Chapter 12

Keja Marshall

Date of birth: 19 August 2041

Date of death: 8 December 2057

—Entry for Keja Marshall in the Marshall Family Tree (current)

THEO COULDN’T BREATHE. She literally couldn’t breathe, her lungs collapsing inward as she stared at the gates in front of them. Her mouth dried up at the same time that bile burned the back of her throat.

Images flashed to the forefront of her mind. Faces. Scrubs. Medical masks.

Screams.

Oh, God, whose screams were those?

Her grandfather’s face, telling her that this was her duty as a member of the family.

Cold in her veins. God, she was so cold. It burned, the cold.

“Hey, hey! Theo!” A deep male voice, a big body leaning toward her own.

She knew she wasn’t alone, that she should be wary, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the gates even as lights began to spark behind her eyes from the lack of oxygen in her lungs.

“Govno!”

Movement, the slam of a door, then the slap of chill outside air as someone opened the passenger-side door. She was vulnerable, so vulnerable, but she couldn’t break the loop in her mind.

Screams.

Cold that burned.

Medical masks.

Grandfather.

Screams.

Burning ice.

Straps, straps, holding her down.

Pain.

So much pai—

“Theo!” Arms coming around her, dragging her out of the passenger seat and into the bright cold of the fall day . . . and then he was literally lifting her up and turning her so she faced the other direction, his body behind hers as he put her down, then held her with her back to his chest.

She stared at the asphalt spreading out in front of them and away from that place of nightmare . . . and took a desperate breath. It hurt, shards of broken glass in her lungs.

“That’s it, pchelka. Breathe. Slow and easy, slow and easy.”

She couldn’t follow the advice, had to gulp. But he kept on talking, and though she couldn’t really hear him anymore through the roar in her ears, the calm and warm timbre of his voice got through, gave her something to focus on that wasn’t the road.

She became aware of the power of his body behind her with a creeping slowness, the heat of him a furnace. Changelings burned hotter. She’d read that during her research using Wild Woman magazine. It had been in an article about how to deal with an argument about the temperature of the air conditioning between a mixed-race couple—human and changeling.

The human was too cold. The changeling was too hot.

She couldn’t remember the advice given to the couple who’d written in, but right now, she understood why the human was cold at the temperature comfortable for her husband. Psy burned the coolest of all three races, and Yakov Stepyrev felt like a fire at her back.

She didn’t pull away.

She needed his fire to melt the lumps of ice that had formed in her bloodstream, threatened to choke up her throat, cut off her breathing.

“That’s it,” murmured that voice so deep and warm, “you’ve got it. Slow and easy. Long and deep.”

She took an inhale, released it quietly . . . and finally made herself step away from him. It was the closest she’d been to another sentient being since childhood. It hadn’t felt odd, not in the moment, but now, she flushed. Not out of embarrassment but because of bone-chilling fear.

Because she didn’t want to turn and look at the gate again.

“What is wrong with me?” The words spilled out past her lips.

Yakov shifted so that he faced her, while her back remained to the gate. “Looked like a panic attack to me.” He examined her face. “Your eyes have gone black. Psy I know tell me it’s a response to intense physiological, psychic, or emotional stress. One second.”

He reached in through the open passenger door to retrieve something while she was still trying to come to terms with his short and succinct summary of the situation. Theo didn’t have panic attacks. She’d never have survived in her family if she allowed panic to steal her breath—they’d have killed her. Literally. Most of her family had been waiting for her to die since she was first graded as a 2.7.

“Here.” Yakov twisted off the top from a fresh bottle of water. “Get a little of this into you. It’ll help clear things up.”

Numb, she accepted the offer because water was always good, and took a sip. Only then did she realize it was fortified in some way. She kept drinking. Her muscles ached as if she’d been running full tilt for an hour.

She didn’t stop until she’d drunk a third of the bottle. “Thank you,” she said afterward, and wondered dully what Aunt Rita would say about accepting this food-related gift from a bear.

Shock, she was in shock. This was no time to be thinking about bears offering food. And the situation was so far beyond Theo’s normal as to be anarchy. None of the usual rules applied.

Yakov took the bottle once she was done, put the cap back on, and dropped it on her seat. “No problem.” Narrowed eyes as he looked past her shoulder.

Her skin crawled.

“You’ve been here before.” It was a statement, not a question.

She couldn’t blame him for the assumption. “If so, I have no memory of it.” She held a gaze that had gone a striking yellowish amber, waiting for him to snort a rejection of her words.

But he nodded. “Yeah, I figured. No reason for you to panic that way if you’d prepared yourself for it.”

Theo swallowed. Her normal mode of operations was to keep her mouth shut on any possible vulnerability. Even with Pax, she was careful, not wanting him to see the truth of what Grandfather had done to her, what he’d made her. It would break her brother into a million bloody shards.

Fingers shaking, she rubbed the bracelet on her wrist. And knew she had no other option but to trust this bear with her current state. “I’m having trouble making myself turn around.” A noxious realization had begun to bloom in her brain, a horror so bad she could hardly face it.

Her name in the mangled file Pax had found.

Memories of medical masks and scrubs.

Echoes of childhood terror.

Yakov didn’t tell her to stiffen her spine and get on with it. “Do you want to?” he asked instead, those bear eyes penetrating her thin skin. “Or do you want to get out of here?”

Screams.

Masks.

Grandfather.

Straps tying her to the chair.

Cold that seared her blood, made her scream.

“I want to,” she said, her voice a rasp. She’d never sleep again if she didn’t find answers to the nightmare images.

“Then we might need to take a break,” Yakov said. “Maybe get an E out here to—”

Theo shook her head in a hard no. “I need to know what lies beyond. I’ll go mad if I delay.” There was no point in attempting to hide the depth of her reaction from Yakov, not when he’d witnessed it firsthand. “The terror will circle my brain until it cripples me.”

YAKOV wanted to vehemently disagree. He’d never seen anyone go that stiff, every muscle in their body locked, their breathing halting as if a switch had been thrown. And her color. Govno, she’d gone so white her skin was parchment, the blackness of her eyes stark pools against the white.

“I’m not sure you can physically do it,” he said, being blunt because he had no intention of allowing her to push herself into another panic attack.

A long breath, Theo’s chest rising and falling before she put her hand on the side of the car, then began to swivel on her foot very, very slowly. He knew when she caught first sight of the gates. Her entire body went rigid; her breathing began to accelerate.

“Theo.” It came out a warning rumble.

She held up a hand, palm out. It trembled, but she was still breathing, albeit rapidly.

And somehow, she managed to turn and face the gate full-on.

The woman didn’t only have claws, she had steel for a spine.

The two of them stood in silence for several minutes as she worked on getting her breathing under control, her body no longer as stiff as a plank of wood. “I can do this,” she murmured, and he wasn’t sure which one of them she was talking to.

Regardless, and despite the confusion of protectiveness and suspicion inside him, he couldn’t help but admire her courage. He wasn’t sure it wasn’t stupid courage—it was obvious she was putting herself through hell—but bears could often be bloody minded, too, so it wasn’t as if he had a leg to stand on there.

“No response to the intercom,” he told her. “Not even sure it’s working.”

Forehead creasing, she looked over at the dilapidated device. “The facility has been drawing funds continuously. That should have been fixed long before it got to that state.”

“Do you have an override for the gate? It has what looks like a complex computronic lock.” He began to close the distance to the looming metal bars.

“Wait.”

When he paused, glanced back at her, he found her staring up at the spikes at the top. “I . . . I think there was an electrical current once. Blue.” Her voice was distant, as if inside a memory.

A second later, she snapped her attention back to him. “It’s dangerous. Stay away from it.”

Yakov’s bear halted, startled at the clipped order.

Aside from his mother and father and grandparents, who had the privilege by dint of having diapered his baby butt once upon a time, there were very few people on the entire planet who’d dare give a bear of his dominance an order. For the most part, that number was limited to his alpha and Valentin’s second- and third-in-command.

No one else would dare.

Except Theo just had.

He considered being insulted by it, but nope, that didn’t feel right. His Psy dream woman with secrets in her eyes was trying to protect him. His bear wanted to cuddle her for it—though he didn’t think he’d get that chance anytime soon, he was gentle with her when he replied, well aware her nerves had to be scraped raw.

“Easy enough to check if the security field is still running.” He angled his head. “I can’t hear the hum of an older system.”

“I didn’t know that was possible.”

“Lot of changelings have the hearing range for it.” Walking to the side of the drive, he picked one of the long blades of grass and touched it to the nearest part of the gate with care.

Despite the cold terror in her scent, Theo actually jerked forward until she stood within arm’s reach of him.

Ready to drag him back if he got himself in trouble.

Astonished at the fierceness of her courage all over again . . . and seduced by the protectiveness that apparently ran so deep in her nature that she was willing to face her worst nightmare to shield his bear ass, Yakov had to fight not to turn around and wrap her up in his arms, nuzzle at her until she wasn’t so afraid anymore.

He hated that this strong, brave woman was so scared that it had stolen all the light right out of her.

What the fuck had they done to her?

His bear growled inside him.