Last Guard (Psy-Changeling Trinity #5) by Nalini Singh

Chaos hugged his boy to his side. “You sure you don’t want it?”

“No, I got cookies and this.” He looked a bit dubious at his choice of dried mango strips, but determined. “I go play with Canto’s blocks now?”

“Sure.”

After the boy was happily involved in the play area Arwen had set up on the deck for Canto’s small visitors, Canto said, “You must be proud of him.”

“Every day,” Chaos said quietly, so much love in his voice that it made Canto ache deep within.

With no one in the Mercant clan currently parenting a small child—the youngest Mercant at present was sixteen—Canto had rarely even thought about children before coming to StoneWater territory. Now he knew he’d gut anyone who laid a finger on Dima or any of the other small souls in StoneWater.

Apparently, he had more Ena Mercant in him than he’d realized.

Beside him, Chaos tore open his child-sized bag of sweets. Canto did the same with his apple slices, and in the time that followed, the two of them just sat there, talking now and then, but mostly listening to the trees while Dima talked to himself as he played. It was a good feeling, sitting with a friend … but Canto’s mind kept being torn away to Delhi, and to a woman who appeared to have no safe haven.

His entire body threatened to knot with rage. He’d find a way to protect her—even if he had to do it in stealth. In saving his life, she’d gained herself a Mercant knight who would always, always be in her corner.





Before



I dream of him every night. And yet he isn’t in my arms. I should’ve never even looked at the proposal Fernandez sent through. I should’ve listened when Mother advised me to talk to multiple others who had been in my position.

I thought I knew better, thought I understood who I was and how carrying a child in my womb would affect me. I was wrong and I must live with that.

—From the private journal of Magdalene Mercant

“I’M SORRY.”

“Why?” He made his voice hard, as hard as he was trying to make his heart. “You did everything legal. You had no responsibility to me.”

The small woman with eyes of hazel brown and hair of moonlight gold didn’t look away, didn’t get up and leave. “It was my responsibility to ensure that no harm ever came to you. In that, I failed.” Cool, clear words, with no edge of excuse. “I am a Mercant—and no one gets to hurt our children.”

He refused to believe her, refused to be vulnerable ever again even though he was scared and lonely and nothing in his body was working right. “Okay, fine. Can I be alone now?”

“I deserve your rejection, but that won’t stop me from being your mother. Whatever you need, I will provide—including protection.”

He stared out the window of the hospital suite rather than answering, his heart beating too fast and his skin all hot. “I hate you,” he bit out. “I hate you.”

“I know.”





Chapter 11



Naysayers shout that Silence will favor the psychopaths among us, but they do not understand the intricacies of the safeguards built into the protocol. They stand in the path of progress out of ignorance and fear.

—Catherine and Arif Adelaja, Architects of Silence (1951)

PAYAL WALKED OUT of the conference room after her meeting and almost ran into Lalit. Her brother—taller than her by a foot, wide of shoulder and hard of jaw, his hair stylishly cut and his cologne crisp—stopped and did up the button on his navy suit jacket. “Agreement reached?”

“Yes.”

“Of course. You were in charge.” He produced a smile so false she wondered how and why others fell for it.

Payal, however, had no issue with the way Lalit chose to present himself to the world. Her issue had to do with the fact that he was a psychopath. “You’re in my way,” she said when he didn’t step aside. She made sure her voice was lacking in tone, and she didn’t break eye contact.

Their father often denigrated changelings as “animals,” but her brother was as territorial as any animal, and he had far less reason for the violence in which he indulged whenever he thought he could get away with it. “I have a meeting with Father.”

One side of his mouth pulled up. “Off you go, golden child.”

She moved on without responding. Both of them knew the truth—after Varun’s execution, it was Lalit who’d become the favored child, the one Pranath Rao had intended to succeed him to the throne of the Rao empire.

Payal had initially been a distant third in line, behind Varun and Lalit. Their father had only retrieved her from the school because he was a man who preferred more than one insurance policy. After they buried Varun, her job was to be a silent threat to Lalit. Because by then, their father had caught Lalit torturing a stray cat—and even Pranath Rao knew that to be a bad sign.

The threat had appeared to work, with Lalit toeing the line.

Then three senior members of the staff had caught eighteen-year-old Lalit cutting up the yet-warm corpse of a homeless human man he’d abducted off the street. To Pranath, the problem hadn’t been the act itself—but that Lalit had been distracted enough to get caught. The head of the Rao family was fine with psychopathic behavior so long as it didn’t draw negative attention to the family.