“Geek.”
She stuck out her tongue at him. “I guess Yurev was too famous to wipe out completely—though you know, he’s not in any of the electronic textbooks, hasn’t been for over half a century. Even the Internet databases have very little on him. If he was that hard to trace, I have no clue how Shine did the others.”
“Maybe,” he murmured, “they had a head start, a list to a certain point.”
“Hold on.” Tally liberated a small notebook from the confusion of paper on the table. “See on the family trees, they also have locations listed next to the names. Around two generations back, sometimes three, they start to scatter.”
“A diaspora.” Clay blew out a breath. “Yurev wasn’t the only Psy.”
“No,” she said. “I can’t prove it but it fits. The murdered kids were all gifted in a way that was
almost
Psy.” Her mouth fell open at the echo of Dev’s words. “Dev was telling us without telling us.”
“Someone’s trying to gag him, but I don’t think he’s happy about it.”
“You don’t think we could be jumping to conclusions?”
He shoved a hand through his hair. “My instincts say we’re right, but one name isn’t enough to go on.”
“And,” Talin pointed out, “once, the Psy were like us. I mean they intermarried with humans and changelings. It wasn’t anything weird.” Her tone became less certain. “A lot of us probably have Psy blood in our past.”
“I know for certain that Lucas does.” Turning, he leaned back against the table and wrapped an arm around her waist, delighted when she automatically put her hands on his shoulders. “We need a Psy perspective.”
He felt her body go stiff, but her response was a nod. “You’re right. Here or—”
“Sascha’s likely to be around.” He was male, but he wasn’t stupid—no sense in aggravating Tally with Faith. The cat preened in the heat of her possessiveness. “We’ve got a new development deal going with a Psy corporation.”
“Psy?” Curiosity had her leaning into him. “I thought they liked to keep to their own businesses. I’ve heard rumors saying, you compete with the Psy, you die.”
He couldn’t resist reaching out to trace the curve of her lip. She pretended to snap her teeth at him. His cock was suddenly taut with need but he resisted the urge to lay her on the table and satisfy his hunger. “DarkRiver ran a project for Nikita’s mother. The profits were huge.”
“It’s a big shift,” Talin murmured, her heartbeat steady under his stroking fingertips but her scent edged with the exquisite bite of arousal. Her mind might not have made the decision yet, but her body craved his. “I wonder if you guys even realize it.”
“Oh, we realize it.” Clay relaxed at the clear signs that she wasn’t suffering any ill effects from that morning. “But no sense tipping off the enemy.”
“You make it sound like a war.”
“It damn well is. And these children”—he pointed to the files—“are some of the casualities.”
That shook her. “I have the feeling there’s more going on here than I know.” But she wouldn’t ask. He either trusted her or he didn’t.
He drew her between the vee of his thighs, one hand sliding down to press over her lower back. “Are you trying to pretend
to be stoic?” he asked. “It doesn’t work if you tap your toe in temper.”
She glanced down and blushed. “That wasn’t nice.”
A warning graze along her neck with sharp leopard teeth. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” His unshaven jaw rasped over the skin exposed by her V-necked sweater. “But right now we have to focus on this. We’ll talk about the other stuff later.” He pressed a row of kisses along that same triangle of flesh. “Freckles. I want to count them.”
“You’ll lose count after the first million.” Her heart felt like it would burst from inside her chest. Did he have any idea what he meant to her? She didn’t think so.
“Go get the others.” It would give her time to compose herself, to put her heart back together. “Call Faith, too.” She made a face and pulled the short hairs at his nape. “I’m not a baby. I can handle her.”
He shot her an amused look. “Very mature.”
“Shuddup. Go.”
“I can call them from here.” He proceeded to do exactly that. “Sascha will be here in about an hour. Faith’s tied up with something, so you don’t have to be mature.”
“Really not nice.” She began to sit back down at the table.
Clay grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the door. “First, we eat.”
“But—”
“Did you have lunch?”
She considered lying but knew he’d catch her out. “No.”
“It’s three o’clock.”
“Did you eat?” she countered.
His response was a grunt.
Scowling at his back, she let him tug her down the corridor and past several startled people she assumed were his pack-mates. “Answer my question.”
“I’m a man. You’re small and weak. Different rules apply.”
“Of all the—!” she yelled. “That’s it. I’m going to kill you this time.”
The woman in front of them pressed her body to the side of the corridor, computer tablet held up like a shield, eyes in danger of popping out of her head.
“Clay, I swear to God, if you don’t—”
He stopped so suddenly, she almost careened into his back. Turning, he fixed her with an intimidating look. “Behave.” Cool, calm, a voice that dared her to disobey.
Her mouth fell open. “Take that back or I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“How are you going to stop me?” His smile was pure, conceited cat.
Her temper, hard to arouse, quick to blow over, but steaming hot while it was up, flared into full life. She smiled, patted his arm. “Oh, Clay darling, if you had
told
me you were feeling irritated because of your … problems, I wouldn’t have made a fuss.” She knew very well the changelings around her could hear every whispered word.
“Tally.” It was a warning growl.
“I mean it must be embarrassing for you … being that you’re such a big man.” Her tone implied all sorts of things. “Last night was an aberration, I’m sure. And if not, there are always the pills.”
Gasps sounded up and down the corridor.
Clay’s eyes blazed hot. “I’m going to show you aberration, you brat.” He turned and glared at their audience, as if memorizing every single face.
Suddenly, everyone had somewhere else to be. Only when he’d intimidated the corridor clear did he turn back to her. “I bet you think you’re funny.”
She grinned. “Yep.”
“I hope you still think that when I’m proving to you just how
big
I am.”
Her eyes dropped involuntarily to his pants and she realized she might have pushed him a tad too far. “Now, Clay …”
Pressing his body against hers, he hugged her to him with one arm and bent to speak with his lips against her ear. “Now, Tally,” he mimicked.
“Bully.”
“Brat.”
At the familiar exchange, Talin felt something else “click” into place between them. Clay’s expression told her he felt it, too. Giddy, she pressed a kiss to his throat, the affectionate act completely spontaneous. “I’m hungry.”
“So am I.” His tone was a lazy invitation. “When are you going to feed me?”
A rush of damp heat between her legs. Lord have mercy but she couldn’t remember any of her rational reasons for not having a sexual relationship with Clay.
By the time
they returned from lunch, Sascha and Lucas were already in the meeting room. “There you are. We were waiting for you.”
It was impossible to do anything but smile in response to the incredible warmth in Sascha’s voice. “Clay decided to eat the place down.”
“Yes,” Sascha said, a frown forming between her eyes, “I heard that you’ve been having some problems.” The last word was a sympathetic whisper.
Talin felt Clay stiffen behind her and was about to set Sascha straight when she noticed the glint of humor in the cardinal’s eyes.
“Better watch out, Clay,” Lucas drawled from where he sat on the side nearest the door, feet on the table and chair tipped back. “You’ll be getting helpful advice from the juveniles before you know it.”
Clay clasped Talin’s nape with one hand. “You are in so much trouble.”
Her laugh made the others grin. “It was your own fault.”
“We’ll discuss that later.” He pushed her toward a chair—
beside the one Sascha had just taken, on the other side of the table.
She sat, while Clay chose to lounge against the wall to their left. The mischief leached out of her as soon as she focused on the papers. It had been over a week since Jon’s abduction. That in mind, she raced through the information as she bought Sascha up-to-date. “I was hoping you could pick out other Psy names.”
“It’s a long shot.” Sascha made a sound of utter frustration. “If I was uplinked to the PsyNet—”
“Which you never again will be.” Lucas’s tone was flint hard.
Sascha shot her mate a scowl. “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted”—another scowl, which Lucas responded to with a grin—“if I was uplinked to the Net, I could run a specific search, but now that I’m out, my data is based on what I knew before I dropped out.”
“What about the library stuff?” Lucas asked.
Sascha nodded. “I’ve been doing research in human libraries,” she explained to Talin. “Lucas is right, I might know some names from there …” Her voice trailed off, her eyes on a particular chart.
Lucas tipped his chair to the ground. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” she murmured, but her tone said otherwise.
Getting up, Lucas walked around the table to lean over Sascha’s other side, even as Clay did the same with Talin. It would’ve been very easy to be overwhelmed by the size and presence of the two men. Both were big. Both were undeniably dangerous. But Talin felt incredibly safe.
Because these were men who cared for their women
.
The revelation shocked her. So simple and yet so powerful, disproving as it did the conclusion that violence in one situation inevitably led to violence in another. Talin felt one of her strongest barriers fall—there was no longer any worry in her that Clay would one day lose his control and hurt her. Even now, he was doing that thing he seemed to like doing with her ponytail.
A possessive act. But also an act of deep tenderness.
Emotions a wet knot in her throat, she tried to focus on Sascha. “What do you see?”
The cardinal’s night-sky eyes clashed with Talin’s and for the first time, Talin saw not peace but confusion. “Can you show me the other family trees first?”
“Here’s the one they had for Mickey.” She forced herself to say his name. He deserved to be remembered, to be mourned. “Jon’s was one of the most intricate, but they’re all pretty in-depth.”
“You’re right,” Lucas murmured, fingering one of the printouts. “How the hell did they manage to trace this many relatives and descendants?”
“Easiest explanation is that someone was keeping records from the start,” Clay said. “Like changelings do.”
“You do?” Talin and Sascha asked at the same time.
Clay released her ponytail, only to stroke it again from the top. Her heart hitched. “Sure,” he said, his voice quiet, full of power. “The pack historian always does it.”
“It’s the best way we had in the past of tracking genetics, including any possible inherited diseases,” Lucas added.
“Like isolated farming communities,” Talin said, her mind flying back through the years. “The Larkspurs had their genealogy written down in the front of the family Bible.”
Lucas picked up the file Sascha had been staring at earlier. “Sascha?”
“Yes.”
“What are the odds?”
“Precisely.”
Talin looked up at Clay. “Do you know what they’re muttering about?”
He shook his head. “They’re mated.”
Oddly enough, Talin understood. Different rules applied to couples, especially couples as profoundly in sync as Lucas and Sascha. Their connection was a near visible line of pure emotion, one that made her hurt with envy.
“Tally.” Clay tugged at her ponytail.
She glanced up, knowing that unlike the alpha pair, she and Clay remained divided. In her mind, she saw them on opposite ends of a glass bridge. Able to see the abyss that awaited if they didn’t make it to each other, but unable to take the steps that would close the gap forever. “Sit down,” she said, angry at him for being so possessive, at herself for being too scared to
trust in his promise to never leave her again. “You’re giving me a crick in my neck.”
He raised an eyebrow at her sharpness but grabbed a seat, angling it so he could keep an eye on the door. Even in this safe place, Clay was on guard. She wasn’t surprised—he was too protective to be any other way. And her flash of frustrated anger aside, she adored him exactly as he was. She didn’t want to change Clay. God, no. She just wanted to reach the secret heart of him, the part he kept hidden … because she had once torn it right out of him.
“Talin.” Sascha’s tone was solemn enough to have them both paying complete attention. “If we can trust these records, then you’re correct, there appears to be a Psy link. It’s not the names—though a few of them set off alarm bells—it’s something you might not have realized the significance of.” Her hand clenched on the sheets she held. “All these trees start between a hundred to a hundred and five years ago.”
“God damn,” Clay whispered, dropping his foot from the rung of her chair and shifting to sit with his arm around the back. He explained before Talin could ask. “That was around the time that Psy began to condition their kids not to feel.”
“You think some of them got out?” she asked, then noticed Sascha fingering the edge of one particular tree. “Sascha?”
“I really can’t be sure about this.” Her voice was hesitant. “Please understand that.”
“I do. We’re just throwing out ideas here.” But she could
feel
the answers so close.
Nodding, the cardinal pointed to one particular name. “Mika Kumamoto was the name of my great-great-grandmother. Her daughter Ai was six years old when Silence went into effect. She became one of the transitional children.” Her voice held a wealth of pain.
Talin put her hand over Sascha’s in silent comfort. The other woman curled her fingers around Talin’s and continued to speak. “I stole my family history before I left the Net. The file on Mika stops eighteen years after Ai’s birth. I thought that that meant she had died, and for some reason, the death hadn’t been noted. That time was chaotic,” she told them. “It was more than a decade after the implementation of Silence, but there were still problems, because of the elderly who couldn’t be fully conditioned.”