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

Payal hesitated, looked within, and there he was: a solid column of light that blazed bright and clear. “I’ll know, too.” It came out a shaken whisper. “If anything happens to you.”

His dark expression didn’t soften. “I didn’t force this bond. I don’t know what it is.”

“I know.” Whatever it was, it was too raw and violent. “I can’t see it in the PsyNet.”

Canto shrugged. “We’re anchors. Who knows how that affects things.” A hard kiss. “You gonna come with me now?”

Payal stood to her full height, nodded. “You have a bad temper,” she pointed out, though his “bad” temper was nothing frightening or dangerous. Even at his most growly, Canto was … warm. His eyes never went hard like Lalit’s or cold like her father’s.

“Is that a problem?” he muttered, after summoning the elevator. “Because if it is, too bad. I’m keeping you.”

Payal blinked and stepped into the elevator with him. “You can’t just keep a person.”

“Yeah?” He glanced up. “Watch me.”

Payal frowned, then said, “Then I’ll keep you, too.” It only seemed fair, and made absolute sense to the screaming girl trapped inside her mind.

They reached the bottom floor.

And Canto tugged at her hand.

The action already part of their personal lexicon, she bent toward him. One big hand sliding around to her nape, warm and rough, he kissed her. “Done deal,” he said. “No take-backs.”

It felt as if his scent were caught in the threads of her clothing, embedded in her skin. Payal hugged it close, a dragon with its gold. She’d forever associate Canto’s scent with being held with care, with being claimed by a man who saw no flaws in her.

They said nothing further until they were inside his tech center, a room without windows that had been set up with multiple comm screens and other computronic equipment. “I need to make the call within the next three minutes.” She bent to check her hair and makeup in a comm screen clear enough to function as a mirror.

The next two minutes were taken up with the technical. Canto’s tech room was set up to his specifications, but together, he and Payal were able to jerry-rig a comm screen to accommodate her preference for taking comm meetings standing up. “The posture helps me contain my natural tendency to fidget,” she admitted.

Tenderness bloomed inside him. He wondered when she’d realize she’d long conquered any such inclination, but today wasn’t the day to bring it up; if the stance was what it took for her to feel comfortable in this situation, so be it.

Switching to hover mode once the comm screen was ready, he dragged across a chair that he kept in the room for when Arwen dropped by. “Just in case the conduit drain goes haywire again.”

“Yes, good idea.”

That sorted, he shifted out of view and watched Payal—his Payal—go to work.

The faces of the Ruling Coalition appeared on the screen one by one. Kaleb Krychek, Aden Kai, Ivy Jane Zen, Nikita Duncan, and Anthony Kyriakus. Each chosen for their personal power or for who and what they represented—power of another kind. Because with Psy, power mattered. Their race could never have democracy as espoused by humans—what was the point of being an elected head if a man like Krychek could do as he pleased, with no one able to stop him?

Psy were more akin to changelings in that sense.

He listened as Payal laid out the problem with Sentinel, her words succinct and her tone cool. No longer was she the soft, curvy woman who’d sat in his lap. This was the CEO, the anchor, the general.

“I didn’t realize the situation with Designation A was so dire.” Nikita Duncan’s face was a seamless canvas that gave away nothing. “Santano was the one in charge of that portfolio, and after his death, we all but forgot about it.” Not an excuse, just a statement of fact.

“The problem didn’t begin with your generation,” Payal said. “It began much earlier, but regardless, we’re stuck with the consequences.”

“Is it still happening?” Ivy Jane’s unusual eyes—clear copper ringed by gold, her pupils jet black—were stark against the cream hue of her skin. “Young anchors not making it to adulthood because they’re considered flawed?”

“Unknown. We don’t have the data and no one is collecting it. That’s something that needs to be put in place, but right this instant, our first problem is the issue in my region.”

“The repair is fluctuating.” Aden Kai, all square angles, olive skin, and short black hair, was as expressionless as Ivy Jane was distressed. “Payal’s right to assume it won’t last much beyond two weeks. A month might be possible, but it’d probably burn out all the anchors involved.”

“Confirmed,” Payal said when Aden shot her a questioning look.

Kaleb spoke for the first time, a living green wall at his back that offered no clues as to his physical location. “Suggestions?”

The result of the discussion was confirmation that there weren’t any free anchors who could take over the area. Canto had already come to the same conclusion, but it was important for the Coalition to reach that conclusion on their own, be confronted by the brutal reality of the problem.

“We may have another option,” Anthony Kyriakus said, his dark hair silvered at the temples and his body clad in a tailored black jacket with a rounded collar that was buttoned up on both sides of his chest with polished black buttons. The head of PsyClan NightStar was a man of dignified appearance and bearing.