Silver ran her fingers through his hair. “What went wrong?”
Valentin drew in a rough breath, faced the horror. “He changed in his forty-seventh year—it was like he released a part of himself he’d shut away. Some people say maybe he suffered a traumatic brain injury that changed his personality, but there’s no proof of that.” No matter how much Valentin and his sisters wished for it to be true.
“All we know is that he began to withdraw from everyone, including my mother, Galina.” Valentin could still see the numb confusion in his mother’s eyes as her mate—the same man who’d kidnapped her so he could court her with sparkly jewelry and handmade food, the same mate who’d tumbled her into his lap and kissed her every single day—began to treat her with disinterest.
“She thought she’d made him angry, really angry in a way a bear never gets with his mate.” Valentin might blow up at Silver, but he’d still cuddle her close, and if she so much as stubbed her toe, he’d be there to yell at her for hurting herself.
Never would he go cold toward her as his father had done his mother.
“So even though she was a dominant at nearly the same level as him,” he told Silver, “she apologized, asked what she’d done.” His mother had been worried she’d hurt her mate in some terrible way. “He just . . . didn’t really react.” Being ignored by her beloved Misha had devastated his mother.
“Despite the upsetting behavior, we didn’t know how deep the change ran until it was too late. Until he became such a monster that, one day, the mating bond broke without warning.” The stark words were as much a shock today as then. “My mother . . . it was like she broke from the heart outward that day. I saw her go down, saw her convulse, then I saw her lie there with dead eyes.”
Silver stroked his side, petted gently. “But she lives.”
“Through sheer, grim determination. She might be broken, but she wants no one to forget that my father tried to fight his psychopathic tendencies for forty-seven years and that he succeeded well enough to win a mate whose honor and integrity no one can question.” Valentin would kill anyone who tried. “The day the bond broke was the night before he committed his first murder.”
Chapter 34
“NOTHING YOU SAY will ever change who you are to me, Valyusha,” Silver said in an uncompromising tone when he went silent. “One of my ancestors was an infamous poet who said that Mercants are miserly autocrats when it comes to our hearts—we give it only once in our lifetimes. And once given, we expect it to be held forever.”
Valentin shuddered, not knowing until then how much he’d needed those words. But Silver wasn’t finished. “Adina Mercant went to jail for stabbing her lover when she mistakenly thought he was trying to leave her.” A pause. “He brought her roses in prison and married her afterward.”
Warmth spread inside him. “Are you sure you’re not bears?” he said, before forcing himself to continue. “The elders in the clan say the mating bond must’ve broken because my father became a totally different person, a person my mother’s bear sensed and couldn’t accept.”
Valentin shook his head. “I don’t think that. My mother loves him to this day—she’d have hunted him down for his crimes if need be, but she wouldn’t have repudiated him. I think he triggered the repudiation when he lost the part of himself that made him capable of love and loyalty.”
Silver rubbed her cheek against his when he turned his face to the side, the soft strands of her hair drifting over his skin. “Did your mother suffer psychological damage?” she asked. “Did she worry that the reason she and your father had mated successfully was because she, too, had a seed of darkness inside her?”
Had another person asked that question, it would’ve been an accusation, an insult. Not so with Silver. With her, these were just questions. “Yes,” he said. “That’s why she spends so much time in the wild.” So much time in her bear’s skin.
“She’s searching for an answer to the question of how she could’ve mated with a man who became a serial killer—and how she can love his ghost still. The ghost of the man who was her lover, who created four children with her, children he raised with love and honor until he was forty-seven.”
Silver tapped a finger on his shoulder. “It’s highly unusual for a psychopath to so successfully maintain bonds and relationships. Especially given the tightly knit nature of your clan—there were no earlier indications?”
“Afterward, everyone thought back. We thought back, but there was nothing. He didn’t torture animals, he didn’t set fires, he didn’t do anything strange or troubling. He was a wonderful alpha, an incredible mate and father, a good friend.”
“You’re sure there was no head injury?”
Valentin clenched his hands into fists. “I want to believe that. My mother wants to believe that. Most of StoneWater wants to believe that. The only piece of evidence that supports that theory is the fact my father was on long-range patrol for two weeks before it all went wrong. When he came home, he had black and blue bruises on his face, said he’d fallen into a ravine during his patrol.”
“There is,” Silver said, “another possibility.”
Valentin knew what she was going to say. “Psy manipulation? The clan thought of that at the time, but there were no signs of incursion into the territory, and Psy can’t manipulate changeling minds that way.”
“Kaleb gave me access to highly restricted files when I took over EmNet,” Silver said, her tone quiet. “Including to files he dug up himself.”
Valentin just waited, his heart thundering.
“At the time of your father, a fringe group of scientists was running experiments on changelings. In almost all cases where they were successful, it took significant time and effort and a large number of Psy. And the change was never long-term. The changelings either self-destructed or went ‘active’ without warning.”
His throat was dry now. “Who? Do you know?”
“The subjects had no names, but I remember seeing Bear Subject M in Moscow.”
The thunder in his heart turned to a raw hope. “What was the purpose to breaking the changelings?”
“To use them as sleeper agents to harm the pack or clan. The experiment was shut down after all of the subjects failed to act as programmed.”
Harsh laughter escaped his throat. “Oh, no, they didn’t fail. My father’s chosen victims were Psy, but he nearly succeeded in murdering StoneWater, too. My clan is split in two. The ones who’ve left Denhome believe I’ll go the same way as my father, my blood tainted.”
“They’re fools.” The words were icy.
“You sure about that, Starlight?”
“Don’t make me hurt you, Valyusha.”
Bringing her hand to his mouth, he pressed a kiss to her palm.
“Clearly,” Silver said in a tone that made it plain he wasn’t yet forgiven, “they don’t feel the same way toward your sisters, or you’d have torn off their heads by now.”
He was glad she understood that; no one hurt the people Valentin loved. “It’s because I’m male. Changelings hardly ever spawn serial killers, but the rare times it happens, it’s always a male. Stasya likes to torment herself by doing research on the topic, and she’s found no mention of a female serial killer. Murderers, yes, but not serials.”
“And you’re alpha, hold the same power as he did.”
“Yes, they’re afraid I’ll finish what my father began and poison StoneWater from the top.” He kissed her palm again. “You really think that was my papa? Bear Subject M?”
“It’s possible. The timing is right. I can dig further.”