Chapter 23
We cannot forget joy. No matter how deep our rage and pain.
—Miane Levèque to BlackSea
“WHAT IF I beg?” Bowen looked up at her, the piercing sadness she’d felt erased by a youthful playfulness that spoke to the heart of her nature.
His whistle had done the same—wolf-whistling might not be the acceptable thing in human culture, but Kaia didn’t only have a human side; her other self loved whistles and loved that Bowen was good at them.
Playmate, it thought again.
“Your fate is in Carlotta’s hands,” she said, never stopping her covert touch. “If she wants to share, that’s up to her.”
“Hmm.” Carlotta’s censorious tone had them both looking at her. “I don’t hold with wolf-whistling.”
“Coma-brain,” Bowen said. “I should get to use that as a free pass at least once a day.”
“Not even my grandchildren have managed to come up with that particular excuse, so I suppose you deserve some pie for the outlandishness of it alone.” Carlotta picked up a knife she hadn’t used for her lunch and neatly cut the large slice in two.
As the other woman put one slice on Bowen’s plate, Kaia made herself break skin contact before she fell into a sensory coma of her own. Because while she’d stroked him in an effort to ease his hurts, give him the comfort of clan in a place where he was far from his own clan, the touch threatened to turn her into an addict.
The sudden disconnection caused a stutter inside her, and she saw Bowen’s shoulders tighten, but he said nothing, just forked up a bite of his pie. Instead of walking away as she’d intended, Kaia hesitated long enough that she saw his eyes close as a deep groan formed in his chest.
Her toes curled.
BO opened his eyes to see Kaia walking away, a luscious woman in scarlet who could cook like a goddess. “No more wolf-whistling,” he said firmly. “This pie . . .” He forked up another bite even as he continued to watch Kaia.
“She has a flair.” Carlotta ate a bite of her own pie. “And you can’t take your eyes off her.”
Bo didn’t look away from the gifted, frustrating, tender mystery of Kaia. She’d stopped at another table and was chatting with a clanmate. “Do you blame me?”
Carlotta’s smile was thin. “No, but has anyone told you about Hugo?”
Instincts sharpening, Bowen snapped his attention to the older woman. “I know he’s her friend.”
“They’ve been two peas in a pod since babyhood. It’s generally believed they’ll end up mates.”
Bowen leaned back deliberately in his chair, his shoulders relaxed. “I don’t think Kaia’s the kind of woman who’ll do the expected.”
Taking a sip of her coffee, Carlotta continued to watch him. “No, and it’s interesting you know that.”
“You don’t sound particularly concerned about Hugo,” Bowen said just as Kaia began to move again, heading out of the atrium.
Carlotta went eerily immobile. “I mourn for all our lost,” she said in a tone that held the darkness of the ocean.
In the distance, Kaia’s red dress disappeared into a large opening that he guessed led to a connecting bridge to another habitat.
“You got balls, coma-guy.” A dark-skinned man with long dreads punched him lightly on the shoulder as he passed their table. “No one messes with Kaia.”
“I heard she threatened to fillet, then fry the gonads of the last guy who tried to court her!” another voice called out from a table behind Bo.
“Or that might’ve been because you tried to court her with dead clams, you numbnut,” came a third contribution.
“Hey! They could’ve had pearls inside!” the numbnut protested. “It was romantic. I asked Aunt Rita in Wild Woman magazine about courtship. She said be unique but romantic. So I thought, why give jewelry when I could give mysterious clams?”
“And that is why you shall die a single, forty-year-old virgin!”
Laughter rippled through the atrium before people began to disperse. Across from him, Carlotta’s expression grew softer. “It’s good to hear my clan laugh.”
Bo’s own smile faded. “It must be hard to stay positive with the vanishings.”
“Yes, but our children can’t grow up in a people drenched in sorrow. It’d ruin an entire generation.” She put down her fork. “Our First has made it clear we must not permit our anguish to shatter the childhood of our young.”
“I get it.” Bowen caught a glimpse of the mustachioed walrus-seeming man out of the corner of his eye. “Human families still have to raise their children with love and affection and joy despite the shadow of psychic violation.” He’d seen the struggle firsthand on the faces of countless parents—but they kept on trying because their children deserved to know happiness and hope.
Carlotta’s nod was slow. “Yes. We all have battles to fight.” Picking up her fork again, she ate a little more of her meal while Bowen continued to keep an eye on the aggressive blond male Kaia had referred to as Alden.
The big man was staying on the far side of the atrium, but he’d shot at least three simmering glances in Bowen’s direction in the last minute alone.
Picking up her coffee again, Carlotta took a long drink. “As for Hugo and Kaia,” she murmured after placing her cup back on the table, “if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my hundred years on this planet, it’s that plans have a way of being derailed by this thing called life.”
Her words rippled a shiver across Bowen’s skin just as a large whale swept by on the other side of the seaward wall. Face crinkling into a smile, Carlotta waved. “There’s my darling Filipe. He always grumps that he’s spent half his life waiting for me to get myself ready.” A laugh, another wave as the whale swam by again. “I’m coming, dear.”
Bowen’s mouth fell open. “I know I’m not supposed to ask . . .”
Carlotta gave an exasperated shake of her head. “Yes, I am a whale. Satisfied now?”
“No.” Bowen was never going to be satisfied on this point. “Leopards and wolves, I can almost make sense of that matter differential, but how can you possibly have enough mass to become a whale?” He chugged down his coffee, put the mug on the table with exaggerated care. “No. Nope. Never.”
Carlotta laughed and it was big and husky and gorgeous. When she finally stopped laughing and stood, apparently finished with her meal, she leaned down to kiss him on the cheek. “Dear boy, I do think I like you.”
She left the atrium moments later.
That was when the mustachioed possible-walrus rose from his table and charged through the nearly empty atrium toward Bowen.
Well, fuck.