Shards of Hope (Psy-Changeling 14)

Aden’s hold tightened. “I told you, you won’t ever be alone again. I’m here. I’ll always be here.” The old, aged anger in his tone gave lie once more to his professed Silence.

The quiet, dark-eyed boy she’d met had been angry for her from the start.

Spreading her hand over his heart, the rhythm lulling the rage into peace again so she could think, she said, “You have to lead from the front.” It was the only way his plan could work. “The squad will follow you into hell and back if that’s what you ask—all you have to do is show them the way.”

Air moved above her, as if he was shaking his head. “The squad needs me to remain as I am, needs the stability.”

Rising to face him, though she kept her hand on his heart, she said, “That’s your parents talking.” Zaira had lived with Marjorie and Naoshi since she’d taken over the Venice compound, knew every one of their views on how Aden should lead the squad. He had always gone his own way regardless, but every so often, he hit a blind spot. Like now.

“You’re the only one who can convince the others that change is possible for more than the youngest of us.” Even she would go as far as she was able, holding the rear and watching over those who’d successfully made new lives for themselves.

Aden’s jaw was a clean, hard line. He’d shaved, she realized suddenly. His skin would be smooth should she touch it. Then he spoke and the possessive compulsion quieted. “My job is to make sure no one is left behind.” Aden would never abandon any of his men or women in the dark.

“It was,” said the woman who was perhaps the most perfect Arrow he had. “Now your job is to forge a new path.”

Her words clashed against his parents’ advice to hold things steady, to make himself a cold power in the eyes of the populace so that no one would ever consider the Arrows a viable target. But his parents also thought Vasic “lost” to the squad because of his bonding with Ivy. They didn’t understand that Vasic had been lost for years, had come back to them because of Ivy.

For the first time in more than a decade, Aden’s best friend was alive.

“You know I’m right,” Zaira said into the quiet. “If I wasn’t, Vasic’s bonding as well as Abbot’s would’ve already initiated the change you want.” Her fingers dug a touch into his skin through his T-shirt. “Wide-scale change can only happen if it spirals out from the center. And you, you’re the center.”

It was her reference to Vasic that made Aden see her words for truth. The other man was part of the core of the squad, Aden’s second in command, his mate an empath who had opened her home and her heart. And yet the squad hesitated on the precipice. Waiting, Aden saw now, for a signal from the top that such “rebellion” from the rules was acceptable on a squadwide basis.

“If I do this,” he said slowly, “I can’t do it alone.” If his men and women needed him to go into the unknown first, that was what he’d do. He’d been born—created—to be what the squad needed and it was a mantle he’d accepted long ago. “Any change in my personal psyche is useless unless I bond on some level with another individual.” It wasn’t simply about moving out of the shadows, but about making deep, emotional connections beyond the ties of loyalty that bound one Arrow to another.

“I can offer you a number of suggestions for a suitable partner,” said the only woman he could ever see by his side. Strong, fierce, and with a fire in her heart that could spark the same in every Arrow heart if she’d only set it free.

Aden looked into the midnight black of her eyes and shook his head. “I want you. No substitutes.”

Chapter 15

“I THANK YOU for choosing me, Aden,” Zaira said after a long, long quiet, and it was a solemn statement that glittered with a brittle beauty. “I will never forget that you did and the insanity in me wants to accept, to take you and cage you up as I did that butterfly, but you know I’m one of the lifers. I won’t ever be anything but an Arrow—or a monster.” She touched her fingers to his jaw. “I’m broken too badly to fix.”

He thought again of the bruised and battered girl who’d run out of the treatment room even though she’d been hurt and in pain, of the woman who’d argued with him during their escape. “If your parents had broken you,” he said quietly, “you would’ve never killed them, never survived.” She’d made the only real choice in horrific circumstances. “You might have fractures inside you, but so do I.”

Her eyes turned obsidian, no whites, nothing but ink black. “You’re the best of us.” A potent statement. “The best. The strongest, the smartest, and the one with a heart stubborn enough that it resisted Silence and cared for the most damaged among us.” She clamped her hand over his mouth when he would’ve spoken. “I’m tough and I’m violent and I will slit the throat of anyone who tries to cause you harm, but I will never choose to go beyond the rigid black walls of an Arrow’s life. I can’t. You know exactly why.”

He tugged away her hand. “I know what you believe.” That the visceral rage that lived in her made her a lethal risk outside the confines of regulation Arrow life.

Zaira had once broken the jaws of two male trainers who’d tried to hold her down. She’d been twelve at the time and had spent the next year being taught ice-cold discipline after being given an ultimatum: learn control or be kicked out of the squad, out of the only family she had. The threat and the training had worked—she’d had no more nonsanctioned violent episodes—but Aden knew the rage lived within her.