Allegiance of Honor Read online

  Since Sascha had no external meetings of her own, she’d chosen to stay home with Naya, though they’d barely actually been at home. Aside from the afternoon play session, they’d gone out for an hour in the morning so Naya could play with Anu’s toddler—the sweet-natured two-year-old and Naya were fast friends.

  Sascha had taken the chance to have a coffee with Anu as the two of them watched their children play. She’d expected stories of juvenile shenanigans from the cheerful maternal female, Anu’s task in the pack to monitor the emotional health of the eleven-to-thirteen-year-old group, but Anu had shocked her with the news that the children hadn’t gotten up to any tricks over the past week.

  “The good behavior won’t last,” she’d predicted with faux solemnity, her prettily plump face set in suspicious lines. “They’re just lulling us into a false sense of security. Then . . . pounce!”

  Sascha was thinking she had to share Anu’s comment with Lucas when he nipped at her lower lip.

  “I’m glad to be home,” he said. “It’s been a hell of a day.” Another kiss, this one hard and fast, before he looked at Naya again. “Why are you pulling Papa’s hair?”

  Naya’s smile was pure gleeful cat. “Ooo!”

  Sascha tensed her stomach in an effort to fight her laughter; she knew that only encouraged their daughter. But, God, it was hard—she had no idea how Tamsyn did it with her twins. Who, incidentally, had taught Naya the word “oops” as a way to respond when caught making trouble. She could only enunciate “ooo,” but her meaning was clear. She also knew the names of the twins, though she couldn’t say Roman and Julian yet, only Ro and Jul.

  “Ooo is right.” Lucas growled at Naya.

  Naya growled back, the sound so adorable and their cub’s pride in making it such a huge, happy thing, that, once again, Sascha just could not keep a straight face. Turning away to hide her tearing eyes and laughter so Naya wouldn’t realize how easily she could cute her way out of trouble, she breathed deep. Only when she had herself under control did she turn and take Naya back into her arms. “Come on, let’s go have your milk so your papa can shower.”

  Following at their backs, Lucas pulled the door closed and locked it again. “It’s safe to release the escape artist.”

  Sascha loved carrying Naya, loved feeling her warm weight, but she’d learned that leopard changeling cubs did best if they were allowed a certain independence from a young age. When Naya wanted a cuddle, she’d find her. So she stole another cheek kiss before putting Naya on the play mat on which her daughter had stacked her blocks. Then she watched her mate walk toward the shower.

  Her sigh was deep.

  It was unfair, how good he looked in an old pair of jeans and a simple T-shirt.

  Glancing over his shoulder as he reached the safely folded and stowed screen they used to separate out the living and sleeping areas when they had guests, Lucas grinned. “Hold that thought until our princess is asleep.”

  Sascha kept her gaze locked to that of her wild panther, let the cat know she saw it prowling under his skin. “Oh, I intend to.”

  A chuckle before he went the rest of the way to the shower located off the bedroom area.

  Going into the kitchenette, Sascha picked up the sippy cup and brought it out to Naya. “There you go, baby girl.”

  Naya held the childproof cup with firm hands, little fingers around the handles on either side. Her eyes widened when she took the first sip out of the raised bit designed to ensure the milk wouldn’t spill should it fall from her hands. “Cho!”

  “Yes, chocolate. You were very good at Anu’s—I thought you deserved a treat.” Rising to her feet, she went into the kitchenette to finish dinner preparations. Naya’s meal was easy—when Sascha dropped off the twins this afternoon, Tamsyn had given her a fresh jar of toddler-appropriate stew that Naya loved.

  If only adult food were so straightforward.

  “Right,” she said, and continued what she’d been doing before stopping to make Naya’s milk.

  She was still a terrible cook overall, but she’d learned to make a few things that were fail-safe, and since Lucas had made sure they were fed three days running, it was only fair she take a turn.

  However, not only were her skills as a cook dismal, she had nothing on how sexy Lucas looked while cooking. Especially since he had a tendency to walk around the aerie wearing only his jeans, those jeans hanging precariously low. Sighing again at the memory—then grinning because he’d probably come out of the shower with nothing but a towel hitched around his hips, she put the potato cheese bake she’d already prepared into the oven.

  Her plan was to pair it with the chicken she’d put in to roast prior to the troubling call from Ivy Jane. She crossed her fingers that the chicken wouldn’t burn or be undercooked. It remained her nemesis, along with a thousand other things.

  Picking up the organizer, she walked into the living room. She’d watch over Naya while Lucas showered, then put away work for the day. But first she had to reply to a—“Eep!”

  She jumped at the feel of something biting her ankle, glancing down just in time to see a furry black head disappear back under the small pink play table next to her. Eyes wide, Sascha tiptoed closer, was about to look beneath the table when she felt a deep need to do this with her mate by her side. “Lucas,” she whispered, reaching for him through the mating bond.

  The shower shut off a heartbeat later, and then a dripping Lucas, white towel wrapped around his hips exactly as she’d imagined, was walking out. “What’s the matter?”

  Sascha just pointed to the table and waved him down onto his knees. Awareness dawning in eyes that rapidly went from human to panther, he came down beside her. Then, together, they both pressed their weight onto their palms and looked under the table Naya liked to use to put her toys on when she was “tidying.”

  Bright green leopard eyes glowed at them before a tiny panther cub bounded out into their arms—or tried to. She wasn’t very coordinated, more slid across the floor than ran. Pride burned in her eyes, in her mental presence, in her growling.

  Lucas growled back, chuckling and rubbing Naya’s little head when she tried to pounce on him. Her concentration that of the very young child she was, she then turned to Sascha and tried to climb into her lap, Sascha having sat up on her knees.

  Sascha’s heart had burst open at first sight of her child’s new form. Jet-black like her father except for those bright green eyes, her leopard rosettes hidden in the black, Naya was astonishingly beautiful.

  Fighting happy tears, she said, “Clever, clever girl.” She’d been told changeling children shifted around one year of age, and with Naya’s birthday a bare week away, Sascha had been watchful—but she’d thought she would feel a mental change when Naya shifted for the first time. “Why didn’t I feel you shift?”

  “Because it’s normal for her.” Lucas turned over onto his back on the play mat, uncaring of his wet state.

  Taking the silent invitation, Naya immediately ran over to climb laboriously onto his chest. She had to rest afterward, her tiny body heaving up and down under Lucas’s hand. Once recovered, she stood on his chest and tried to bat playfully at his face. He deflected her with gentle hands, but in a way that told Naya it was all right to continue this game. “She’s always Naya, whatever form she takes.”

  “But when you shift, you feel wilder.” Sascha didn’t know how else to explain it.

  “She’s a baby, closer to her primal state.”

  Naya looked up and purred when Sascha petted her, then fell flat on her belly, legs splayed out. Sascha helped her get back on her feet, where she once again started to “fight” with her father, safe in the knowledge that Lucas could easily handle her mock-attack.

  “No claws.” Lucas caught one small paw and tapped on the claws.

  When Naya made mewling sounds, claws still out, Lucas released his own claws, then
retracted them. One second, two, three, Naya’s head tilted to the side . . . and her claws slid back in. “Good girl.” Lucas kissed her face.

  Happy, Naya turned to Sascha. Unable to resist, Sascha picked up their sweet baby and held her close. Her tiny heart beat so fast, her fur soft. Memories crashed into Sascha of the day she’d first held a cub in animal form. Julian had been bigger than Naya then, but just as gorgeous. Never could she have imagined that one day she’d be holding her own cub. Her eyes stung.

  Naya only allowed Sascha’s hold for a little while before wriggling to be put down. Circling Lucas and Sascha—falling and getting up and slipping—Naya growled and purred and had a rest every so often against her parents.

  Sascha, one hand on Lucas’s bare chest, couldn’t stop watching her. “Remember that day I held Julian for the first time?”

  “You mean the day you gave yourself away?”

  Sascha smiled through her incipient tears. “I wish I could’ve kept that boot he chewed on.”

  “You kept me. I’m a better souvenir.” Lucas raised one leg so it was bent at the knee, the towel immediately falling open on either side of his muscled thigh.

  Her mind split in two. “Stop that,” she ordered the gorgeous adult panther on the floor while a gorgeous baby panther tried to bite at his arm with tiny panther teeth. “I can’t have you being all sexy while Naya’s being all adorable.”

  Her heart might explode permanently.

  He chuckled, moved over onto his front—and that towel, it just couldn’t keep up. Before she could drag it back into place, the air filled with shattered light and a large black panther now sat beside her. Delighted, Naya tried to bite at Lucas’s tail but she couldn’t catch it because he’d swept it over. Moving in that adorable, stumbling way, she tried to chase it—and Lucas swiped it back.

  Sascha laughed as Naya tried to catch it again.

  The simple game kept her amused and excited until she crawled into Sascha’s lap and fell fast asleep with the quickness of the toddler that she was. Stroking her hands through Naya’s soft fur, Sascha caught light from the corner of her eye. “Now you’re naked.” She tried to glare at her mate without looking at his body. “Do you want me dead?”

  Chuckling, Lucas moved so that he was leaning on his arm behind her, his lower body mostly out of her range of vision. “I can’t wait to take her for runs, to teach her the forest, show her how to climb to the aerie.”

  Sascha’s overworked heart thumped. “Oh God, she’s going to be so much more mobile.” While still a baby in every other way.

  Lucas tapped her on the nose. “She’s a cat. We’ll also teach her the rules.”

  “Is she going to start jumping off the balcony?” It was strength in motion when Lucas did it. The idea of Naya’s tiny body flying through that much air had Sascha close to hyperventilating.

  Rubbing her back, Lucas made a reassuring purring sound in his chest. “Not tomorrow or the day after. She’s going to need time to build her strength.”

  Sascha had the feeling he was easing her into Naya’s inevitable jump, and she was okay with that. Any woman would need to be petted and reassured when her baby was about to start flying off a balcony. “She’s so beautiful as a cat, too.”

  “Of course she is.” Lucas nuzzled her. “She’s your daughter.”

  “Ours.”

  “Ours.” Fingers weaving into her unbound hair, Lucas kissed her with a smile on his lips while their daughter slept in her lap. Sometime during the kiss, Naya shifted spontaneously back into human form—and the dinner burned. Neither Lucas nor Sascha cared. Not with their child snoring sweetly in her dreams.

  Chapter 9

  THE ARCHITECT, THE one who’d put together the Consortium, the one who’d had the foresight to see the fall of Silence on the horizon and to understand the power vacuum it would leave in the world, considered the latest data on the Trinity Accord.

  If successful, Trinity and the ensuing United Earth Federation would kill the Consortium, though right now, the accord appeared to be barely treading water. Still, the Architect took nothing for granted. The Consortium had made the decision to go under to regroup after a member in the uppermost echelon of its membership was captured by the Arrow Squad, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t action small-scale disruptions.

  The Human Alliance, for example, would have little patience for Trinity business if anti-human insurgents started making trouble in their territory. As it happened, the Architect knew of one such group. All it needed was a nudge to the right location and a catalyst to light its destructive fuse.

  It was a small thing, but all chaos had to begin somewhere.

  As for the much bigger operation that had been put into motion by another one of the core members of the Consortium . . . The Architect looked down at the brief on Nadiya Hunter. It was pitifully empty, but then the child wasn’t even a year old, according to Consortium sources. Her importance as a symbol, however, was starting to grow as the Psy race came out of its post-Silence stupor and began to look around.

  The Architect’s fellow Consortium member was right: Killing the child in the right way held the potential to incite a bloody war between Psy and changeling, humans caught in the crossfire. It would be a decisive blow that permanently shattered Trinity and any hope of a peace that promised to severely frustrate the Consortium’s plans.

  However, a single mistake and the fury of DarkRiver and its powerful allies would focus solely on the Consortium. The Architect knew predatory changelings well enough to understand they wouldn’t stop until each and every member of the Consortium was dead.

  The pros and cons of the Nadiya Hunter gambit required further thought—but all the pieces were in place, if and when the Architect decided it was time to press “go.”

  Chapter 10

  LUCAS PUT NAYA into her crib and raised the bars of the safety barrier, which he’d had to extend to their full height after she started escaping. It was to keep her safe. Lucas and Sascha would normally wake at the smallest sound, but just in case.

  Covering her with a furry green blanket Tamsyn had knitted for her, he tucked the damn wolf snuggle toy beside her, then touched her soft, dark hair and looked at the woman who stood by his side. “We did good.”

  Sascha slipped her arm through his, eyes of cardinal starlight touched with sparks of color on Naya. “Yes, and had fun doing it.” A sudden frown. “She had chocolate sprinkled milk, and I didn’t clean her teeth. She usually doesn’t fall asleep so early—she didn’t even have her dinner.”

  “She’ll wake if she’s hungry, and one night without brushing her teeth won’t hurt her,” Lucas reassured his mate. “I did that every so often myself as a kid—it’s amazing how much candy I got into.”

  “Thanks for the warning. Now go put on some jeans.”

  Chuckling, he drew her out of the nursery he and packmates had added on soon after Naya’s birth. It was attached to their bedroom, so even if Naya escaped her crib, she’d have to go past their bed to get out.

  “Anything salvageable?” he asked after pulling on jeans and following Sascha to the kitchen.

  “Hmm. I think the potatoes might still be good.”

  “Super melted cheese is still melted cheese.” Lucas took the pan to the table. “Chicken?”

  “Lump of charcoal.” Sascha looked morosely at it before shaking off her disappointment. “Want omelets instead?”

  “Yep.”

  The two of them worked side by side to prepare the omelets. “Hear anything about Nikita?” The recent assassination attempt on Sascha’s mother had caused significant injuries.

  “Sophie says she’s pushing herself too hard.” Sascha’s tone tensed. “She’s concerned about a setback.”

  Running a hand over her hair, Lucas pointed out an irrefutable truth. “Nikita isn’t used to giving up control, even for short periods.” T
he former Councilor and current member of the Ruling Coalition of the Psy race was a pitiless operator who was used to power.

  Sascha nodded, took a deep breath. “So far, she’s fine. Sophie’s going to keep me updated on her progress.” Unspoken were the words that today, Sascha had to focus on her vulnerable child, not on a mother adept at lethal defense—and offense.

  They sat down to eat less than ten minutes later, their chairs beside each other instead of on either side of the table. Lucas liked to be able to affectionately touch his mate, and Sascha had picked up the feline habit, petting him every so often as they ate.

  Skin privileges between a mated pair. Simple. Deeply needed.

  He felt the worry that rose to the forefront of her mind now that Naya was asleep, but they both spoke only in touches until after they’d polished off the meal and she was cutting up some fruit for them to eat for dessert. That was when Sascha asked him to go over the full details of what Aden’s people had heard in the Net.

  Her face grew white under the dark honey of her skin as he spoke. “Is it a group like Pure Psy?”

  “No current signs that it’s anything that focused.” Lucas forced himself to be calm; his mate needed that from him right now. “I’d still like to increase security precautions around her regardless. People—and not just Psy—are curious about her.”

  Dorian had done some research for him today, discovered that the only living child of mixed Psy and changeling blood was of far more interest to various groups across the world than the pack had ever realized. The majority of those groups had little to no information about Naya, knew only that she existed. But Lucas wasn’t about to take chances with the life of his cub. “That curiosity is only going to grow and”—his jaw tightened—“some bastards will see her only as a political pawn to exploit.”