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

That was why she didn’t crack open the door. It inevitably led to a deluge.

Despite her conversation with Kari and though she took the time to change into fitted black jeans, a sweater in dark green, and work boots she used on site visits, she still beat Canto to the desert.

Lights came on the instant she moved. Small twinkling sparkles wove their way through the trees of the oasis, while the walls of the shelter began to warm with a soft glow that made it welcoming rather than harsh.

Having walked down to the water, she felt Canto arrive, her telepathy strong enough to run patrol scans in this limited area. The mind that appeared with his soon disappeared, the teleporter fast enough that Payal didn’t bother to try to catch a glimpse of them. It was hardly a surprise that the Mercant family had access to such services.

As she walked back up to join Canto, she saw that he’d brought nutrient drinks, fruit, and simple food packs in a small box and was setting them out on the table. “Figured you’d need fuel after another distance teleport at the end of a full day,” he said gruffly.

Her chest hurt, that ache in her throat threatening to take over her whole body. “Why do you keep feeding me?” she blurted out, angered by him for some incomprehensible reason. “That’s not your job.”





Chapter 13



I am concerned about the levels of certain hormones in her system.

—Medical report on Payal Rao (age 6)

A CHALLENGING LOOK out of those eyes so hauntingly beautiful—and implacable in their stubbornness. “Yes,” he said, no give in him, “it is.”

“Why? Because I’m to be your anchor representative?”

His jaw worked. “Don’t give me that bullshit, Payal. You and I, we bonded in blood as children. You saved my life. Yours is now mine to protect.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Take it up with my ancestors.” Grabbing a sealed pack of sliced fruit off the table, he lobbed it to her with a scowl. “I can see your cheekbones.”

Payal caught the bag; she was a Tk—it was instinct. Since her stomach was gnawing at her in a reminder that she’d missed two meals, she opened up the bag and began to eat. Too late did she remember that she hadn’t checked the tamper seal. She should’ve halted, abandoned the offering.

But she ate on.

Bonded in blood.

“We were children,” she muttered, not ready to let this go. It was too important, too seductive. Were it a mirage, it would hurt her. Not too much—not when she hadn’t permitted her innermost shields to drop—but enough to scar and damage the strongest and most important memory of her childhood.

“We survived a thing that would break most adults,” Canto all but growled, and unscrewed the lid of a nutrient drink, then held it out to her.

“I’m already holding this bag,” she argued.

“Fine, I’ll hold it for you. But take a drink.”

She wanted to rebuke him for giving her orders, but the lines of his face, the tension by his eyes … She had the oddest thought that he might actually be worried about her energy state. It was … Payal had no word to describe this situation and what it did to her, how it threatened the entire foundation of her existence.

Grabbing the bottle, she slugged down a drink, then handed it to him to hold as they moved down to the water together. “Why aren’t you eating?”

“Already ate,” he said. “Had friends drop by. One of them is a chef—figured I’d give him a night off and did the cooking.”

Payal chewed on a piece of pear. Crunchy, it contained a shock of tart sweetness that was an assault on her senses. The closest she’d come to fruit in her adult life were dried slices infused with extra vitamins and purposefully drained of all taste, but she didn’t balk—to reject Canto’s gift was an impossibility. “You have friends.”

She didn’t know why that disconcerted her. Perhaps because she’d begun to think of them as the same in a small way. But of course they weren’t. He’d been rescued by the Mercants, whose loyalty to one another was a thing of legend. She’d been sucked back into the bosom of a pit of vipers.

Canto’s world was far bigger than hers had ever been.

“You have a sister who adores you,” Canto said, as if he’d reached into her mind and read her thoughts.

She froze on the path, ice crackling through her veins. “Is that a threat?” A pulse began to beat in her mouth, and all at once she was viscerally aware of the stupidity of her desire to be with this man.

“What the fuck!” He threw up his hands, his half gloves already familiar to her. “Are you kidding me? Do I look like the kind of man who goes about threatening little girls?” His voice was loud and rough, patches of heat along his cheekbones. “Apologize for that.”

Ice melted, her own cheeks hot as her hand clenched around the bag of fruit. “Why?”

“Because you know me!” He pointed a finger. “Pretend all you like that you don’t, but you do. You know me to the fucking core in a way no one else has ever done.” With that, he moved off down the path at rapid speed.

Pulse pounding in skin that felt too small for her body, Payal saw him turn right onto a path that she assumed went around the water. He soon disappeared into the foliage. She went the other way, to the bottom of the path, then took a seat on a large stone by the water. Where she ate her way methodically through the bag of fruit.