Chapter 8

But here’s the thing, before a bear attempts to feed you, they’ll probably try to make you laugh. They’ll succeed. Because bears have the best sense of humor in the entire changeling kingdom (and yes, I will fight my fellow columnists if any of them challenge my claim).

And see, after you’re weak from laughter and utterly in thrall to their gorgeous, gorgeous smile and wicked humor, that’s when your bear will offer you your favorite sinful dessert of choice. While your guard is down.

Radar up! Remember, those gorgeous bear smiles are dangerous to your status as single Wild Women!

—From the March 2080 issue of Wild Woman magazine: “Skin Privileges, Style & Primal Sophistication”

THEO WAS ON board her flight to Moscow three days after Pax first spoke to her about the hidden Center when she got a telepathic message from her twin. Theo, can you take a look at my mind on the PsyNet?

Theo responded without hesitation, wondering if he was worried about visible instability. Entering the Net now. A heartbeat later and she was in the sprawling psychic blackness dotted with countless stars, each star a Psy mind. Mere years earlier, the highways of the PsyNet had been a pure and unadulterated black, the minds islands in the darkness.

Now, streamers and sparks of color proliferated, and a honeycomb of fine gold connected people to each other and to the empaths who’d brought emotion and color back into their world. Despite it all, Theo’s bond to Pax remained invisible. Forced to be hidden so long that their pain had become a permanent scar.

She didn’t need it to find him. He was right next to her. It had always been this way, the reason why their grandfather had effectively psychically muzzled her for much of her early life. So she couldn’t reach out to Pax on the PsyNet. Now, she did a careful examination of his mind.

It was dazzling, the brightness searing.

Clearly the mind of a Psy on the top end of the Gradient.

No fractures, no instability. Nothing but crisp clarity.

All stable, she told Pax. What’s the matter?

I’ve received thirteen telepathic pings in the last hour. All from unknowns. I was wondering if I was somehow drawing them.

Theo scanned the area around them. While Pax’s mind was visible in the Net, it was also so heavily shielded that it was a silent deterrent against unwanted contact. “Pings,” as he’d put it, could be sent by any mind to any other mind. It was a request for communication, no threat.

It could be innocuous. Teenagers playing games. She’d heard rumors of such annoying but harmless games as her people began to come out of Silence. But keep me updated. If it gets really distracting, you can always just turn up on the Net and catch them in the act. No kid wanted to come face-to-face with an aggravated 9.

It’s a minor irritation at most—I can easily set my shield to ignore any pings by unknowns for a period, Pax said. Hopefully that’ll send whoever it is off elsewhere. I’ll let you know if it goes any further. You have two more hours in flight?

Yes. I’ll report back once I’ve been to the facility.

Upon landing, she decided to make that first visit right away. According to the city’s sunset clock, they still had at least three hours of daylight left, she wasn’t tired, and she needed to know what she was facing.

She didn’t, however, know if her assigned partner was available—and though technically, she was within her rights to go to the facility on her own, Pax had made it clear that this was a question of politics as well as accountability.

“Our grandfather did a lot of damage,” he’d told her. “We have to be cleaner than clean if we’re to dig the family out of the mud. I have no desire for Marshall to become a backwater family—and I refuse to let Grandfather’s actions define us for generations to come.”

Having had firsthand experience with certain members of their family, Theo thought Pax was on a fool’s errand. “Our family is tainted from the inside out,” she’d said. “Even you were ready to cross some dark lines before.”

Before he became aware he suffered from Scarab Syndrome.

Before an empath connected to the SnowDancer wolves became his only link to sanity.

Before his protectiveness toward Theo reasserted itself as a driving force in his life.

Pax was still far better—far cleaner—than Theo, but that didn’t mean he had no skeletons in his closet. And Theo wanted him to face those skeletons. Secrets that dark needed to be exposed to the light or they turned toxic and poisoned a person from the inside out.

Theo knew that better than Pax ever could.

Her twin hadn’t flinched at her blunt words. “I know. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be better. It’ll take time, but we’ll be better.”

Strange as it was, she thought her ruthless sibling might even believe that. She didn’t. The rot in their family hadn’t started with Marshall Hyde. Back in her late teenage years, she’d dug into their family history in an effort to find a hero on whom to focus, some member of her family who’d done good instead of evil, who’d chosen compassion instead of cruelty.

But theirs was a line of darkness.

She’d gone back, so far back, and all she’d found was a thirst for power and for cruelty. They’d been conquerors who’d crushed uprisings, doctors who’d done horrific experiments in the name of progress, CEOs who’d wiped out entire towns in their hunger to be the best and the only.

Marshalls were evil.

At the end of her research, she’d sat there shivering in the small room that was her own . . . and she’d felt a whisper of a touch that was of her twin. Not the instinctual bond nothing had ever broken, but a more conscious attempt at telepathic contact. She’d rejected it not because she didn’t trust Pax—that had never been the issue between them—but because she’d come face-to-face with the fact that she was just one more cog in the machine of evil.

Just another ugly Marshall.

But Pax thought they could be better. And . . . her brother was dying. There was no cure for Scarab Syndrome. This attempt to bring the family into the light might be the last thing he ever asked of her.

Theo’s chest hurt, the pain sharp and hard. She’d tried to make herself stone long ago, and she’d succeeded with everyone but her twin. The far better half of their pair. Any lines he’d crossed couldn’t compare to her crimes.

Not willing to look head-on at a loss that would signal the end of her own life, too—for there was no reason for her darkness to exist if Pax was gone—she exited the plane, then slid her phone out of the pocket of her calf-length skirt. She paused on the way out of the passenger area to send a message to Yakov Stepyrev.

Her phone rang in her hand mere moments later, the same name on the screen. “Theodora Marshall speaking.”

“I figured you’d want to check out the site,” said a masculine voice in accented English that held an undertone of warmth. “I’m your ride. Look out for a big furry brown creature as you exit.”

Theo blinked, took the phone away to stare at it, then said, “I have your ID photo. Unfortunately, it only features your human face.”

A pause from the other end before he said, “In which case, look for my ugly mug when you leave the secure area,” in a voice that held a thread of something she couldn’t quite pinpoint.

Shaking her head at the odd interaction, she slipped her phone back into her pocket. She’d undertaken basic research on bear changelings during her flight—most of it via the digital archive of a magazine called Wild Woman. She’d learned that while bears were intensely territorial, they were also considered one of the most good-natured of the changelings—as long as you didn’t attempt to harm them or theirs.

The various columnists had often referred to the bear sense of humor, but she hadn’t expected to run headlong into it the instant she set foot in Moscow. Of course, an article by “Aunt Rita” had stated that while bears found great amusement in acting like “lumbering trunks of fur with a limited number of brain cells,” they were ruthlessly intelligent.

“Only a fool underestimates a bear” had been Aunt Rita’s final words on the subject.

Theo hadn’t needed the columnist’s advice on that point; she’d figured it out on her own. No pack or clan would’ve survived existing in—much less holding territory in—the same region as Kaleb Krychek if they were anything less than dangerous and smart.

Aunt Rita had also stated that “bears appreciate spine” and weren’t easy to offend—unless a verbal opponent targeted the vulnerable under their care. Theo had found herself compelled by the latter, unable to imagine a people so good-natured and even-tempered.

Psy might have aimed for peaceful minds with the emotionless regime of Silence, but all they’d achieved was a frigid control that wore on the psyche until people began to snap.

Murder rates hadn’t gone down under Silence. The crimes had just been concealed better. She knew that because her grandfather had never bothered to hide information around her; he’d thought it was fear of him that kept her mouth shut. Theo had allowed him to believe that. Far better that than he realize she did it for Pax.

Marshall Hyde had never understood her profound allegiance to Pax—and her brother’s equally visceral loyalty to her—which was why he’d never realized that he could use one twin to manipulate the other. A small mercy.

Today, she’d be interacting with a man as different from her grandfather as night from day.

She’d survived a Councilor. How hard could it be to deal with a bear?

Armed with her research, she had her guard up and her senses on alert when she exited through the doors that spilled her out into the public area. She’d ended up on the tail end of a group from a commercial flight and expected to spot Yakov Stepyrev well before he spotted her; Theo was hardly a woman who stood out. Her grandfather had taught her to never stand out for reasons of his own, and she’d taken those lessons into adulthood because they suited her.

Except the instant she walked through the automatic doors, she got a prickle on the back of her neck that told her she was being watched. She looked up . . . and met eyes of a stunning aqua green across a good ten meters of space.

He lounged against the white of the far wall, one booted foot kicked up against it and his arms folded. Faded blue jeans. Black T-shirt. His biceps were defined but not in the overt fashion of a man who’d made it a point to get those muscles—these were the muscles of a changeling used to the physical. His hair was thick and silky and the color of polished mahogany, his skin a shade closer to dark honey, his face put together in a way that had multiple women sending him smiles as they passed by.

Right now, however, Yakov Stepyrev, StoneWater bear and Theo’s partner for the duration of this task, was focused absolutely and totally on Theo.

YAKOV exhaled against the visceral punch to the gut that was Theodora Marshall.

The woman of his dreams was staring straight at him, her eyes an intense and electric storm blue and her features set in lines that told him nothing . . . yet there was a potent power to her, a sense of that storm contained. So much fucking emotion hidden beneath an outwardly calm surface.

Barely able to breathe, he tried to settle his racing heart.

Stupid ID photo. Lying ID photo. Probably taken by a cat.

How had anyone managed to snap such a flat image of a being who fucking radiated energy? Oh, it was kept under tight lock and key, much like with Silver . . . but no, Theodora Marshall wasn’t the same as Silver.

His alpha’s mate had never given off this impression of an explosion barely contained, the veneer on the surface the merest patina. Silver’s calm was internal, the reason why she could be the unflappable director of EmNet—and a senior member of a clan of bears who liked to misbehave.

Theodora Marshall, however . . . She was a powder keg.

A single trigger . . . and boom.

His bear stretched, ready for the boom. For everything. Because it was her.

The woman who’d been haunting him since he was sixteen.

Pushing away from the wall with what he hoped was a commendable show of lazy relaxation, he strode over to her. “Theodora Marshall.”

“Yakov Stepyrev.” Her voice held a slight huskiness, and she didn’t offer her hand.

The latter, he’d expected. Psy who’d grown up under Silence weren’t easy with touch. As for the huskiness, it affected him the same as when he’d spoken to her on the phone: straight to his dick.

Real evolved of you, Yakov, muttered his internal prude. That prude, however, was soon swatted away by his bear. A bear that really, really, really liked Theodora Marshall and her tightly pent-up energy and her unexpected and sharp comeback to his comment about looking out for him in bear form.

Woman had claws.

The bear was intrigued. It wanted to stroke her until she went boom for him.

Forcing himself to breathe and to keep his bear in check, he took in the rest of her. She was shorter than him by at least a couple of inches, maybe more. At five-eight, he was somewhere in the midrange for changeling males, but even though she was technically shorter than him, with fine features, there was nothing small about her—Theodora Marshall had what his babushka Graciele—his father’s mom—would call a presence.

This, despite the fact that she wore generic black flats, a wraparound calf-length skirt in the same color, and a plain white shirt with long sleeves. No studs in her ears, no sign of piercings at all. Her only jewelry appeared to be the metallic comm device on her wrist. Her nails were clean and unpolished, her hair pulled back into a severe knot at the back of her head. Even her purse was nothing but a large black square with no personality.

Everything about her said Don’t touch.

His bear was all about touching, but skin privileges were a serious matter. To be given, not taken. So he wouldn’t assume anything. But he also intended to charm the heck out of her.

Hold on, hold on.

A screeching sound in his mind, a reminder that she was part of a family that had made a business out of lobotomizing people.

She was a child for most of that, another part of him murmured, but the earlier reminder managed to cut through his knee-jerk reaction to his dream woman. He might think he knew her, but all he knew of her was a figment of his imagination, visions caught between sleep and wakefulness.

Yakov didn’t know the real Theodora Marshall.

He still intended to stick to her like glue—because if she was real, then so was that vision of her jugular spurting blood. His bear paced inside him, hunting for a threat neither part of him could see.

This woman who was both a stranger and not, he vowed, would not die under Yakov’s watch.

He fell in step with her as she walked toward where the system would spit out her luggage after she scanned her ID. It didn’t matter that she’d flown on a private jet—all luggage went through the airport’s security systems and could only be collected by the person to whom the luggage was linked. At which point, it would either be handed over, or Theo would be pulled into a private cube to be questioned about items inside.

Moscow had a number of the most secure ports of entry in the entire world. A result of the fact that Kaleb Krychek, the StoneWater bears, and the BlackEdge wolves all called it home and had worked in concert to put those precautions into place.

“I’ll grab it,” Yakov said when her suitcase appeared in the waiting area behind the collection points.

He didn’t realize what he’d done until she said, “How do you know it’s mine?” Her ID was still in her hand.

“Scent,” he said, though he didn’t need to be thinking about the enticing lushness of her scent, all heat and dynamite and vanilla. Definitely a hint of vanilla in there. He just needed a closer sniff to be certain.

Sending a stern signal to his dick to behave and to not get all energetic about taking a deep draw of the scent at the delicate curve of her nape, he said, “Yours is all over the suitcase.”

A pause, her eyes staring into his, as if she expected him to sprout claws at any moment, go rampaging through the airport. “Of course,” she said at last, and scanned her ID so the luggage could be released. “That makes sense. By the way, you can call me Theo. My full name is a mouthful.”

“You pack bricks in this thing?” he muttered as he picked up the case with ease, his bear sniffing at the idea of turning on the hover function.

Also, in Theo’s defense, certain bears had been known to run amok in Moscow. Perhaps even Yakov. When he was much younger, of course. But even his kretin juvenile self had known better than to do it at an airport or any other port of entry. The alliance that held the city took no shit where security was concerned, and he’d have had his skin flayed off his body by his alpha and the wolf alpha.

Theo Marshall—and yeah, “Theo” suited this contained explosion of a woman far better than the antique-sounding “Theodora.” Though the old-fashioned name was pretty, he supposed. Yet this sleek creature with her composure and her chilly blue eyes behind which stirred a dark inferno was far more a Theo.

She also wasn’t as invisible as she clearly wanted to be, given her choice of clothing and her austere grooming choices. People looked her way, frowned as if they didn’t know quite why they were doing so.

He could have told them: Theo was magnetic.

Charisma, he thought with an inward suspicion. A lot of bad people had charisma. Then again, so did a number of talented, good, and smart people. Like his own alpha.

He’d have to watch and listen and learn if he was to figure out whether Theo Marshall was a friend or an enemy seeking to slide under his defenses.

Or a lover, his bear suggested. Just get her naked, figure it out from there.

Groaning silently, Yakov shoved the ursine heart of his nature away from the surface of his mind. If he’d had any doubts, he now knew the primal half of his nature clearly couldn’t be trusted here.