Psy-Changeling Short Story
Author's Note: This short story is one that many, many of you have requested since Allegiance of Honor came out last year. I hope you love. :-)
Rowan
by Nalini Singh
Kaleb glanced once again at the message he'd received from Zachary Quinn. He'd met the other man at the party the DarkRiver leopards had thrown to celebrate the birth of three new cubs, and now Zach was reminding him about their dinner plans. Because that dinner mattered to Zach's mate, Annie.
Kaleb had met Annie long before he'd ever known Zach. Both of them children, both of them trapped in different ways. Kaleb hadn't been able to free himself then, but he had been able to help Annie, had used his vast telekinetic strength to lift the train compartment off her crushed leg so that she could be rescued. And she hadn't forgotten.
All this time, all these years, and she'd remembered.
Not only had she remembered, she'd held the memory close enough that her baby's name was Rowan Kaleb Quinn. Kaleb wasn't quite sure how he felt about that. It wasn't the use of his name that concerned him. It was the impact the connection would have on an innocent child's life.
He'd even said so to Annie when he first learned of her intention. "Are you sure you want him linked to me?"
"Yes," Annie had responded, her voice gentle yet immovable. "You will always be a part of our family."
Now, Kaleb looked across at where the woman whom changelings called his mate--and Kaleb called his everything--sat in the armchair she'd dragged into his office one day. It was very definitely her chair. Even when she wasn't there, he found his eyes drawn that way, his lips parting to speak to the only person who had ever truly known him.
It helped that he was a telepath who could communicate across vast distances. Sahara never turned him away when he reached for her, whether in person or on the psychic plane. She knew that the twisted darkness deep within him needed her like he needed air. "Zach and Annie are insistent." He told her about the reminder.
She looked up from her organizer with a smile, her unbound hair dark against the white shirt she'd stolen from his wardrobe and wore with the sleeves folded partway up her forearms. "Why do you sound like you were thinking about pulling out?"
"I keep hoping you'll change your mind." He'd do anything for her but social interaction wasn't exactly something with which he was familiar or comfortable. It was one thing to go to a large gathering like the DarkRiver party. There, he could find a quiet space to himself.
But to go into someone's home? It would be a far more intimate encounter.
Sahara's laugh was a warm caress, the midnight blue of her eyes inviting him to laugh with her. "Forget it. We said we were going to go and we're going."
Realizing he'd been bested, Kaleb walked over to lean up against the wall beside her armchair. "We have to take a gift, don't we?"
"Yes. This is the first time we'll really be meeting Rowan," she said. "We did meet him at the party, but this will be... more official."
Kaleb had the same feeling, a sense that this event would be a momentous one in both his and Rowan's life in some way he didn't yet understand. "What shall we get?"
Sahara just stared at him. "Why do you think I know?"
"Because you know things like this." Straightening against the wall, he turned so that he could see all of her. Sometimes he wondered if she knew, if she had any idea of what it did to him to simply look at her and know that she was his, that she chose to be his even though she saw all his darkness, all his mistakes, all his nightmares.
Despite it all... No, not despite it all. Sahara didn't put limits on her love for him. He could feel the untamed wildness of it like a tidal wave inside his mind, a storm that surrounded him in a love that had defied time and horror and pain and the cruelty of those who'd sought to destroy her.
"I don't often have--" She stopped herself. "In fact, I've never had a reason to buy a gift for a baby."
Kaleb wanted to trace her lips with his finger. "You seem to have forgotten the triplets. I'm certain we must've given them a present." He hadn't even worried about it, certain Sahara would take care of that social necessity.
"Of course we did." She put aside her organizer. "But I didn't actually have to think of anything myself. I asked Sascha and she said that a number of packmates were getting together to open up a roaming account for the children."
"A roaming account?"
"For when the cubs grow up and want to go off and explore the world. Usually they're responsible for themselves during that time--apparently, it's part of roaming. Being independent, growing into adulthood."
"Then?"
"Changeling parents are like any parents. They have trouble letting their children go off into the wilderness completely alone," Sahara told him. "All roamers start off with a little fund. Just enough to get them started and cover their costs for the first few weeks. After that, they're on their own."
Kaleb had never had family except for Sahara, felt as if he was hearing about an alien culture. "I'm happy to pay the suggested amount into Rowan's roaming account." It would be a simple solution to the problem of what to get a being who didn't yet speak and couldn't make his wishes known.
Sahara bit down on her lower lip. "I don't think that will do," she said, frown lines forming on her brow. "It has to be more personal. Rowan and you will always be connected. As you are to his mother."
The only woman in the world with whom Kaleb had an indelible connection was Sahara. For her, he'd burn down empires and destroy civilizations. Except she kept asking him to save them and so he had to turn away from the darkness and attempt to walk toward the light. He knew he would never be a creature of that light, but he was comfortable walking in the gray.
"Do we need to call one of our friends?" It felt odd to say that even now, to acknowledge he had friends who'd find it nothing extraordinary should he contact them for assistance; they'd also provide that assistance without hesitation.
"No." A stubborn set to her jaw. "We're two intelligent people. We should be able to figure this out." With that firm statement, she got up and went over to his desk, taking a seat in his chair.
Walking over to behind the chair, he played with her hair as she brought up the Internet on the transparent screen of his computer. Like Kaleb, she never used the interactive immersion feature built into the Internet--they already had one data network in their heads, didn't need another.
As he watched, she typed in "baby gifts." Pages upon pages of results followed. "Maybe we should just buy the one at the top," Kaleb suggested. "It's clearly highly ranked." It looked to be some type of a plush creature. "Why is it purple and orange and pink?"
"Babies have strange tastes." Sahara turned both hands palms up, her shoulders rising at the same time. "Sascha and Lucas's child is incredibly attached to a plush toy wolf. According to Lucas, it's unnatural for a leopard. But when she loses it and starts to cry, he finds it for her anyway."
"That still doesn't explain what we're looking at. How can it be good for a child to believe in orange and pink and purple creatures with three tails and seven eyes?"
"How do you know they don't exist?" Sahara shot him a grin. "It's about the imagination--but I don't think that gift will do. It looks like the most recent popular toy. You need to give Rowan something more classic, something that will last."
They spent the next two hours going through the listings, discarding most of the suggestions. Kaleb would've picked five or six items by then if not twenty. But as it was, he'd 'ported in another chair and now sat beside Sahara while she scowled at the computer screen. "You have to take this seriously, Kaleb." She glared at him when he began to play with her hair again. "It's important."
"He's an infant. We could give him a potato and he'd find it as i
nteresting as he would that creature with seven eyes."
Sahara held his gaze, the emotion in the midnight blue changing to something deeper and far more poignant. "You understand giving gifts that matter," she said softly. Her fingers went to the charms that hung from the bracelet she wore almost every day. The only times she took it off and left it in their home was when she might be doing something that could cause damage to the bracelet.
"That's different." That charm bracelet was about Sahara and everything about Sahara was important to him.
"You saved a child's life." Sahara reached out to run her own fingers through his hair in a caressing stroke. "And because you did, that child grew up into a woman who fell in love and had a child with the man she loves. And now she's honoring you by giving that child your name as part of his. It's important."
Kaleb still didn't truly understand until Sahara dropped her shields and let him twine around her on the deepest level in an act of trust that always, always destroyed him... and he began to get a glimmer. Rowan's life was now tied to his. For the rest of Kaleb's own life, part of him would be monitoring Rowan's health and status.
Because Rowan Kaleb Quinn was part of his family.
"How about this?" He brought up an image they'd scrawled past without really noticing several pages back--except that Kaleb's brain noticed everything.
Sahara looked at what he'd chosen. And her lips curved. "See? You understand."
*
Two days later, Kaleb teleported himself and Sahara to the location for which Zach had given him the visual. It brought them in right in front of Zach and Annie's home. Surrounded by woods and with the scent of pine redolent in the air, the graceful house was clearly very much a home; neat flowerbeds by the front, a pebbled pathway, warm-hued curtains in the windows, and an outdoor furniture set that looked to have been lovingly handmade. "They really shouldn't have given me such a close visual of their home."
Shaking her head, Sahara slipped her arm through his. "Well, if you decide to indulge in any megalomaniacal urges, let me know so I can beat some sense into you."
Sometimes, Kaleb wondered why Sahara wasn't scared of him. The answer, of course, was that she knew every corner of his battered soul, knew better than anyone that he'd cut off his limbs before he put a bruise on her. "You have the gift?"
"Safe and sound." Rising on her toes, she kissed his jaw. "I love you, Kaleb."
He'd almost become used to those words and to the emotions that rippled down their mating bond. "Good," he said. "I would definitely turn megalomaniacal if you stopped."
Sahara laughed with unhidden delight.
That was when the door of the house opened and Zach walked out, Annie following with the baby in her arms. She wasn't using her cane today, her balance appearing to have improved since the party.
Zach's handshake was firm and welcoming. "It's good to have you here. Welcome to you both."
"Thank you," Kaleb replied, while Sahara smiled.
"We thought we could sit outside," Annie said, "since the sun's out."
Kaleb nodded--he'd much rather be outside. It felt less confining, even though he knew the feeling was nonsensical: he was a teleporter, wasn't confined by anything. Not anymore. Once, he'd been a child trapped by psychic chains, but he hadn't been a child for a long time.
It was after they sat down that Sahara handed over Rowan's gift. "We spent forever choosing it," she admitted. "We hope you like it. And that Rowan does, too, when he's old enough."
Zach had taken Rowan by now, so it was Annie who accepted the small envelope and opened it to retrieve a thin electronic card.
"You have to put it into an organizer," Sahara said.
Kaleb teleported in a spare he had at home so that Annie didn't have to get up. She blinked before her shoulders began to shake. "Well, that's definitely handy." She slipped the card into the organizer's slot.
Stars filled the screen, a galaxy that slowly disappeared as the program zoomed in and in. Until in the center was a single pulsing star. Below it were the words: Rowan's Star.
Annie gasped. "Oh, this is wonderful." Her eyes glowed as she turned the screen toward her mate. "Our baby has a star named after him."
"He's going to get all the girls." Zach's grin betrayed his own pleasure.
Rowan yawned at that instant, raising his fist before settling down.
Catching Kaleb's gaze, Zach held out the infant. "Would you like to hold him?"
Kaleb knew the socially approved response was to say yes. It was what people did with things like babies and kittens and cubs. But while he had accepted a certain responsibility for Rowan Kaleb Quinn, he felt no compulsion to hold that small life in his hands.
Annie laughed. "You're looking at him like he's alien," she said, no insult in her tone.
"Here." Sahara held out her own arms. "I was hoping to get a chance to hold him."
As Kaleb watched, she snuggled the child to her breast, her gaze on the baby's sleeping face. "He's beautiful," she said to Annie and Zach, her fascination with the tiny being in her arms clear.
Kaleb found himself reaching for her mind. Does it matter?
Sahara's telepathic voice wrapped around him like a soft vine that didn't attempt to strangle, just to caress. No, she said, it doesn't matter. I know that if this child was in danger, you'd do what it took to protect him. Wouldn't you?
Yes. He didn't have to think about that. In his darkest hours, he'd thought of destroying the entire PsyNet, but even then, he'd spared the children. Because he'd been a child once and he'd been innocent. Sahara had been innocent. A child didn't have a choice. The sins of their fathers were not their's.
That was what Sahara told him often. Because his own father had been a monster.
Then, Sahara said, that's all that matters. She looked up then, her gaze holding his in a cage without walls, one he never wanted to escape. You don't have to hold babies and you don't have to understand why it is that so many people want to, you just have to be you. A man who will step in front of danger without hesitation to protect this child. That's enough. That's you. And that's who I love.
(c) Copyright 2017 by Nalini Singh
If you'd like more information on the Psy-Changeling series, you can find excerpts and more on the following pages of the website:
Psy-Changeling series
Psy-Changeling Trinity series
Nalini Singh, Rowan
(Series: Psy-Changeling # 15.10)
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