Chapter 59

You’ll never guess what just happened, Starlichka.

—A (grinning) Valentin Nikolaev to his mate, Silver Mercant (today, now)

HARD-CORE CUDDLING HAD begun in earnest when Yakov felt a jolt at the back of his brain. Not pain or a warning . . . but a shift. And he knew. Usually, only the alpha of a clan would know so soon, but Yakov fucking knew.

Joy, pure and unfettered, set his heart alight. “My brother just mated. About damn time!”

Big blue eyes hazy with pleasure looked up into his. He’d been lying beside Theo, petting her naked body slow and easy for a good ten minutes, and his cock was about to erupt. But this wasn’t about rushing.

“How do you know when you’ve found your mate?” Husky words, her gaze so open that he wanted to wrap her up in titanium, protect that vulnerable core the world had wounded over and over again.

He stroked the rounded curve of her thigh, slid back up over her hip, her rib cage, to cup one plump little breast. A small handful. Just the right size to squeeze and caress and pet. “This bear,” he murmured, “dreamed about his mate.” He’d let her come to him in her own time as Arwen had come to Pavel, but he wasn’t about to hide who she was to him. “You’re it for me, serdtse moyo.” His heart. Always. “Whether we mate today, or ten years from today.”

A shaky exhale, her hand tugging at his T-shirt. This time he didn’t resist pulling it off, and once that was off, she was insistent he get naked. “It’s only fair.”

As an argument, it was a compelling one. Even more compelling was the look in her eyes as she took him in once he stood bare to the skin at the side of the bed. He was a bear with no sense of modesty whatsoever, so he smiled and prowled over to lie above her, his body braced on his forearms, and the heavy weight of his cock snuggled against her stomach.

When she spread her thighs a fraction, the scent of her musk grew heavier, richer. Groaning, he leaned down to kiss her all slow and romantic. Because damn if he was just going to thrust into her like a rutting bear tonight. That could wait until his lover was comfortable with intimate skin privileges.

No scaring her off when he wanted to do this with her for the rest of her life.

Continuing to kiss her, he moved one hand down to between her thighs and began to make sensual music with his fingers, while murmuring sexy, encouraging words to her that made her skin flush and her body move rhythmically on the careful intrusion of his. And kisses slow and sweet.

His Theo liked kisses.

“Please,” she whispered long before he was ready to stop playing, “I need . . .” A lost look to her.

“I have you, my Theo.” And though he’d planned to draw this out, need clutched his heart, the desire to give her what she wanted his most primal driving force.

Using his knees to nudge apart her thighs, he made sure she was ready for him. “Tell me to stop if it’s too much,” he said, his muscles bunched and his eyes locked with her own as he began to nudge into her. “Such a pretty pussy you have, Theo.” Sweat broke out along his brow. “Bozhe, you’re tight.”

Her nails dug into his arms, her breathing hitched . . . but his Theo was stubborn as all hell, and he was the one who was shaking as he sank home. She wrapped her legs and her arms around him, silky strands of her hair caught between them.

“I love this.” A shocked little voice that made his bear strut.

Finding a fragment of control, he raised his head to look at her, and his heart, it ached at seeing the shocked pleasure, the vulnerable trust on her face. “Me, too. And we’re just starting.”

Theo traced his lips with her finger as she’d done once before that night. “Your smile feels like sunlight.”

Throat growing unexpectedly thick, he leaned in to take another kiss as slow and deep as the movement of his body in hers. He took care, such care. Because this was his Theo, and he’d cut off his right arm before he’d ever hurt her.

But later that night, after her sobs of pleasure and his shout as his back arched, he dreamed of blood. Theo’s blood. All over his hands. So slick. So much of it. Warm and fresh and unstoppable.

YAKOV was not in a good mood when he woke, that fucking dream gnawing at him. Nuzzling and cuddling with Theo did a little to temper his worry and fear, but he was forcing down toast past the fury in his throat when it struck him that the dream had changed last night.

This time, the blood had been all over his hands.

Halting with the toast halfway to his mouth, Theo still on the phone call with her brother that had come a minute earlier, he switched his brain into tactical mode. What had he done? Why had the dream altered? He’d been near Theo this time, no longer tied up. But not fast enough if she was still bleeding out.

When his phone rang, he almost didn’t answer, not wanting to lose his train of thought. Then he recognized the personalized ringtone. “Good morning, sweetheart,” he said with a grin.

“Too much charm for your own good, just like your deda,” his grandmother Quyen sniffed, but beneath that bubbled unrestrained joy. “Did you hear the good news?”

He felt his cheeks crease. “Think we can officially steal Arwen now?”

“Hush! Ena, she’ll rain down hell.” Open admiration in her tone. “I’ll invite her to tea again. Last time, she told me and Graciele about how she took over an evil man’s empire as a young woman and—oh, such sad news—he had a fatal accident soon afterward.”

That little tidbit didn’t surprise Yakov in the least. “Have you seen the new mates?” He could just imagine Pavel’s strut, Arwen’s beaming joy.

“Pah! You think your babushka doesn’t remember being young?” she scolded. “No disturbances until at least noon. That’s my rule. But I made the new mates a big breakfast and drove out with your deda to leave it by the door of Ena’s city house, then ran away and sent your brother a message telling him to open the door.” A small giggle. “The insulated breakfast basket was gone when I accidentally passed that way five minutes later.”

Yakov wished he could hold his tiny storm force of a grandmother. “We’re lucky to have you in our corner, Babulya.”

“Yes, you are. I didn’t get these gray hairs just sitting around. I’ve lived a life, cublet.”

Flexing his free hand, he found himself saying, “Babulya, what do you think it might mean if I dreamed I had blood on my hands?”

A long pause. “A dream or a dream like my papa used to dream?”

“It started like one of Denu’s dreams . . . but this part. It feels different.” Not as real. Even in the dream, he’d felt oddly disconnected from it. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Hmm.” His grandmother was quiet for a moment. “Your denu told me once that he had two kinds of visions—the first kind are the ones everyone knows about, but the second were more subtle. Holding meaning but not being an exact representation of what would be.”

Blood on my hands.

“My fault,” Yakov murmured, his gut leaden. “It means that what’s about to happen is going to be my fault.”

“Well? What are you going to do to fix it?” his babushka demanded.

Yakov’s panic flatlined. Because that was exactly what he needed to figure out. “I love you, sweetheart.”

“I love you, too, my cheeky cublet. Give Theochka a hug for me.”

After hanging up, Yakov glanced over to where Theo stood by the window, phone to her ear. He could hear most of the conversation, though he wasn’t trying to listen in—just a side effect of his hearing. He’d have to tell her, so she could choose to wear an earpiece for privacy.

From what he’d picked up, Pax was warning her about a segment of their family that had apparently decided that she was a threat because of her “new” closeness to Pax. Yakov wanted to roll his eyes. He’d only known her a heartbeat of time and he could already tell that her bond with her twin was a thing old and weathered and set in stone. Just like his bond with Pavel.

“Your family is a bunch of psychopaths—I mean, seriously, a plot by your freaking mother?” he said after she hung up, tapping at his ear to let her know he’d overheard. “Er, did I just offend you?”

Looking up after sending a quick message, she gave him that sweet Theo smile that was still so rare. “No, I think they’re psychopaths, too—my mother being the chief one now that her father is dead. Maybe not clinically diagnosable, but they drank of my grandfather’s venom all their lives.”

“I’ll get you an earpiece,” he said. “So you don’t have a nosy-parker bear in your business all the time.” Slicing up a couple of strawberries, he put them on her plate. “Your brother worries about you.” Yeah, he was having to do a whole lot of rearranging of his thoughts when it came to Pax Marshall.

“He should be worrying about himself.” Taking her seat opposite him, Theo sipped from the glass of nutrients he’d made for her alongside their simple breakfast of toast and eggs. “He’s in the center of all that ugliness. I told him to get out, but Pax has a responsibility complex a mile long.

“Thousands of people rely on the Marshall Group’s various arms for their paychecks,” she explained, “and Pax knows it’ll all collapse without him. Our family members have big ideas, but Pax is the only one with the training and knowledge to run the operation.” Frustration and pride entwined. “I’d feel better if I knew he had someone else in the upper echelons in his corner, but it’s impossible to figure out loyalties.”

Yakov frowned, his fingers curled around the warmth of his coffee mug. “Huh.”

“What?”

“You should hire an empath. Specifically, Arwen. Without breaking confidence, he just helped another person figure out friend from foe.” Payal Rao had come from the same type of viperous family as Pax and Theo.

The PsyNet seemed to spawn them. Not surprising when Silence had rewarded a lack of emotion and punished empathy. How no one had ever seen that it would all end in tears was beyond him, but then again, as Valya often said, they were just simple bears.

Theo parted her lips, closed them, considered the suggestion. “I never thought about going to an E. Pax wouldn’t, either. Trust again.” The entire PsyNet might trust empaths, but the two of them had seen too much, experienced too much, to trust anyone blindly. “But Arwen . . .” She knew him, did trust him; he’d helped her for no reason but kindness. “Do you think he’d do it?”

“You can ask.” Yakov put more scrambled eggs onto her plate. “It’ll probably depend on how bad it is in there, and how much he can take. But our E’s a Mercant, too—he’s got steel in that sophisticated spine of his.”

Theo’s phone vibrated with a message. She glanced at it, swallowed. “There’s another factor that might impact Arwen’s decision.” Taking a deep breath, she told Yakov the last secret. “My brother is sick.” Having realized Yakov could probably hear her even if she spoke in a low voice, she’d messaged Pax right after hanging up.

A private question, because this was her brother’s secret.

Her bear immediately took her hand. “You don’t mean a cold, do you, pchelka?”

“No.” Throat thick, she told him about Scarab Syndrome and how it threatened to swallow Pax whole. “He’s stable due to considerable work by another E, but it’s a tightrope that’s getting slipperier day by day.” She swiped the base of her palm over her eye to get rid of the moisture there—it was as if now that she’d cried once, the tears wouldn’t stay put.

But she shook her head when Yakov would’ve risen to come to her. “No, I can’t break down today. And I will if you cuddle me.” His big heart, the way he held her, she felt so safe that it was impossible to maintain her composure. “But I want you to know all of it.”

“I’m here for whatever you need.” A deep rumble, his thumb brushing over the back of her hand.

Theo thought of her brother’s face the day he’d knocked on her door, such a handsome man with anguish in his bones that his twin alone could feel. She’d tried her hardest to keep him at a distance, but it was an impossibility. “Here,” she said to Yakov after she finished going over the entire story, “read this. It’s his reply to my request to share this information with you.”

Yakov frowned as he picked up her phone.

She knew the words on the screen by heart: Yes, of course, Theo. That you’ve found someone you trust enough to want to share this? It brings me a peace I didn’t dare to hope for; the bears look after their own. I’m glad you’ll have them at your back in the time to come.

When Yakov looked up, she said, “He’s terrified of what’ll happen to me after he’s gone, worried the family will hunt me even though he’s taken me out of the line of succession at my own request.” Her chest squeezed, squeezed. “My brother is getting ready to die, Yasha.”

Yakov’s hand clenched on hers, the word he spoke under his breath harsh and blue. “No cure? Nothing at all?”

“Nothing anyone has discovered to date. Scarabs in the time before Silence imploded and died as children. Their brains are inherently unstable, their psychic powers a category five hurricane.” Chaotic and furious and piercingly beautiful in its terrible power.

“He’s not dead yet,” Yakov said, his jaw grim. “Don’t waste the now by living in the unknown future, Theo. Doing so will wreck both the present and the future. That’s a piece of advice my great-grandfather gave my grandmother Quyen, and she in turn passed on to me.”

The profound truth of Déwei Nguyen’s words resonated through her bones. “I want you two to meet.”

“Anytime,” Yakov said at once, because this was his mate’s twin. Of course he wanted to meet the man. “We can go to him if he can’t come to us. It sounds like he’s shoveling a ton of poisonous shit right now.”

“I’ll ask.” Theo wiped away more moisture, took a shaky breath. “I feel so much better having told you. I don’t want secrets between us.” She swallowed. “No one talked in my family. Everything was hidden.”

Yakov winced, then slapped himself in the face with his free hand.

Theo glared at him. “What are you keeping from me?”