Chapter 20

Do not ever get between a mama bear and her cubs. You will most certainly be in pieces before you realize your mistake and start to apologize.

—The Traveler’s Guide to Changelings (revised edition, 1897)

THEO’S SPINE WENT rigid. “You were almost kidnapped?”

“No. Our mother was too fast—I guess they figured one small woman and two cubs in an isolated section of the park against four big males was fair odds.”

He bared his teeth. “Two dead in seconds, third guy—she ripped his arm off. That leaves the one whose insides she clawed out while we cheered her on from the spot where she’d told us to stay put and keep out of her way. Wasn’t even a close fight.”

Theo was beyond fascinated at this point, her anger at the old incident no longer the dominant emotion. “How old were you?”

“Five. Had our claws out and were straining at the bit to go for the attackers, but Pasha and I knew better than to disobey our mother when she used that voice. So we just threw up our arms and cheered every time she got in a hit. Afterward, one of the injured men called us ‘fucking bloodthirsty animals.’ And our mama punched him in the face for daring to insult her sweet little babies.”

Having twisted fully in her seat, Theo stared at him for long moments before she found her voice. She didn’t know which question to ask first, went for, “Who was it? Behind the kidnapping, I mean?”

“Pissed my parents off but no one could ever figure it out. The guys were all hired muscle, paid through cash drop-offs. No real trail to follow. In the end, Enforcement said it was probably part of a trafficking ring that they’d heard about but that hadn’t previously shown up in Moscow. Whoever it was, they never tried that shit again, not with any bear cub.”

Having lowered his window, Yakov leaned one arm on the window frame. “With some of what we’ve learned about the Council since the fall of Silence, we suspect it might’ve been a Council-backed operation. Word is, their psychopathic scientists experimented on changelings in an effort to discover a way to break us.”

Theo had zero trouble accepting that suspicion. “My grandfather once told me that changelings were about as intelligent as stray dogs—he would’ve thought nothing of abducting a changeling child. Because once he’d justified it to himself that way, the facts no longer mattered.”

Yakov shot her an assessing look before returning his attention to the road. “You didn’t like him much, huh?”

“I would cheerfully dance on his grave if he had one.” But she didn’t want to speak about the dead and never-mourned Marshall Hyde.

Theo wanted to know about bears. Warm, beautifully lethal-in-their-protectiveness bears.

“Did you need psychological assistance after witnessing the violence?” Theo didn’t know why she asked that. Perhaps because she knew that she was damaged in ways nothing could fix . . . or maybe it was because she wanted to test his tolerance for rage-induced violence.

Yakov took his time answering. “I’m not human,” he said at last. “I’m not Psy. I’m changeling. Violence is part of our life—and it’s not always in a bad way. My animal hunts for food, takes only what it needs to survive. It feels no shame in that, because it knows that is the natural way.”

Every cell in Theo’s body resonated with the power of his words.

“A predatory pack isn’t a soft place,” he added. “Wolf, bear, leopard, hawk, it doesn’t matter which predator, we all have so much physical power that it sometimes needs to be slapped down when it gets out of control.

“There are dominance struggles. And changelings have certain laws that if broken, result in an automatic death sentence delivered most often by the alpha—but that can also be delivered by other senior members of the pack or clan.”

He continued on when she didn’t interrupt. “Don’t take me wrong—we’re fierce in defense of our own, too. That’s the other side of the coin. We love as ferociously as we fight. I grew up knowing that my parents and clanmates would kill to protect me, and that it’s okay to fight back if someone tries to hurt you. It’s the natural way. One predator against another.

“If it had gone wrong? If they’d hurt our mama? Yes, then we’d have been screwed up. But she won. To the small bears we were then, that was just the natural consequence of bad behavior by the would-be kidnappers. The worst possible time-out.”

Theo batted away the whisper of hope flittering around her head, but it wouldn’t vanish out of existence. Not now that Yakov had made it crystal clear that his tolerance for physical violence was far beyond what she might’ve imagined from her own experiences with the Psy race.

She didn’t dare put her hope into words, couldn’t reveal the stabbing need inside her, so she spoke another truth: “I would very much like to meet your mother.” The woman sounded astonishing and amazing and like the kind of mother Theo would worship.

Yakov smiled—and thought that his mother would be highly interested in Theo Marshall, too. Because his pchelka was a study in contradictions, and if there was one thing Yakov’s mama loved, it was a mystery. That was why she ran StoneWater’s monthly mystery book club, the Beary Good Sleuths, and why she was an actual detective.

“She’s a private investigator,” he told Theo. “The stories she sometimes tells us.” He shook his head. “She served as an Enforcement cop for ten years before going the P.I. route. Can you imagine that? A bear changeling in Enforcement?”

He chuckled. “She took no shit and, as a new recruit, threw so many bears into overnight jail that it became a badge of honor to have been arrested by Mila Kuznets.”

“Bears,” Theo said slowly, “are interesting creatures.”

His shoulders shook. “Her colleagues loved her, and while she enjoyed the work, she hated the administration side of things. She’s much happier on her own and she occasionally still gets called in to consult for the cops.”

“How about your father? Is he an investigator, too?”

“No, he’s a landscaper. A lot of the planting you see around Moscow? He and his team probably had a hand in it. I can still point out the trees I helped plant when I worked on his crew for a summer job. Then I did another summer with my mother, acting as her assistant while her real assistant was out for maternity leave.”

Grinning at the memories and conscious of Theo’s attentive interest, he said, “Pasha and I switched off, since my parents refused to have us both on the same job at the same time. Said we were menaces together.” Which, in fairness, was the absolute truth.

One twin: fairly well-behaved, invested, and useful.

Both twins: demons who pulled every prank possible while still being useful and invested.

“How about you?” he asked as the light-studded buildings of central Moscow began to appear in the distance against the black cloak of night. “You do any fun summer jobs?”

“I worked for my grandfather,” she said in a flat tone that made his fur bristle and all his doubts about the truth of Theo roar to the surface.

It took effort not to allow his bear’s rumble to color his voice, demand she reveal herself to him. “Yeah? Filing and that sort of office stuff?”

“Something like that.”

The bristling intensified. She was lying to him. According to what Silver had told him, Theo had been sidelined and considered unimportant during her grandfather’s reign, such an insignificant cog in the machine that she had no psychic or digital footprint beyond the most basic facts.

Yet he’d put good money on the fact that Theo had done exactly what she said she’d done: worked for her grandfather. That wasn’t the lie. The lie was in her answer as to what she’d done for Marshall Hyde, the man who’d been a Councilor during some of the Council’s ugliest periods. The same man Theo herself had just told him would think nothing of kidnapping an innocent cub.

What then, Yasha, asked his internal bear, did that man do to his unimportant and unnoticed granddaughter?

A bearish rumble building in his chest, his emotions colliding. Because the Theo with secrets dark and perhaps ugly was the same Theo who’d once been a child held in a monster’s punishing grip.