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

Canto scowled. “I hate changeling noses.”

Valentin’s laughter was a boom that made the cub in his arms startle awake and try to join in, its voice far higher-pitched. And goddamn it, adorable. Chuckling, Valentin kissed the cub’s head before handing him over to Canto and dropping the towel aside. He shifted in a shower of light.

When Canto next looked, a huge Kamchatka bear stood where the man had been. It shook its body as if settling its fur into place. Waiting until the bear glanced at him, Canto placed the cub on his back, where the boy took a solid grip. Valentin left with a nod, a predator who could move with lethal speed despite his size.

Canto watched after him, still with that inexplicable sense of protectiveness in his gut. Sometimes danger didn’t come from the biggest and most obvious predators. Sometimes it came from the quieter, deadlier ones.

He knew Payal was one of those quieter, deadlier threats.

He also knew that she’d fight with vicious fury to protect the innocent. It was part of her core, unalterable and forever. His 3K was still alive beyond the carapace Payal had created to protect her bruised and abused heart.

His wrist unit vibrated discreetly. A surveillance alert. Lalit Rao had just made an interesting financial maneuver. Canto’s eyes narrowed. He knew what the other man was doing—attempting to box Payal out. He wouldn’t succeed, but he might make things difficult for her if he got enough others on his side.

He tapped out a message to Payal with the info.

PAYAL didn’t teleport to her apartment after leaving Canto’s house. She went to the desert oasis. Her brain was a place of jittery chaos; she needed to find her cool, calm center again. Locating an area in the garden she hadn’t already mathematically balanced, she began to move things around.

As she restructured and reconfigured under the brilliant desert sun that almost hurt the eye, she didn’t try to think, just let herself be.

Until at last she could breathe, her heartbeat no longer irregular and her skin temperature even.

You’re not a child anymore.

Canto’s words reverberated in her soul. She’d never considered that there might be another way, that controlling her aberrant tendencies didn’t have to be a brutal crushing hammer, that a more subtle approach might work as well.

Nothing but a false hope, whispered another part of her. It’s a thing of madness you carry inside you. That’s why your father put you in that place.

“No.” Payal would not permit that old voice to rear its ugly head. Yes, she’d been unstable, but she’d also had a brother who’d tortured her, until the only way she could fight was to lose herself and turn into a berserker.

This was a far different situation.

She wasn’t a child—and the empaths were brilliant lights in the world. They hadn’t been permitted to exist openly during her childhood, and even if they had been, her father would’ve never taken her to see one. Too high a risk of exposure, he’d have said, too high a chance she’d become known as defective.

Yet in the time since the Empathic Collective came into being, Payal had heard of no leaks of personal psychological information. None. The empaths of the Collective took their vow of privacy dead seriously.

Canto had also offered to introduce her to an empath who would hold all her secrets, but if Payal did this, she’d choose her own E. Not because she believed Canto would point her toward anyone less than stellar, but because this had to be on her. She had to make the choice—as she’d made the choice as a child, to cage the screaming girl.

Canto had trusted her.

A sudden, panicked reminder of the act that had shattered her psychic distance, turned her manic.

No one ever just trusted anyone.

That wasn’t how the world worked.

People maneuvered and negotiated and formed alliances for specified endeavors. As she, Canto, Arran, Suriana, Ager, and Bjorn had done on the anchor issue. As 3K and 7J had done in that long-ago past. It had been about survival; they’d clung to each other because they’d had no one else.

But this, what had just happened …

Was it possible that despite everything, he was setting up a cunning double cross? Had he researched her brain, figured out that this tactic would confuse and put her off-balance? The Mercants were known for their ability to get their hands on information, and Canto was a key player in that network.

There was logic to her train of thought for a woman who’d grown up in a family where trust was considered a fatal weakness. It was easy to believe that Canto Mercant was playing a dangerous and finely balanced game.

Eat.

His care was a rough echo in her head. No one but Kari cared about Payal. Yet Canto had watched over her while she’d been at her most vulnerable; he’d taken no advantage. Not once.

She’d shown him her madness, and he hadn’t been disgusted as her father had been disgusted with her as a child. He hadn’t gotten an avaricious gleam in his eye as Lalit had done when he realized he could push and manipulate his younger sister by activating particular emotional triggers.

Canto had looked at her as he always did, with an amalgam of what she wanted to see as fascination and tenderness—mixed with a little aggravated frustration. The latter element made her memories seem more real, more quintessentially him. She could almost hear the gruff rumble of his voice.

He’d also asked her to look within, see if she needed to stay inside the prison she’d built for herself. He hadn’t told her she was wrong, that her brain wasn’t strong enough to make such decisions. He’d just asked her to look again at a problem she’d solved in childhood, to check if she could structure a more elegant solution.