Last Guard by Nalini Singh
Chapter 21
Without you, I would be a monster.
—Kaleb Krychek to Sahara Kyriakus
KALEB ASSISTED ADENto finish the repair. The two of them then checked it sector by sector. “It’ll hold, but it’s like the other recent ones.” A repair they’d have to strengthen again and again in the coming months to maintain its integrity.
“Are you tired?”
“Yes.” Psychic tiredness was a rare thing for Kaleb—as a dual cardinal, he could access more energy than most Psy could even imagine. “Nowhere close to flameout, but this was a difficult repair. The worst we’ve had to date.”
“I agree. Maybe that was why the anchor spoke to me.”
“Possible. But we’ve had critical incidents in the past without any anchor contact.” Yet PsyNet logistics dictated that the As had to have been working alongside them the entire time.
Aden put his thoughts into words. “The anchors must have been adapting to the changes in the PsyNet for the PsyNet to retain any kind of stability. It was a mistake to think of them as a passive presence.”
“We have a dangerous blind spot.” Not words Kaleb had ever expected to say when he’d spent his entire adult life gathering information—because in that lay power. Yet he’d permitted Designation A to slip under his radar.
“I’ll find out the name of the anchor in this region.” He’d also touch base with Ena regarding the Mercant anchor who’d asked for data on Sentinel. Clearly, that A was taking a serious and active interest in current matters.
“Intake nutrients first,” Aden said.
Unspoken was the fact that even with a corps of other strong Psy now trained to counter breaches, Aden and Kaleb remained the strongest and most skilled at the task. They had to be ready to respond at a moment’s notice. “I’ll give you the same advice.” He and Aden weren’t friends, but they’d become brothers-in-arms after so long fighting together.
The two of them parted without further words.
When Kaleb opened his eyes to the cold dark of very early morning in Moscow, it was to see Sahara standing in the doorway that led into their house, a glass of nutrient liquid in her hand. She wore one of his shirts with the sleeves folded back, the color an ice white, paired with dark gray leggings that were stretchy and soft.
Padding out onto the deck on socked feet, she handed over the drink. “I felt you go.”
Both he and Sahara had been meant to have early meetings with other time zones today, and he’d been outside exercising to shake off the night when Aden sent him the emergency alert. His naked upper body was now covered in sweat, and the thin black fabric of his pants stuck to his skin.
The cool bite of the morning air was welcome against his overheated flesh.
Accepting the drink, he swallowed it down to the last drop. Sahara had made sure it wasn’t one of the flavored varieties she preferred. She might be the reason Kaleb wasn’t a ravening monster, every cell of his body hers to command—but he drew the line at peach- and cherry-flavored nutrients.
She smiled after he teleported the glass back to the kitchen. “How about banana?”
“It should remain a fruit.”
Her laughter was soft and husky, sparks of delight in the midnight blue of her eyes. But it faded too fast. Placing a hand on his back, touching him as she so often did—just because she wanted to be close—she said, “That was a hard one, wasn’t it?”
“Major cascading breach.” As she listened, he told her about the anchor who’d spoken to Aden.
Wide eyes. “Anchors don’t talk to anyone, I mean, I’m sure they do—but they never talk about anchor business. They just … do it.”
“Unless the situation is now so critical that they have no choice.” Grabbing the towel he’d left on an outdoor chair, he began to rub his face and hair dry. “I need a shower.”
“Go, have a long one.” She pressed her fingers to his lips when he would’ve spoken. “Finding out about the anchor can wait a few more minutes. Look after yourself first.”
She kept on doing that. Looking after him. Protecting him. Him, a man who could topple cities with the power of his mind alone. Seeing the fine lines flaring out from the corners of her eyes, sensing her concern in the way she ran her hand over him, he did as she’d ordered and got himself to a bathroom lush with plants his lover babied every morning.
When a naked Sahara stepped into the large space minutes later, he welcomed her with open arms and a hungry mouth. He hadn’t understood pleasure before her, hadn’t understood that touch could be wanted and not simply borne. All slippery limbs and possessive lips, she kissed and bit and claimed him all over again as he found home inside her. Always, he’d find home with Sahara.
Afterward, he pulled on a pair of sweatpants while she threw on a loose sweater-dress that came to halfway down her thighs. Hit by a wave of raw possessiveness, he gripped her by the waist, held her. If he ever lost her …
Her fingers on his jaw, her charm bracelet sliding over her wrist, she rose on tiptoe to brush her mouth over his. “Don’t go there. Into the dark.” An order. “Stay in the now. In the here. With me.”
Pressing his forehead to hers, he exhaled before nodding. Sometimes the demons tried to claw him back into the relentless fury in which he’d lived after she’d been taken from him, but that past held nothing but pain. This, where they were now—despite all the problems in the PsyNet—it held only beauty of a kind he hadn’t known could exist.
Hands linked, they walked to the kitchen, where she made him a second drink.
Lips curving, she said, “Kiwi?”
“Is a bird.”
Laughter in the air again as she pushed across the drink. Her bracelet tinkled gently, and he caught sight of the most recent charm he’d given her: a flower in full bloom, its petals pink sapphires and its heart a yellow diamond.
For his birthday, she’d talked his admin into ensuring that his schedule was free of all meetings—and then she’d “kidnapped” him for a visit to a theme park where, disguised to avoid recognition, they’d ridden all the rides and eaten the bad food, and he’d won her a stuffed creature of indeterminate origin that she kept in her home office.
Giving him, giving them, the kind of innocent joy they’d never had as children.
Seated at the counter, he waited for her to join him before he said, “I need to track down that A, find out what she means when she talks about the Substrate.”
“You’re extremely annoyed you don’t know this already.” She rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone.”
He scowled at her, the gentle teasing something else to which he’d become accustomed. She kept on doing things to pull him into the light, keep him from giving in to his tendencies toward cold-eyed power. “I was a Councilor and yet this subject never came up.”
“We both know our race has managed frankly remarkable feats of memory loss—we even forgot an entire designation. In comparison to that, this is a minor oversight.”
The most dangerous thing was that she was right. It made Kaleb wonder what other critical data lay mothballed in the past, gathering dust while the PsyNet floundered. Today, however, his priority was the Delhi hub-A.
“The entire anchor database now has dual protections—I have to get Ivy Jane’s authorization as well as my own.” Everyone knew Kaleb could breach almost any wall put in place to keep him out, but he had no reason to breach this one. He had no ill intent.
Sahara picked up the phone she’d left on the breakfast counter. “She was online just before—it’s early evening for her.” Her fingers flew over the screen. “If you’re right about the A working as hard as you and Aden, you’ll have to wait to talk to her. You’re tired, so she has to be close to flameout.”
A reply popped onto Sahara’s phone screen at the same instant: Tell Kaleb I’ll meet him at the vault that holds the data.
That vault was on the PsyNet. But, courtesy of the Pure Psy attacks in 2081, it didn’t hold information on every A in the world. The information had been split into myriad pieces, much of it held safe by trusted parties, and the rest scattered across seven PsyNet vaults. It was a safeguard so a breach wouldn’t expose all the anchors in the network.
Each member of the Ruling Coalition knew which data guardian or vault held which segment of information, the reason why Ivy Jane hadn’t had to specify it for him. The president of the Empathic Collective also had to be the second person to authorize any request for access. Of them all, she was the one most likely to hold on to her ethical center.
On the PsyNet, Ivy Jane’s presence held an echo of empath-gold. “Who are you looking for?” she asked once they were inside the vault.
“The main anchor for the region that fractured today. Around Delhi.” It was at times hard to tell which physical location correlated to the psychic, but not with such a major city—and not when fatalities had reached over two hundred and fifty. People had collapsed where they stood, their minds crushed in the initial assault.
“Here.” Ivy pointed out the segment of data that related to northern India.
It only took him half a minute to find the name: Payal Rao.
