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

She was younger, her starlit eyes stark with reality, but she got all bright and happy at his question. “I watched a recording of pink blossom trees once, all in a row. The blossoms were falling and I wanted to walk under them. I’ll do that.” She squeezed his hand. “What about you?”

He told her, asked her more questions. She was so smart, so vivid. He liked being around her, liked listening to her dreams. She was telling him about her favorite animal when the door smashed open. Then the girl who’d saved him was being wrenched away from him, and he realized he’d never asked her name. No one used their names in this place. They were just numbers and letters.

Neither one of them screamed.

They knew these people had no mercy.

Rather, they stared at one another in a silent rebellion that only ended when she was literally carried out of the room. One of the teachers kicked him in the gut. When he choked out a cough but didn’t move, the numbness now halfway up his chest and his breathing a stuttering beat, the man looked at the woman who was checking on the dead teacher.

“Looks like a real medical issue. We’d better get instructions from the family.”

“Sure. It’s part of the protocol. But you know what they’ll say—he’s here because he’s problematic. No one will authorize lifesaving measures.” Cold green eyes on his face. “Guardians will tell us to dump him on his bed and let him die a ‘natural’ death. He’d be better off if I slit his throat.”





Chapter 4



Current percentage of anchors diagnosed as psychopathic: 14%

Current percentage of anchors diagnosed as borderline: 27%

Current percentage of anchors with significant mental health risk factors: 43%

—PsyMed Census Bureau: 2067

CANTO ARRIVED AT the oasis five minutes prior to his meeting with Payal Rao. “Thanks for the teleport,” he said to Genara.

Lifting two fingers to her temple, her ebony skin gleaming under the desert sunlight, Genara shot him a salute that was just a little too crisp to come off as anything but martial. Her hair, the tight curls buzzed close to her skull with military precision, echoed that impression, as did the way she stood lightly on her feet.

Always ready to snap into motion.

“Nice shirt,” she said.

He scowled. “Arwen calls the color distressed steel. It’s fucking gray.”

Genara’s flat expression didn’t alter. “Heard he stole your other shirts and burned them.”

“Go away,” Canto growled, because while Genara appeared as Silent as they came, she was tight with Arwen. Which told Canto all he needed to know about this new member of the Mercant clan.

Ena rarely adopted in family members, but when she did, it was law. Trust was given at once. Because Ena Mercant was the toughest of them all—if she said Genara was to be trusted, was to be treated as family, that was how it would be.

Canto had said “Yes, ma’am” and gotten on with creating an unbreakable new identity for Genara. The only thing he’d asked his grandmother was where in hell she’d managed to unearth an unknown teleport-capable Tk. Canto ran their intelligence operations, yet Genara was a mystery who’d appeared out of thin air.

Ena had taken a sip of her herbal tea and said, “You know I want you to act as Silver’s right hand when she takes the reins of the family.” Her eyes—unreadable silver at times, fog gray with a hint of blue at others—had been serene, her silky white hair in a pristine knot, and the pale bronze silk of her tunic without a wrinkle. “I had no such right hand until Silver came of age, and life is far easier with one.”

“As long as that right hand lives in the shadows, I have no problem with it.” Canto had about as much desire to live in the public eye as he had to wear the chartreuse horror of a shirt Arwen kept threatening to gift him. “What does that have to do with Genara?”

“A little mystery to keep you sharp.”

“I should quit,” he’d muttered, making a face at the tea she’d insisted on pouring him. “See who you can find to put up with this disrespect.”

Ena’s gaze had altered, holding a warmth he’d first seen when he was eight and motionless in a hospital bed, scared and lost in a way that had come out as childish rage. She’d been so cold then, a woman aflame with ice—except for when she’d looked at him. “You’re home now, Canto,” she’d said in that calm voice that hit down to the bone. “You’re safe. No one will ever again hurt you.”

Canto hadn’t believed the stranger she’d been, but she was all he had. What about her? he’d demanded telepathically, while the machine pumped air into his paralyzed lungs. The girl who helped me. 3K?

“There’s no record of her in the school’s system, and all those staff who had contact with the students are dead, so we can’t scan their minds.” Not even a single flicker in her at the idea of smashing open people’s minds to reveal their innermost thoughts.

Canto had held the implacable steel of her eyes. Did you kill them?

“I would have but only after getting all necessary information. Never act without thought, Canto. That is how your enemies win.” Her cool and smooth hand on his brow, brushing back his hair. “However, they were already dead when we came to bring you home. It appears one of the other students broke their mental bonds and struck out.”