It was no surprise to see Valentin heading toward her, his big body at ease in this primal landscape. Because he was as wild, civilization a thin skin that he could shrug off without hesitation. Thrusting a hand through his hair, he came to a standstill in front of her.
“Do you own a comb?” she asked, her eyes on the incongruously silken strands.
Valentin shook his head, sending the strands flying. “There,” he said afterward, “it’s neat now.” He sounded absolutely serious.
Silver lifted her hand. He went motionless. Her fingers were a centimeter from pushing back the tumbled strands when data blasted her mind, picked up by the monitoring alerts she had in place.
Explosives. Unknown casualties. Multiple strikes.
In front of her, Valentin’s gaze turned grim. “What’s happened?”
“Attacks in Shanghai, in Berlin, and in Melbourne. Identical characteristics to the Moscow attack. Majority human casualties forecast, with limited but not zero Psy and changeling casualties.”
Heart thumping in an uncontrollable physical response to the deluge of information, Silver nonetheless already had her phone in hand. “I have to activate EmNet, get in touch with the people on the ground.”
“What do you need?” Valentin asked as they moved quickly back to Denhome.
“A larger computer would be useful. At least two screens. A comm I can take over for the duration.”
“Follow me.”
Silver began to make calls at the same time, alerting the nominated EmNet contacts in the affected areas that she was aware of what had happened and was about to initiate the emergency network. “Send me local data, as much as you can,” she told them. “It’ll help me mobilize the right resources.”
Once inside Denhome, Valentin led her down several corridors to a medium-sized room set up with cutting-edge tech. “We use this for comm conferences. It should have everything you need.”
Settling in and hooking up the system to EmNet’s servers, Silver discovered the StoneWater system was higher spec than her EmNet office. She was able to handle the triple emergencies with comparative ease, technologically speaking. The only issue was that she and her assistant were only two people. This needed at least five.
Creating an EmNet team would go to the top of her list after this was over.
When hot nutrient drinks appeared at her desk through the hours that followed, she drank them. In a distant part of herself, she realized that this, too, was different. No one fed her when she was caught at home during a situation. She worked alone and in silence.
Though no bears interrupted her today, she was aware of Pavel and Nova looking in on her. The bear male had silently added another screen to her system after seeing the amount of data she was handling, while Nova had left a high-energy nutrient bar on her desk.
“You want my help?” Pavel asked at one point. “I’m not on shift for another four hours.”
About to say no out of habit, Silver abruptly realized that would be foolish. “Yes,” she said. “That screen over there—can you collate the emergency data coming in and give me a précis every half hour?”
“Summarize?” Pavel pulled up a chair, his eyes already on the screen. “I don’t like to brag,” he bragged smugly, “but I was the king of last-minute summaries for school essays.”
She’d been concerned the gregarious bear would keep on speaking, but that was all he said, his focus on the work. She should’ve remembered that while bears could be rowdy, StoneWater wouldn’t have become a power if they weren’t also capable of intense concentration on things that needed to be done.
He turned out to be as good at winnowing the data down into manageable bites as he’d boasted. “Are you in the market for a permanent position?” she asked after the first hour.
“Yasha would cry if I left him.” Pavel kept his eyes on the screen in front of him, even as he spoke. “But maybe if you throw in your scrumptious brother as my bonus.”
“Arwen should be coming to see me again soon,” Silver replied. “If you’re half the bear you claim to be, you’ll get his call code from him.”
“Oooooh, that was a burn as cold as Siberia!” Pavel thumped his fist onto his chest, shooting her a dimpled grin over his shoulder at the same time. “I can melt a Mercant, just you wait. I’m a bear.”
With that, they returned to their work and to the dark reality of an emergency that could have no happy ending.
Valentin didn’t reappear after showing her to the tech room. It wasn’t a surprise. She hoped he was catching some sleep but knew it was unlikely; as the alpha of a large and powerful pack, he had multiple calls on his time and attention. Which made it even more extraordinary that he’d come to see her at her apartment so many times.
Regardless of all that, part of her listened for him.
VALENTIN’S heart was a pulsing ache when he returned from the part of StoneWater territory the dissenters called home. No matter how many days passed, the pain remained as hurtful as the day he’d first felt it . . . the day a quarter of his bears had rejected him to walk out into the cold. But despite the freshness of his hurt, time had passed. He’d soon have to make a final decision.
His bear hung its head, its big body no shield against this wound.
“Mishka!”
Halting at the sound of that childish cry, he immediately tracked a fresh trail of scents to find three unsupervised cubs, ages six, six, and seven. All tiny gangsters. He scowled and folded his arms. “What is Arkasha doing?” he asked, nodding at the furry butt hanging out of a hole in a stone formation.
It was hard to keep a straight face as those little legs kicked and the butt wriggled.
“He’s stuck!” Sveta cried. “We were going to explore the cave, but the hole’s too small.”
Biting the inside of his cheek to choke off his laughter, Valentin raised an eyebrow at the other miscreant. “Why is Arkasha so shiny and slick?” His fur looked like it had been slicked down with hair conditioner, but that wasn’t what Valentin’s nose was telling him.
Fitzpatrick Haydon William, tiny owner of a very long name, took his hand from behind his back to reveal a familiar wrapper. “We thought if we rubbed him with butter, he’d slide in,” he admitted.
“Did you ask Chaos for that butter?”
Two shaking heads, while the butt went still, Arkasha in full listening mode.
“Hmm, we’ll talk about that later.” Valentin hunkered down by Arkasha’s small body. Patting his furry back to make sure the boy wouldn’t get scared, he considered their options. Despite his antics in hanging upside down on the tree the other day, Arkasha was too young to have fully mastered semi-shifting, or Valentin would have asked him to shift parts of his body to his smaller human form.
Which left only one option.
“I’m going to crack the stone,” he told the boy. “Close your eyes and duck down your head. Kick your left paw when you’re ready.”
The kick came nearly at once.
Slamming the side of his fist against a section of stone that appeared the weakest, Valentin created a crack, then carefully wrenched off a piece. It left that edge ragged, and he had to act quickly to clamp his hand on Arkasha’s side to protect him as the child wriggled free.
Plopping down on his back, the cub lifted his paws to his face . . . and sneezed.
Valentin couldn’t hold in his laughter any longer. Cracking up, he sat down with his back against the hole and opened his arms. Arkasha crawled into them at once, Sveta and Fitz slamming their bodies against Valentin’s the next second. He held all three, calming the butter-covered cub and his friends from their fright.