“This is Alpha Valentin Nikolaev.”
Bo didn’t believe it. “I’m still in shock over my deathly shy cousin mating a StoneWater bear.” He banged the back of his head against the railings. “If you tell me Janika is your sister, my head will probably explode.”
Laughter filled the line, the sound big and warm and primal. “We are family now, Bowen Knight!”
Chapter 15
Ain’t no party like a bear party.
It’s the hangover that’s the problem.
Worth it. Carpe-the-diem!
Wolves are cool, bears are fools.
Didn’t get an invite to the party, huh?
TWO HOURS AFTER they’d returned to Denhome, Silver sat in a—comparatively—quiet corner of the Cavern and watched several bears—in bear form—stand up on their back paws to dance. At least two were holding beer bottles in their paws. One had tinsel wrapped around his neck and was, for some unknown reason, wearing sunglasses.
Another was snoring a few feet away from her. Every so often, he’d slap out his paw as if killing dream flies. The cubs who weren’t yet asleep kept sneaking up to the sleeping bear on tiptoe and putting flowers and play “jewels” on his fur. By now, he was extremely well bedazzled. Not far from him, a number of clanmates, who hadn’t shifted form, were playing a game called bobbing for apples.
No one had so far returned from their shallow dive with an apple, but that didn’t stop their stomach-holding laughter. Possibly because the adult barrel was apparently filled not with water but with liquid of a more alcoholic variety. The cubs had a cub-sized barrel that was more traditional.
The tiny gangsters were making up their own games. One was currently standing on her head next to Silver, while another two had stuffed so many cherries into their mouths that they looked like chipmunks. It was a contest from what she could see, with the stems of the cherries neatly lined up beside them.
Two more were in bear-cub form, doing “kung fu”—as told to Silver by the martial artists themselves before they shifted.
“How many seconds?” the head-stander called out.
“Seven,” Silver said.
“Nika’s mated!” the same child called out. “I like Nika!” Tumbling to the floor, she rubbed at the top of her head before running off toward the food table.
Silver watched the tiny girl duck between much larger bears with fearless dexterity, saw a hand reach down to pluck her up and throw her across the room into another pair of waiting arms. She was lowered to the floor right by the food, a wide grin on her face.
“Boom, boom.” A very small cub lurched against Silver’s chair, balance not yet his strong point. Someone had shaped and gelled his soft blond hair into a Mohawk, and dressed him in a miniature replica of a biker jacket, complete with fake chains. “Boom, boom!”
“Yes, the music has a strong beat,” Silver responded. “It’s not as loud as I expected, however.”
Big blue eyes looked at her with solemn attention. “Boom, boom!” He then dropped a soggy half-eaten cookie onto her lap.
Plucking the child into his arms, Valentin blew a raspberry on his stomach. The cub giggled. “You should be in bed.” Despite the stern words, Valentin cuddled the cub close and began to pat the little boy’s back as he leaned up against the wall next to Silver. “Sound’s calibrated not to blow out our eardrums.”
Silver put the unwanted cookie on a discarded plate nearby. “Of course.” Changeling hearing was acute. “I haven’t seen you take a drink.” It was his sister’s mating the clan was celebrating, after all.
A wink. “I’ll wait until Nika’s home with her engineer. That’ll be a party.”
Silver looked around the wild chaos of the Cavern. The kung fu cubs were now doing kung fu on the legs of adult bears, while the beer-drinking bears were pointing to the whiskey bottle on the bar table, and nodding at one another. Pavel’s twin, Yakov, was spinning Anastasia in a dance that kept crashing them both into the other couples. At which point, everyone involved cracked up laughing . . . right before a pie sailed from across the room to nail Yakov on the back of his head.
“Pasha!” With that roar, he took off through the crowd, hell-bent on vengeance.
“If that will be a party,” she said, “what is this?”
“Fun, but it’ll shut down soon—that whiskey’s never going to be opened. People have shifts to prepare for, work to rest up for.” He looked down at the child who’d fallen trustingly asleep in his arms. “I’ll get this escapee to bed.” A glance out of eyes gone amber. “Stay until I get back?”
Silver found herself nodding, though she should’ve retreated to her room an hour ago, her body yet healing. She watched as Valentin walked toward the residential area, his big body too heavy with muscle to be graceful . . . yet, he was in a way that was all power and strength.
VALENTIN had just returned from putting the cub into his crib—after ridding him of the biker jacket—and was trying to think of a cat-sneaky way to talk Silver into a dance when her eyes suddenly connected with his, urgency in their depths. His phone buzzed three seconds later, a second after he’d navigated his way to her.
The name on the screen was Zarina Saarinen. Head of StoneWater’s educational system and mother to Zahaan, Zarina was in the city for a party to celebrate the birthday of her former college roommate, a human female who was now an astronomer.
He answered it as Silver motioned for him to follow her back into the quieter residence section. “Zarina, what’s happened?”
“A bomb, I think,” she shouted down the line, screams and shouts loud in the background. “I heard the explosion from two streets away, ran over into dust and chaos. Looks like the Dancing Frog bar was the focal point.”
A bar?
“Who’s on scene?”
“Krychek’s here, along with people from neighboring businesses. No emergency crews yet.”
“Do what you can.” Hanging up, Valentin looked at Silver. “You know?” The telepathic highway was a lightning-fast one.
“Only human victims discovered so far,” Silver said, her eyes on her phone, which scrolled with data. “I’m in touch with local authorities to see if they need EmNet assistance.”
Anger raced through Valentin’s blood. “The fanatics who’ve been predicting the destruction of the Psy race if Trinity goes ahead?” The threats had been sent to various comm stations, warning of a loss of Psy “superiority” if others were to “interbreed” with them. “Didn’t the pieces of shit threaten to attack humans and changelings seen associating with Psy?”
“Word’s filtering through that it was a suicide bomber.” Silver touched her temple for a second before starting to work her phone again. “No signs of him being Psy at this point. Taking into account the location and the known casualties, as well as the lack of any violent psychic ripples in the Net, there’s a high chance it was a non-Psy.”
Valentin wanted to say no changeling could do this, but their race wasn’t perfect; it was capable of spawning those with hate and violence in their heart. Valentin knew that firsthand. Even if he hadn’t, it was changelings who’d stained the earth bloodred during the Territorial Wars three and a half centuries ago. No alpha, no changeling, could ever afford to forget that, especially in a time when it would be so easy to blame the Psy for the world’s ills.