."
He wanted to shake her. "You've listened to me talk about how defenseless humans feel against telepaths. You know exactly how I feel about the Psy. Yet you said nothing!" Bo had trusted her with his soul, and she'd held back this elemental piece of herself.
Wrenching her wrist out of his grasp, she stepped back, and her eyes, they were no longer in any way human. "Because it didn't apply!" Her chest rose and fell in jagged breaths. "I have ethical lines I will never cross! What does it matter if I'm a telepath when I would never, never enter another mind without permission?"
"That's not what this is about!" It was about him and Kaia and a bond they'd forged based on truth.
"No, it's about you thinking of me as a psychic rapist!" The brutal word was a verbal slap that made his head ring. "No, don't speak. I don't want to hear anything you have to say."
Bo wasn't about to be given the brush-off, not by his siren, but he caught a glimpse of Dr. Kahananui's face at that instant. Her shoulders were tense, her face pale, her eyes darting between him and Kaia. Shit. "Do it," he said to Kaia even as his stomach twisted. "Run the test." The rest of this conversation, they needed to have in private.
Hands fisted by her side and her eyes pools of black, she said, "Think of a five-number sequence as hard as you can and push the sequence out of your mind."
Bo took three seconds to put together the sequence. "I have it. Pushing now."
Kaia stared directly at him for at least a minute before shaking her head. "Nothing, not even a whisper. Your shield is rock solid." She folded her arms. "Since you think I'm a lying cheat--"
"I never said that," he began.
"--you should get a second opinion from a telepath you trust."
"Ashaya Aleine should be suitable, I think," Dr. Kahananui said, her expression deadly in its immobility. "I'll get in touch with her." She held Bowen's gaze. "You should go. I need to scrutinize the test results in more detail."
It was a clear dismissal, but Bo wasn't used to meekly following orders. "Come with me," he said to Kaia. "We have to talk."
"We have nothing to talk about." She turned her back to him, spine stiff and shoulders rigid.
Bo went
to speak again when Dr. Kahananui winced and shifted restlessly in her chair. No way could he add any further stress to her system. Nodding curtly, he left--but this conversation wasn't over. Not by a long shot.
Chapter 40
I have to do this, find out what happened. I can't live with regrets.
--Heenali Roy to Domenica Bianchi
BO COULDN'T THINK. His head rang, his senses wrapped up in a black fog.
How could she not have told him?
How could she have kept such an integral part of herself from him?
Shoving both hands through his hair as the questions repeated over and over in an endless loop, he walked back to his room and grabbed his board shorts. When he got to the pool, he found it mercifully empty, the salt water motionless but for the silent movement of the small creatures that called it home.
He changed quickly before diving in. Haunted by memories of how Kaia had laughed when he'd thrown her, how she'd said he was "fun to play with" when he'd never known how to play aside from in his role as brother to Lily, he swam as hard and as fast as his body would permit.
Lap after lap after lap.
His muscles were feeling it by the time he pulled himself out of the pool, but the crushing blackness in his head hadn't let up and his thoughts ran on a tortured circuit. He could've blamed it on the experiment, but he knew this was very much him.
His sense of betrayal.
His anger.
His . . . hurt.
Bo's hand crushed the soft fabric of the towel he was using to rub his hair dry after a quick shower. He hadn't wanted to admit that, even to himself, but he was so fucking hurt that she hadn't told him. Had she not trusted him to react in the right way?
His mind flashed back to the image of her mischievous smile, and how it had wilted in the wake of his response.
He'd done that.
Gut churning, he got dressed and made his way back to his room. Then, despite the tumult in his mind, he folded up his shirtsleeves and got to work. His fucked-up emotional state didn't mean he was no longer the security chief of the Alliance; as long as his brain worked, he'd do everything he could for his people.
And when it came to any subject but Kaia, he could think clearly.
First, he finished reading the files Lily had forwarded to him. So far, she'd found no indication that one of the knights might be involved in the high-stakes poker world. Another dead fucking end. But it was her final update--sent while he'd been in the lab with Dr. Kahananui--that had him swearing a blue streak.
Calling Cassius rather than Lily because this wasn't a data matter, he said, "What the fuck is this about Heenali going AWOL?" He'd started the investigation on her because that was his duty and he couldn't turn his face from it, but he'd never truly expected to find evidence of conscious betrayal. However, for her to go missing now? It poured fuel onto the embers of suspicion.
Cassius made a face. "It's not what you think--or what we thought when Lily sent that report." Folding his arms, he braced his feet, his body swaying in a way that made it clear he was on a waterborne vessel. The wood paneling behind him told Bowen nothing further about his location.
"Turns out she told Domenica where she was going," Cassius continued. "After the ex-boyfriend. She wants to convince him to give the relationship another go."
"Oh, for Christ's sake!" And yet how the fuck could Bo say anything against Heenali's behavior when his head was a screwed-up mess and his heart bruised? "At least tell me she's keeping in touch with Domenica."
"Yeah. I also stuck a tracking dot on that knife she takes everywhere." Cassius didn't look happy about his decision. "I'm still feeling like an asshole, but at least my assholishness might help her out if she gets into a jam."
"Range on the dots isn't huge." Useful because they were all but undetectable, the devices had the concordant limited amount of tech and transmitting power. "Does Domenica have her general location?"
Cassius nodded. "She made Heenali promise to check in twice a day, said she was worried about how down Heenali was."
"I never understood what Heenali saw in that guy."
"All shine and smile and no grit," Cassius said bluntly. "But I figured he was her version of a pretty girl who didn't ask too many questions."
Bowen had made much the same assessment--that Heenali needed a lover who didn't challenge her; she'd spent her life fighting challenges. Maybe, he'd thought, she just wanted to hang out with a handsome man who found her attractive and treated her as if she were an ordinary girlfriend, not one who was never far from her favorite knife.
Trey Gunther had given her roses for Valentine's Day, sent chocolates during the long periods when he was away working his salesman route. It was witnessing Heenali's response to the romantic gifts that had made Bowen soften toward the other man--whatever Gunther's faults, he'd made Heenali smile and that was as rare a sight as with Cassius.
Wishing his knight well in her quest to heal her broken relationship, Bo said, "Have you got a staffing issue?"
Cassius shook his head. "Heenali briefed her deputy and got ahead on her work before she took off." Unfolding his arms, he put his roughly scarred hands on his hips. "But, with her gone, no one will blink if I step in to oversee the odd thing. I'm heading out to talk to the captain of one of the ships that breached BlackSea's territorial borders."
Bowen realized Cassius must be on a small vessel heading out to where the big ships anchored in far deeper water. "Brief me as soon as you're done," he told his best friend. "Malachai Rhys is letting me run this, but I don't know how long his patience will last."
His eyes on the blackness outside the window, he shared details of the brutal image Malachai had shown him. "I had an erratic signal at the time, couldn't complete the upload, but looks like I have a stronger signal today." Pausing for a second, he sent the image. "Fifty percent, seventy-five . . . you should have it."
Face as hard as stone after taking in the photo of the bloodied changelings on the deck of the Quiet Wind, Cassius said, "I don't care what the fuck evidence this Hugo has compiled, Heenali would never help butcher innocent people. Especially not water changelings. She's always asking to be allowed in on the BlackSea meetings--she's fascinated by them."
Bo didn't say it out loud, but Heenali's fascination could well be a cover for far darker aims. He ran up against a solid wall of disbelief seconds after the thought.
No, not Heenali.
But they had to collect evidence to prove that beyond any doubt--right now, everything pointed to her.
His mood even darker after he ended the conversation with Cassius, he decided to do what he should've done from the start: find out about Hugo. The question was, how did he do that without getting stonewalled? The other man was a clanmate, while Bo was a relative stranger.
But he was security chief for a reason: he knew there was more than one way to ask a question. Heading back out, he glanced at the closed door to the lab and knew Kaia couldn't still be inside. It'd be easy enough to swing by the kitchen if he wanted to track her down, but he remained too messed up to see her again, his feelings of betrayal raking bloody furrows inside his skin.
When he spotted Carlotta sitting at a seaward table with a big-boned man whose sailor-brown skin glowed with health, he walked over. "Mind if I join you?"
Carlotta waved a hand graciously at the empty chair at the table. It was across from her, her companion seated so he faced the seaward wall--and was by her side.
"Bowen," she said, "this is my mate, Filipe."
Bowen shook the other man's extended hand before sitting down. "I think we've already met in your other form." He nodded at the transparent wall that looked out into the ocean. "You were the reason I realized this was definitely not Venice."
Chuckling, Filipe ate the last bite of his cookie. "Carlotta's been telling me you think you have a chance with Kaia."
It was the perfect way in. "That's kind of why I came over." He shook his head when Carlotta offered him a cooki
e from the plate in the center of the table. "Everyone talks about Hugo, but I can't get a handle on who he is as a man."
He knew the other man liked poker a little too much, and that he was a comms expert, but Hugo was an empty silhouette beyond that vague sprinkling of facts. "My rival is a shadow, not a flesh-and-blood man."
Carlotta's pale green eyes held his over the rim of her coffee cup. "He is one of our vanished," she said softly. "He's no obstacle in your path."
Chapter 41
Hugo, you're late! We're going to miss the start of the show!
--Message from Kaia Luna (16) to Hugo Sorensen (16)
"LOVE ISN'T THAT simple," Bo replied, and using that word, it came easy. It felt right. And yet his mind continued to churn, his heart fucking aching with the hurt. "A man who isn't here has no faults, can't make Kaia angry."
Carlotta nodded after a long pause, a slight curve to her lips. "Absence does definitely make the heart grow fonder." She looked at Filipe and something unspoken passed between them, the communication so effortless that Bo thought of a distant future in which he and Kaia sat next to each other and spoke with their eyes.
Filipe's deep voice shattered the fragile daydream. "Hugo's a charmer, as my ma used to say. That boy can make Bebe herself laugh, and when he was younger, he could make anyone, even my Carly, forgive him his sins." Reaching out an age-spotted hand, he closed it over his mate's.
She turned hers upside down, wove her fingers through his. "Black-haired, with skin as dark as Filipe's and a smile like the sun, he's got the devil in him--but it's a charming, likable devil. There's no meanness in Hugo."
Bowen had never been called charming. "What's he like as a friend?"
"He can be fickle," Carlotta said with a smile. "But he's so joyously dismayed about being late or forgetting an appointment or not paying back a loan that you forgive him instantly." A glance at her mate. "He was careful with Kaia, though, always there when she needed him."
"She's special to him," Filipe confirmed. "He'd do anything for her, I think. They laughed together a lot."