“He would choose nothing else,” Silver said, certain of that beyond any doubt. “He was born with those big shoulders and big feet for a reason.”
Nova gave an open-throated laugh. “I like you more each time we meet, Seelichka. And I already liked you a whole lot.”
Silver felt the weight of the future smash onto her like a boulder designed to crush. How could she tell Nova and the rest of her friends in the clan that she might soon be incapable of reciprocating their friendship? That, or she’d be dead.
Valentin’s heart would break in either case.
“It looks like I’d better grab my son and make sure he eats his dinner rather than his friend’s arm as he’s threatening to do.”
“Shouldn’t they be asleep by now?”
“Bears, Seelichka. Small bears, but bears.” With that very descriptive answer, Nova went off to grab not only Dima but also his two friends. She held one wriggling body under her arm, gripped another child firmly by the hand, and made the third child hold that one’s hand.
The third child looked to be considering escape but one stern look from Nova and he fell in line.
“She’s good at cub corralling.” Valentin’s arms wrapped around her from behind, unrepentantly possessive.
It felt like coming home all over again. Emotion threatened to overwhelm her, a pain in her chest that spread to every corner of her being.
“Solnyshko moyo.” A nuzzle against her temple. “Don’t be sad.”
The simple, rough request threatened to shatter her. “Our bond,” she whispered to him, “it’s like earth and green and starlight entwined.”
She’d never know what Valentin would’ve said in reply, because loud sobbing interrupted the ordinary conversation in the Cavern. Valentin was moving to intercept the woman who’d run out of one of the many passageways that honeycombed Denhome before Silver realized he’d taken a step.
Slamming against Valentin’s massive chest, the woman wailed, “Why didn’t you bring her home?” It was a scream. “I want my baby home! How could you tell her to go? She called me! She said you told them to go!”
Valentin’s voice was quiet, but Silver heard it with crystal clarity, her audio shields having lost further cohesion during the day. “She’s an adult.” He held the sobbing woman in a gentle embrace. “She made the choice.”
“No!” The distraught female pounded at Valentin’s chest with fisted hands. “You’re alpha! You make her come back!”
Wrapping her totally in his arms, Valentin murmured to her—and again, Silver heard every word. “She’d only leave again.” His voice was ragged, his huge heart wounded but still beating because it needed to beat for his clan. “I can’t permit her choice or those of the others with her to jeopardize the clan.”
The woman screamed again.
Silver’s head pulsed.
She slammed up her most powerful shields, the ones she didn’t usually use because those shields muffled her senses in a thick fog.
The stab of pain faded at once—but so did her crystalline awareness of her surroundings. She could see and hear everything around her at a normal level, but she felt disconnected from it all. As if she’d cut off part of herself.
Lowering the shield, she braced herself for the pain, but it was more manageable after the short respite . . . and because the mating bond was taking some of the impact. Valentin’s big heart was taking some of the impact. Silver tried to stop it—her mate didn’t need any more pain—but found it impossible.
The mating bond was as stubborn as the bear to whom it connected her.
In front of her, the woman Valentin had been holding was now sobbing in the arms of a white-haired man with lines carved into his face that spoke of deepest anguish. Valentin looked little better.
It was instinct to go to him, slip her hand into his.
Around them, the Cavern walls dripped with sorrow.
Thankfully, the cubs had all been moved swiftly away the instant the woman ran in.
“The decision has been made,” Valentin said, his voice carrying to every corner of the huge space. “It’s the only choice that could be made.” His words were final.
His eyes locked with hers for an instant, a question in them. Silver answered through their bond—Yes, she’d stay. She was his mate, was clan, would stand with him no matter what.
When clanmates came to her, she opened her arms and held them close.
LATE that night, seated on the edge of the bed with Valentin beside her, she fought the infamous Mercant temper as he told her about the ugliness of the day he’d become alpha. What should’ve been a day of celebration had been marred by a jagged break in the heart of the clan.
“Sergey said I was a good man, a man he respected, but that I came from bad blood,” Valentin said, a grittiness to his voice. “Blood that couldn’t be trusted. Sergey was my father’s best friend and his first second—he became Zoya’s first second when she took over.”
Silver asked a question so he could pause, his anguish such a huge thing, she worried it would crush him. All the time, her own fury bubbled inside her, a creation of cutting ice. “I don’t understand how StoneWater had an alpha available, especially someone of Zoya’s age.”
“She was the retired alpha of a small clan to which StoneWater has blood ties,” Valentin told her. “She stepped in to shepherd StoneWater after we lost my father ‘in a terrible accident’—that’s what we told everyone, what the rest of the world believes.”
He exhaled in a harsh gust. “Only the clan knows that my father was executed by his seconds—he was so strong it took all of them working together to contain him. Even Zoya was only told the truth once she became alpha and had pledged to keep our secrets. Her term was to run just until a new alpha came of age.”
“Sergey had to know it would be you.” Valentin’s dominance was a force of nature.
“I think he hoped he was wrong, that I’d only be a second to another bear.” He stared ahead, his shoulders rigid. “In the darkest depths of night, I wonder if Sergey is right, if I’ll turn one day, become like my father.”
“That’s not a possibility.” Silver had never known anyone more honest, more centered, more earthy and true. “I feel you inside me, Valentin Mikhailovich Nikolaev, and I’m trained to know the mind. There is no darkness in you.” Bad-tempered and arrogant and aggravating he might be, but beyond all that, he was purest light.
Hands fisted between his knees, Valentin’s tone was bleak when he replied. “I look like him. I sound like him. Half of me comes from him. And we can’t be certain his degeneration wasn’t organic.”
“The other half comes from your mother.” When he still looked defeated, a look that simply did not belong on his face, she allowed her anger to color her tone. “What would you do if you felt such a vicious darkness begin to wake in you? If you felt murderous compulsions?”
“I’d end me,” Valentin said without hesitation. “I’d protect my clan by taking the threat out of the equation.”
“There’s your answer.” It was the same answer she’d have given had their positions been reversed.
Amber eyes glowing in the muted light of the room. “Why do you see so clearly?”
“We all see clearly when we haven’t lived the pain—and what I see is that I need to kill Sergey.”
Looking distinctly alarmed for a man who was twice her size, Valentin scooped her up into his lap. “Was the stabby poet a direct ancestor?”
“Traced back in an unbroken line,” Silver confirmed. “Tell me what this Sergey looks like.”
“I don’t think so, Starlichka, not when you’re looking so bloodthirsty.”