"They don't miss home?" The changeling race's clan-minded nature was both a strength and a weakness.
"We take home with us wherever we go--at least ten other bears tag along." Nova shook her head. "Hard to find privacy sometimes, but honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way."
As if to underscore her comments, multiple voices called out Nova's name.
"Later!" Nova called back. "I'm showing our guest around."
A hundred questions came at them, all to do with Silver.
"Act like bears, not wolves." Nova's stern statement had the entire group laughing big belly laughs. The laughter sent a couple of children rolling around on the rugs scattered across the floor in a riot of well-worn color that somehow wasn't jarring to the senses.
Ignoring the cacophony, Nova led her across the vast expanse and toward what appeared to be an entrance to the Cavern. "Go through this, along the passage, and you'll be outside," the healer told her. "If there's an emergency and you can't reach this entranceway, head for that one or that one." She pointed them out. "Then follow StoneWater bears out through the back way."
"I know you can't detail the escape routes, Nova," Silver said, having picked up the other woman's discomfort. "It's about protecting your vulnerable against an unknown."
Nova's smile returned, the healer's gentleness an almost palpable force. It was the same sensation Silver felt near empaths. As if they had an internal candle that produced a glow strong enough to encompass everyone in their vicinity.
A quite different sensation from Valentin's raw warmth.
"You're unlikely to ever need those back routes," Nova added. "No one would get this close to the heart of the clan without having bombed the hell out of everything around us."
Since even the wolves had apparently never penetrated deep into StoneWater land, Silver tended to believe her. About to ask another question, she felt a whisper of dizziness. "I believe I better return to my room."
Nova's gaze grew sharp. "Let's go."
It took them longer to return to the room than it had to get this far, with Silver growing progressively weaker. By the time she lay down in bed, she was so exhausted she didn't protest the fact Nova pulled off her boots and covered her with a blanket. "Spasibo," she managed to say.
"Hush now." Nova took several more readings. "I spoke to the physician who treated you--she said the waves of exhaustion will come and go for a day or two, depending on how much rest you get. But after that, you should be as healthy as a bear."
Silver wanted to reply, but her brain had other ideas. She slept.
Chapter 11
Sneaky like a cat.
--Handwritten note pasted to the back of Valentin's door
VALENTIN RETURNED TO the heart of the clan in the late afternoon and immediately caught the barest hint of a familiar scent: frigid ice with a hidden spark of fire. Silver had passed through the Cavern some time earlier. That meant she might be awake.
His bear rose to its feet inside him, its big heart thundering.
"Uncle Mishka!"
Rubbing his hand over the tight black curls of the little boy with skin of darkest brown who'd wrapped himself around Valentin's lower leg, he continued to walk, the changeling barnacle clamped on tight. "It's done," he said to Pieter. "The wolves have agreed to the new perimeter."
The other man's hazel eyes glinted. "Seriously? It took only one meeting?"
"It was difficult for even Selenka to argue against a giant crack in the ground, which meant her sentries would have to grow wings and fly to complete their rounds." Valentin rubbed the barnacle's hair again, the texture soft and bouncy against his palm. "That section was already unstable, and the little jolt we got a month back just pushed it that final bit."
"Flying wolves," Pieter said, his eyes warming with a humor only those close to him ever saw. "Imagine the games Pasha and Yasha would come up with. Target practice with rotten tomatoes, perhaps?"
"Did I hear my name?" A rumpled Pavel, his hair sticking up as if he'd just rolled out of bed after a late shift, bit into a muffin.
"Border with BlackEdge," Valentin explained shortly before glancing at Pieter again. "Selenka wouldn't have been so cooperative if you hadn't come up with the peace offering." Valentin had voluntarily sliced off a comparable section of his territory that backed up against the wolves' land.
The other man--and one of Valentin's two best friends--shrugged. "Not like we used it anyway. Too rocky for us, but the wolves will enjoy it."
"The best thing," Pavel said after swallowing his wolf-large bite of muffin, "would be if we did what DarkRiver and SnowDancer have managed in San Francisco." He thumped a palm against his chest, mimicked a heart pounding hard.
Pieter's lip curled.
So did Valentin's. "Can you see any bear being satisfied with a wolf?" He shuddered. "They like to wake up at dawn in winter and do insane things like run around in the snow when every sensible changeling who doesn't need to be awake is curled up nice and warm in their bed." It was one of his favorite places to be.
Since the barnacle wasn't showing any signs of breaking off on his own, Valentin reached down and pulled him off in what would've appeared to be an unnecessarily rough action to anyone who wasn't a bear. Bears were tough. Their cubs were tough.
Throwing this cub into the air, he caught the otherwise silent child's laughing body in his arms, then bounced him to Pieter. "Get him back in the Cage." Bear kids were notorious for escaping school--the clan literally had to lock them in and threaten them with outlandish punishments to get them to study.
Valentin's mother had once promised to shave his fur like a poodle's if he didn't stop eating his math homework. Sometimes Valentin wondered how any of them--himself included--were even literate. "And find out how he got out in the first place."
Pieter threw the wriggling escapee over his shoulder and sauntered off, while not-yet-awake Pavel headed to get himself a cup of coffee. Valentin went directly to Silver's room. He pretended not to see all the grinning nosy parkers nonchalantly poking their noses around the corner.
Lifting his hand, he went to knock, then realized she might be resting.
He shouldn't disturb her.
He should leave right now.
Chert voz'mi.
Bear and man both needed to see her.
Just to confirm that she was okay.
Deciding to try a quiet knock and go away if she didn't respond, he lifted his hand, rapped. Damn, that hadn't been so quiet. Yet there was no response. He grabbed hold of his impatience, went to walk away. He wasn't a barbarian. He was a civilized bear.
Crash!!
Valentin slammed into the door, broke the bolt on the other side without trying . . . to find Silver sitting up in bed, her hair down around her shoulders in a cool golden halo, and her hand reaching down for the insulated metal bottle Nova must've given her. It was his sister's favorite way of keeping drinks cold for her patients.
He was inside picking up the bottle, the door pushed firmly shut behind him to discourage his inquisitive clanmates, before he could process the shock of seeing Silver without her armor. "Here," he said.
Accepting the bottle, she unscrewed the lid and took a drink before looking at the door. "Is this how you normally enter guest rooms?" Frost licked the air.
Starlight obviously didn't need her armor to be fully in control. She was doing just fine flaying him alive with nothing but her voice and her eyes.
He grinned and took a seat on the bed.
When she looked very pointedly at him, he pretended not to catch her meaning, focusing instead on her face. Not on that glorious hair that wasn't dead straight as he'd always thought but had a slight wave to it that made it appear deliciously soft. He'd stare at that later, when he'd charmed her into not throwing him out of her room. "You're still pale."
"I'm seventy-eight percent Caucasian. Being pale is part of the package."
Sometimes, Valentin swore Silver was jerking his chain. "Paler than usual. An
d your eyes aren't pure ice," he teased. "There's a little fog drifting in. I woke you, didn't I?" Her face was all soft, her plush lips making him half-crazy.
"Is there a point to this conversation?"
"I just wanted to see if you were doing okay." His hands itched to touch her, but even Valentin wasn't that pushy.
Okay yes, he was when it came to Silver, but he knew how to control himself. "Can I--"
"No." Silver put down the bottle on the bedside table Valentin had built with his own hands.
"You don't know what I was going to ask," he protested.
"You've been staring at my hair when you haven't been staring at my face. You want to touch my hair."
Valentin tried to think like a cat again. Sneaky. After all, Lucas Hunter had a Psy mate. If a leopard could do it, a bear could do it better. "I'll shift and let you pet my fur in return."
Silver froze in place, unblinking.
Bear and man both held their breath . . . and then she shook her head. "No. I have no rational reason to need to touch a bear changeling in his bear form."
Valentin wasn't the most subtle of creatures, but neither was he stupid. He'd caught the hesitation, filed it away. One of these days, he'd talk his Starlight into believing she really did need to touch a bear's pelt. And then he'd pet her skin. An even trade . . . even if he was getting pleasure from both. He smiled inside, smug.
See, he could do sneaky as well as any cat.
"What I do need is an organizer and a phone," Silver said, her thoughts clearly not on the same track as his. "I can have the funds for the items transferred into your pack's account."
Valentin didn't take offense at her offer to pay--that was how Psy functioned and Silver liked to follow the rules. "Hold on." Stepping out of her room, he made sure to leave the door nearly closed as a sign to his lingering clanmates that they weren't to go barging in--oh, they'd be cheerfully friendly about it, just ducking their heads in to say hi, but there'd be a hundred of them in under a minute if he gave them the least leeway.
Silver would also end up with enough food for a year.
His bears thought food fixed every hurt. Most of the time, that food came with hugs and loud agreement if you were angry at something. Two weeks earlier, quiet Pieter had said "Hell yeah" while Valentin released his hurt and anger and frustration with what was happening in the clan.
Pieter and Zahaan--currently out on long-range patrol with Taji and Inara--were the only ones he allowed to see him that way; he and Zahaan had been best friends from the cradle, Pieter a natural fit for their small group when he and his family moved to StoneWater while Pieter was a child.
While Valentin trusted Stasya with his life and with the clan, her position as first second never in any jeopardy, she wasn't only the most dominant individual in the clan after him. She was also his eldest sister, their relationship subtly different from that he had with his other seconds.
Her instinct would be to comfort her baby brother while getting angry on his behalf, while Pieter and Zahaan understood that he just needed to let off steam. But Silver wasn't ready for the bearish version of sympathy and comfort, so Valentin scowled at the clanmates who were oh-so-casually hanging around outside her door.
"You all look like you need extra duties."
"Aw, come on, Valya. We just want to welcome her to Denhome."
"You can do that later." He put his hands on his hips and glared.
Dragging their feet, they began to slink away.
More than one shot him a dirty look over their shoulders.
Valentin wasn't surprised by their behavior. To have Kaleb Krychek's famously icy and searingly competent aide in Denhome? His bears were beside themselves with curiosity. There had been a few raised eyebrows and three quiet asides to Valentin about how safe it was to have her in the clan's heart, but no one had been angry.
Most understood that this was a time of change, that to stay strong going forward, StoneWater had to form friendships and alliances across the spectrum. Zoya, part of the old guard, had been recalcitrant about breaching the careful isolation that had kept StoneWater safe since the clan was first created. That is, until Valentin pointed out that the wolves were already in the process of coming to an understanding with people like Kaleb Krychek.
Zoya had only moved forward because she couldn't stand that the wolves might end up in a stronger position. But the upshot of her decision to take that first step was that StoneWater was adapting to this changing new world. Not too fast, however. Valentin had turned down good opportunities because StoneWater wasn't ready for too much change. His wounded clan needed time to heal.
So did its alpha.
He blew out a painful breath, shoving aside the thought for this extraordinary moment when the most beautiful, intriguing woman he'd ever met was in his territory. His ungrateful bear grumbled that he should've put her in his bed.
Valentin scowled. "She'd have turned my brains into liquid."
Going to his own room, he found the package he'd asked Pavel to prepare yesterday evening as part of his plan to be sneaky-like-a-cat.
Picking up the sleek computronics carrier along with a toolbox in which he already had the necessary spare lock, he returned to Silver's room. "Here, Starlichka." He put the carrier on her bed. "All the gadgets your heart could desire. I can give you the code if you want to Send using our systems, but I'm guessing you're hooked up to a Psy satellite?"
He was opening his toolbox as he spoke, having set it down by the door. Be nonchalant, he told his impatient self. Don't stare at her to see if she likes the gift. Cats don't stare. Cats just kind of prowl along until they prowl themselves right into their lovers' beds. Be the cat.
Silver spoke to his back. "My family has a personal communications satellite, but thank you for the offer." A pause. "What are you doing?"
"Fixing your busted deadbolt."
*
SILVER found herself staring at the wall of Valentin's back as he began to remove the broken lock from the door, his physicality an intrinsic force. "Do you have replacements just lying around?"
A grin shot over his shoulder before he returned to his work. "It is a bear pack."
Her eyes lingered on the shift of heavy muscle and tendon in his back and arms under the dark blue of his T-shirt, his words triggering a question she'd been meaning to ask. "Do bears metabolize alcohol faster or better than other changeling groups?"
Valentin's shoulders shook as his laughter filled the air. "Yes. It pisses off the wolves."
That explained the bear liking for alcohol a little more--it wasn't simply the drinking they enjoyed, but the fact they could take it better than the other predators in the area. It put paid to her belief that bears were unsubtle. Bears, it appeared, could be subtle. They were just very, very clever about it, hiding the subtle under the blunt edge of an axe.
And Valentin was their alpha.
She stared at the button-collar microphone and paired receiver, the paper-thin organizer, the satellite phone, and the slimline computer that had been in the padded carrying case he'd handed her. Each of the latter three items was of the exact make and model that she preferred. "You've spied on me."
Having removed the broken lock, Valentin put it down beside his toolbox. "I notice everything about you, Starlight." The holes in his jeans exposed part of his lower thigh as he shifted to drill in a piece of the new lock. "If, hypothetically speaking, we did do any spying, it'd be only fair." A very bearish smile. "Can't have you be the only one snooping around."
Silver couldn't refute the latter. She had spied on StoneWater. She'd even done a little industrial espionage when her family and the clan had been up for the same contract. StoneWater's espionage had been better; it had taken her three months to work out how they'd done it--by buying a young employee of the company a beer or seven and getting the inside data on the deal.
Bears.
"Did you discover anything interesting during your hypothetical spying?" she said as she began t
he process of connecting the devices to the Mercant satellite. The first thing that would download after connection was a "clean sweep" virus that would return the devices to factory settings, ensuring she began with a clean slate.
"You have a lot of gray suits." Valentin got up, began to fit in the second part of the new lock. "Light gray, dark gray, blackish gray, gray-gray, gray with fine pinstripes, gray so pale it's nearly white . . ." A shake of his head, his hair all tumbled black strands. "I never knew there were so many types of gray before you."
Satellite connection made, Silver watched the clean-sweep icon come on. "Gray is a very versatile shade."
"I'm no fashion critic, Starlight. My style is 'it's clean, put it on.'"
And yet he had a presence that dwarfed other men's.
"But," he added, "when Nova saw our hypothetical spy file on you, she said you should try sapphire blue and emerald green and deep pink. She says 'winter' shades would suit you, whatever that means."
He put something between his teeth as he carefully positioned part of the lock. "I'd be happy with anything other than gray," he said from around the object. "Makes it hard to see you in the rain."
Silver found herself responding to the sly challenge. "I'll wear a shade of your choice . . ." She waited just long enough for him to turn toward her in open interest. "If you start wearing three-piece suits."
Valentin's scowl was all heavy eyebrows and dark eyes. "I do have a suit, you know. My sisters got it for me for my high school graduation."
"Of course you have only one suit, and it's ten years old." He never turned up to meetings looking as if he'd made an effort. Part tactics, she thought, and part . . . because bears.
"How are my bears treating you?" he asked a minute later, his back to her once more.
It was a very broad back. Silver wondered what it would look like if he took off his T-shirt. She'd never been near anyone who was built with that much muscle. "Very well," she said around the problematic thoughts, "but I won't be staying here as long as my grandmother indicated."
Chapter 12
Repeat after me: I will never trust a bear who promises to show me a good time.
--Selenka Durev to BlackEdge juveniles
VALENTIN DIDN'T REPLY at once, his attention on the handheld drill he was using to finish fastening the bolt to her door. Turning afterward, he thrust back his hair with an absent hand, said, "Can't say I'm shocked. Ena's protective of you, but you're not the kind to hide away and let your elder take the risks."