Chapter 14

If a bear or a wolf tries to feed you, you wild women know to be on your guard. If an eagle suddenly turns up spic-and-span and wearing a pretty suit, you know to lift an eyebrow. But humans . . . humans don’t follow any kind of a pattern that we’ve been able to work out despite extensive investigation on your behalf, so you’ll have to be on your guard. Or you might end up in your sneaky human’s bed before you know it.

—From the December 2081 issue of Wild Woman magazine: “Skin Privileges, Style & Primal Sophistication”

BOWEN KNIGHT WAS very good at hiding his thoughts and emotions, but nothing could erase the black cloud hanging over his head. Yet they’d been talking about a happy subject, about love, about a bear mating a—Oh.

Kaia swallowed hard as she grabbed the oatmeal she needed for the oatmeal raisin cookies, her skin suddenly frigid. Because it struck her that Bowen was probably caught in the vicious reality of his own existence, where he had only a five percent probability of surviving beyond two weeks with his mind intact. His chances of falling in love, mating—

“Does BlackSea have a relationship with the Moscow bears?”

Flinching inwardly at the sound of his voice, she stood to find he’d banished the blackness and was focused on chopping up the walnuts. His hair fell across his forehead, and the lines on that forehead were of concentration. She wanted to shake her own head—he even chopped walnuts with a dangerously intent absorption.

She curled her fingers into her palm when they threatened to reach out and push back that lock of hair. “You’ll have to ask Mal or Miane about the politics, but I’ve never met a bear.” Apparently the bears had been acting secretive for a while.

Malachai had mentioned it to her once, while muttering about how bears drove people crazy and those crazy people liked it. It had been on the heels of three of their young going missing—only to turn up gigglingly drunk in the Caspian Sea, on a boat with a bunch of bears.

That had been before the vanishings, before they’d lost their innocence.

“Here’s what I do know,” she said, fighting the sadness threatening to crush her; her kitchen hands would be here soon and they were only youths, deserved better than to exist in a clan mired in constant mourning. “Last week the bears threw a party so raucous it covered half of Moscow.” She found the vanilla pods and set them out; she liked having all her ingredients at hand before she began to bake. “It was in the latest In the Know column of Wild Woman magazine.”

Bowen looked up. “What magazine?”

She waved away the question to tell him something far more interesting. “Kaleb Krychek attended and the column had a photo of him dancing with his mate.” The Psy couple had been surrounded by large bears in bear form wearing party hats.

“Any reason for the party?”

“Mating celebration for their alpha.” She realized something. “You probably don’t know, do you? Valentin Nikolaev mated Silver Mercant.”

The knife thunked to motionlessness on the cutting board. “Seriously, Kaia,” Bowen said with a pained look, “you all have to stop messing with me. My coma-brain is going to explode. The last person Silver Mercant would ever mate with is a bear.”

A laugh bubbled up inside her at his expression. “Here.” Picking up the organizer she generally used to make recipe notes, she brought up the most recent edition of Wild Woman and flicked to the article about the mating. “They even managed to get a short Q&A with Silver for their story.”

Kaia had a feeling the powerful woman had agreed in order to humanize herself, breaking down barriers that might stand in EmNet’s way. She had to admire the telepath for that—because Silver Mercant had a sense of containment about her that said she valued her privacy. Yet she’d given that up for the good of people across the globe who might one day need assistance from the Emergency Response Network supported by all three races.

Bowen took the organizer, spent the next five minutes reading the article. “One measly coma and the world turns upside down. Silver Mercant with a bear. What the hell am I going to find out next? That Psy Councilor Nikita Duncan has fallen madly in love and eloped?” Shaking his head as he muttered that ridiculous scenario, he turned a few pages, then seemed to get engrossed in another article.

Kaia wondered what he was reading; Wild Woman was aimed at changeling women for the most part, though she knew her cousin Armand had a subscription. Ask him around other men and he’d smirk and say it was for “research on women,” but Kaia knew full well he loved the fashion and beauty editorials. He’d even asked her to help him make the natural skin-softening cream described in one issue.

“I have the worst stubble rash,” he’d said, scratching at his jaw with black-painted fingernails.

Amused at Bowen’s fascinated concentration and speculating whether he’d found a beauty tip of his own, she bent down to grab the jar of raisins she had to hide behind pungent spices so people wouldn’t steal them. No, not the kids. Grown adults who should know better, but who kept purloining her cooking supplies—as if there weren’t perfectly fine packets of snackable raisins in the huge “goody” jar she had out front.

Apparently, her cooking raisins were “juicier.”

Bowen had put down the organizer by the time she rose back up to her feet. As she watched, he threw a walnut into his mouth.

“How about eating more actual food rather than my walnuts?” She looked pointedly at his half-full plate.

“I’m taking a break.” He continued to chop the walnuts.

As Kaia began to measure out the ingredients for the first set of cookies, he said, “You lost someone, didn’t you? In the vanishings?”

Kaia’s spine went ramrod straight at the quiet question. God, the man was dangerous—he might have just come out of a coma, but the security chief part of his brain was fully functional. And she’d let down her guard in the silliness of a conversation about bears and walnuts.