Chapter 22
Kaia remains badly wounded inside. Food is the only language she finds safe, and so you must learn to understand what it means to her.
—BlackSea’s senior healer to Natia and Eijirō Kahananui (2063)
ENDING THE CALL with Cassius without good-byes, Bowen made his way to the kitchen area, drawn by a compulsion toward a woman who remained unsure about his capacity for the ugliest kind of betrayal. And yet who made sure he was warm and had food when he woke.
Bowen had the feeling he’d never understand Kaia.
The skinny teenager with the black curls and the starburst birthmark high on his left cheekbone—Scott, that was his name—was topping up the bread tray when he arrived. “Can you really not swim in the deep?” the kid asked.
“Not unless I want to drown.” The idea of exploring the blackness beyond the seaward wall in just his skin was an exhilarating one regardless. “You sound like you’ve never met a human before.” The idea brought him up short. Most changeling packs and clans had humans in the group—but BlackSea had sequestered itself for a long time. Maybe they didn’t have human clanmates.
“What are humans?” It was the glint in the boy’s eyes that gave him away.
Apparently teens were likable assholes regardless of race.
“And what about you?” Bo asked, having scanned the entire kitchen area without spotting Kaia. “Some kind of a winged jumping sea frog?”
Scott bristled. “There’s no such thing as a winged jumping sea frog!” Heavy eyebrows drawing together into a vee over the deep green of his eyes. “I’m a shark. A hammerhead.”
“I bet every teenage boy I meet is going to be a shark.”
“Scott, why are you telling lies during your lunch shift?” The tone was female and severe.
Cheeks going a hot pink, Scott ducked his head. “He thinks winged jumping sea frogs are real.”
The woman who’d spoken, a gray-haired matron with a solid body, her gilt-colored hair pulled tightly back into a ponytail and a prominent beauty spot just below her right eye, raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure he believes you’re a shark, too.” Tumbling the boy’s curls, she said, “Be proud of who you are, my love. For you are a being of patience and grace.”
The boy’s smile turned unexpectedly sweet. “I was just messing with him, Grandma.” After turning to hug the older woman and get a kiss on the cheek, he limped off toward the back of the kitchen, where a middle-aged man appeared to be running things.
Definitely no Kaia, though. Could be her day off. Or she’d gone swimming, and if he waited long enough by the seaward wall, he’d see a brown-eyed siren swimming out of the black, her hair streaming behind her like living water. “Scott,” he said when he realized the older woman was watching him, “what type of changeling is he?”
It was his turn to get a stern look down an aquiline nose. “That’s a very rude question, young man.” Pursed lips. “If my grandchild wants to reveal himself to you, that’s his choice—and if you ask me what I am, I’ll clip you about the ears. Now, pass me a roll.”
Set firmly in his place and reminded of his paternal grandmother—the indomitable Cece—Bowen did as ordered, then set about filling his plate while considering how best to track down Kaia. He told himself it was so he could find out if she knew anything further about the Alliance Fleet encroaching into BlackSea territory, but the truth was he just craved her.
He didn’t feel like a man racing a clock counting down to oblivion when he was with her; he felt young, alive, more himself than he’d been his entire adult life. There were no shields with Kaia, no walls. He was Bowen and she was Kaia and what they had between them was a turbulent fire that threatened to burn them both.
Walking out into the atrium with his food and a mug of coffee, he nearly ran into a short and lithely muscular man with reddish blond hair. He’d been on edge ever since he left his room, expecting another reaction like that from the mustachioed man yesterday. But Hugo had apparently not shared his theories with all his clanmates because this one grinned at him.
“Good to see you up, dude.” It was the heavily gritty voice that told him the other male’s identity.
Bowen grinned back. “KJ. Thanks for not barging in while I was in the shower.”
“No tentacles, only two arms, not even worth it to look.” Laughter danced in his eyes. “Catch you later—I’m just grabbing my caffeine fix before I head over for my shift at the infirmary.”
“Wait.” Bowen angled his head as KJ went past. “The station has an infirmary?”
“Six hundred folks and guests—and a whole bunch of them full-time blackers who think racing sharks and diving with orca is a funtime activity.” KJ threw up his hands as he walked backward toward the coffee station. “Infirmary’s never empty is all I’m saying. I got job security for life.”
The words caused a pang of homesickness deep within Bowen. The Alliance’s head medic often muttered about his job security while patching up yet another injured soldier.
And it struck Bo out of nowhere that he might never see home again. That he’d go into oblivion without ever experiencing the glory of another Venetian sunset, or the quiet sound of water lapping at the building where he had an apartment. No more mornings listening to a busker outside his favorite bakery. No more runs through Venice’s narrow cobbled streets dodging wide-eyed tourists clustered about with their cameras.
Bowen Knight might end forever in the black that was full of wonder and beauty and danger . . . but that wasn’t his home.
The knot in his throat thick, he nonetheless forced himself to continue moving forward. He could not freeze. To do that would be to give up.
Scott’s grandmother was already seated at a small table beside the seaward wall and beckoned him with an imperious wave of her hand. Bowen’s heart hurt too fucking badly to want to make conversation, but the ruthlessly pragmatic part of his nature saw in the older woman a possible source of information on Kaia. “Name’s Bowen,” he said after putting his plate and mug on the table.
“Carlotta,” she replied as he took the chair across from her. “Scott’s grandmother and best friend to Kaia’s grandmother on her father’s side.” She forked up a bite of quiche before continuing. “So, you’re the experimental subject Atalina’s brought down from the surface.”
“That’s me.” Bowen ate a bite of peanut butter toast, his mind filling once more with images of Kaia provoking him, then giving him cookies. It eased the knot, softened the piercing sense of loss that speared through him. If this was to be the last place he saw before he ended, at least it had her in it.
“You should be proud,” Carlotta said. “Atalina wouldn’t accept just any subject.”
The skin on the back of his neck prickled, the tiny hairs there rising. Even as he turned, he knew what he’d see: Kaia walking toward them.
His mechanical heart kicked. Hard.
She wore a sleeveless dress that flirted around her ankles and hugged her curves each time the fabric settled against her before moving again. The color was stoplight red and the top part a halter cinched below her breasts by a wide band of fabric and tied at the back of her neck.
Her hair, she’d brushed into a sheet of gleaming dark filled with myriad shades from black to brown to strands of copper. It went all the way to the flaring curve of her rear.
A wolf whistle pierced the air.
Bo didn’t realize he was the one who’d done it until Kaia gave him a narrow-eyed look that could strip paint off a wall. Around him, a number of others whooped and clapped. Carlotta, however, was staring at him with a distinctly assessing expression on her face. “She’s the best cook across five oceans.” It was a mild rebuke. “I hope you enjoy gruel.”
Sauntering over, Kaia leaned down to kiss the older woman on the cheek. “Good morning, Carlotta.” The bloom tucked over her right ear was a creamy white and wafted an intoxicating wave of scent. “Would you like a piece of blackberry pie? I made it this morning.”
“Blackberry pie?” Homesickness crashed over him again in a breaking wave. “My mom makes blackberry pie every summer.” He tried to get back to his parents’ farm at least once each summer, often ended up with scratched arms and juice-stained lips from his hunt for the lush, juicy berries that grew wild around their home.
KAIA was caught by the haunting poignancy of Bowen’s voice, the sense of loss in the air so heavy that it made her want to rub the heel of her palm over her heart. “Don’t expect to get a piece,” she said, but it came out husky.
His lips curved at the edges, the hard-eyed security chief returning with a vengeance. “What if I say ‘please’?”
Snorting, she fought the violent urge to go to him, touch him, give him the comfort of clan.
He’s not clan, he’s the enemy, cried the echo of Hugo’s voice.
“You know I’d never turn down a piece of your pie.” Carlotta’s voice entered the moment without breaking it, as if Kaia and Bowen existed out of time.
Turning on her heel before she could surrender to the urge to touch him, Kaia sauntered into the kitchen as if she had not a care in the world. As if she hadn’t spent the night tossing and turning, tormented alternately by dreams of tender caresses and kisses full of primal need, and the chilling screams of their vanished.
She still didn’t have an answer to the question of whether Bowen Knight was the enemy, but what she did know was that there was more to him than the ruthless leader of the Alliance. “Thank you for holding the fort,” she said to Naz, who often took a shift so she could have time off.
Today, her clanmate—an experienced cook who now made his living as a mystery novelist but who continued to love food and the kitchen—had taken the midmorning-to-midafternoon shift.
“Any problems?”
“Aside from Scott’s bottomless pit of a stomach? No, we’re humming. Shoo, enjoy your break.”
“I’m just grabbing some pie.” She sliced out Carlotta’s piece. After placing it on the plate, she picked up a bottle of raspberry syrup and did a bit of decoration on a second plate before heading back out.
“Here you go.” She put a huge slice in front of Carlotta, then put Bowen’s empty plate in front of him.
He took one look at the message she’d written on the plate and threw back his head, laughing so hard that several clanmates rushed over to see what was happening. They snickered at reading: Wolf whistle the cook = no pie for you.
And somehow in the melee, Kaia ended up beside him with her hand on the back of his chair. Her fingers brushed through the silken thickness of his hair to touch his skin. He went motionless . . . then leaned deeper into the contact.