Shards of Hope

Chapter 17

A CHANGELING FEMALE appeared in Zaira’s line of sight just then, her hair and the shape of her face making it clear she was the child’s mother or other close relative. “I’m so sorry,” she said with a smile that didn’t seem apologetic at all. “She loves ponies. Come on, cublet. Let Zaira eat.”

The child—the cub—clung on tighter. “No.” A puff of hot air against Zaira’s neck. “My friend!”

Lips twitching, the other woman raised an eyebrow. “She can be like a barnacle. You mind?”

“No.” Alarming or distressing the child would hardly create goodwill, and right now she and Aden needed RainFire’s assistance.

“Be good, Jojo.” Leaning in to kiss the child’s cheek, the woman stepped back and returned to another table.

“Jojo good,” the child said into Zaira’s neck. “Zai good?”

Surprised the cub had so quickly picked up on her name from the context of the conversation, Zaira sat down at a table and looked at her new companion with more interest. “Not always,” she said with utmost honesty. “I can’t always control myself.”

Sitting up in her lap, the child stared at her, frown lines marring her forehead above eyes that had shifted to a soft brown. A second later, she clapped. “Cookies!”

As the word seemed apropos of nothing, Zaira downgraded her estimation of Jojo’s intelligence until Aden said, “Do you find yourself unable to control yourself around cookies, Jojo?”

A firm nod from the black-haired girl. “Cookies. Nom nom.” She made chomping movements with her jaw and mimed putting cookies into her mouth with hands that suddenly had tiny claws at the tips of her fingers.

Zaira looked at Aden. “Are all children this small this intelligent?”

He wasn’t the one who answered.

“Kids are full of surprises,” Remi said, taking a seat across from them. “Good morning, Jojo.”

Beaming, Jojo pushed herself up by bracing one hand on the table and blew kisses at Remi.

The alpha grinned. “This one, though, she’s a smarty-pants.”

Plopping back down in Zaira’s lap, claws retracted, Jojo reached out and took a triangle of toast off Zaira’s plate. She made a face after taking a bite. “Pea butter?”

“Gimme.” Taking the slice, Remi put some kind of spread on it from a small jar on the table. “There you go, complete with peanut butter.”

Happy, Jojo relaxed against Zaira and busied herself eating. The small, warm weight was . . . odd. Picking up an undoctored slice of toast, Zaira was very careful with all her movements so as not to inadvertently harm the child.

“She won’t break, you know.” Remi’s stance was unaggressive, his arm placed easily over the back of the chair next to his. “Jojo’s a leopard cub, probably has bones stronger than yours.”

“Her spine remains fragile. I could snap it in a second,” Zaira said before she remembered she was supposed to be blending in.

The growl that rumbled from Remi’s throat had Jojo going still. Zaira did, too, aware of Aden ready for a fight beside her.

“Apologies,” she said before the situation could escalate. “I didn’t mean I would harm the child. I was just pointing out that you’re all being very trusting in allowing me to hold her. You should be more careful.” Jojo was tiny, easy to harm, easy to break.

Remi’s eyes remained leopard as he stared at her, but the growl was gone from his voice when he said, “You couldn’t lay a finger on her before you’d be dead.” Absolute conviction. “The fact that you’d warn me about yourself tells me that even if we had trusted you, we’d have been right to do so. Do you kill children, Zaira?”

“No, only adults.” Ming LeBon had twice ordered her to retrieve a child he’d wanted to experiment on. Both times, Zaira had seen to the child’s safety, well aware Ming needed her covert skills too much to punish her for her actions.

Remi’s lips curved, his gaze flicking to Aden. “Is she always this honest?”

“Yes,” Aden said from beside her, his shoulder brushing hers.

“Lying wastes energy.” Zaira ate another bite of toast. “Also, it’s pointless. No one would believe it if I smiled and wore frothy clothes and pretended to be helpless.” She was dead certain the alpha hadn’t fallen for her weak act in the infirmary so there was no point in carrying on the subterfuge.

Remi chuckled, the sound making Jojo laugh, her face smeared with the spread on her toast. The sound was high, soft, and it was a sound Zaira had never heard from an Arrow child. She didn’t know if children with vicious psychic abilities could ever be this carefree, but as she watched Jojo laugh, she began to truly understand Aden’s vision for the squad.

ADEN didn’t monitor Zaira while he conversed with Remi. He knew she wouldn’t harm the child. Because Zaira, as she’d said herself, wasn’t a psychopath. She was simply wired differently. Put her in charge of a group of children and she probably wouldn’t touch them or comfort them without prompting. But she’d make sure they were protected from all harm, even if it meant giving up her own life. Not because they were children, but because they were weaker than her.

Zaira’s weakness was weakness.

If she was sent against a target who was vulnerable to the extent that she considered the person unfair prey, she wouldn’t move. She might assassinate a pedophilic CEO without an eyeblink, but she’d refuse to touch a teacher who had angered someone in power. Then there was the hacker she’d saved even though the younger woman had been attempting to break into Arrow Central Command, and the outwardly respectable doctor she’d executed.

It had turned out the doctor was killing vulnerable patients after getting them to sign over their estates to him. Unlike in that case, Aden didn’t always understand the judgments Zaira made, but he knew that children were simply never on her hit list. Perhaps because she remembered the helpless child she’d once been, the one no one had helped and everyone had hurt.

“How’s the head?” Remi asked in a deceptively laid-back tone.

“Problematic,” Aden said, since it was clear the alpha had an idea something was seriously wrong.

An incisive look. “Yep, that’s the truth.” Seeing the question Aden didn’t ask, he shrugged those big shoulders. “For all I knew, you’d recovered and were staying here for reasons of your own. Spying maybe. What the hell for, I don’t know—we’re a dot in the ocean when it comes to changeling pack hierarchy.”

Aden had a feeling it wouldn’t remain that way. While he’d waited for Zaira to wake yesterday, he’d heard the alpha mention Lucas Hunter to Finn. The DarkRiver alpha was a power and he clearly respected Remi if RainFire had direct contact with him.

“I am spying in a sense,” Aden said, deciding to lay these cards on the table. “This is the first time any active Arrow has been inside a changeling pack.” Judd lived in one, but his loyalty to SnowDancer stopped him from sharing information about the pack with the squad.

“Nothing much to see.” Remi smiled thanks at an older packmate who gave him a mug of coffee on her way across the room. “We’re a big family.”

“A family with rules.”

“Of course.” Putting down the coffee after taking a long swig, he said, “You Psy, you think you’re the only ones with control issues, but we have these.” His claws sliced out to dig into the tabletop as if the hard wood was made of butter.

Jojo clapped. “Meow! Meow!”

Shoulders shaking, Remi shook his head. “We don’t go ‘meow, meow,’ Jojo. We go ‘grr.’”

“Grr.”

Remi retracted his claws to the little girl’s laughter. “Those claws are only the start of it. If two Psy fight, you might go mind to mind, but we go claw to tooth, can rip out each other’s throats if we’re not careful. That’s why we need rules.”

“No biting,” Jojo input into the conversation. “Bad Jojo.” A sad face.

Reaching over, Remi tapped her on the nose. “You took your punishment. You going to bite again?”

The little girl shook her head and lifted her arms.

Remi plucked her from Zaira’s lap and into his own, using a washed-soft white napkin to clean her face before holding her against his body . . . where she turned into sparkles of light. Aden watched, having never seen the transformation close-up. Beside him, he was aware of Zaira sitting stock-still. And then where the child had been was a very small leopard cub trying to climb up Remi’s body.

Laughing, the alpha lifted her up onto his shoulder, where she curled happily, her tail hanging down Remi’s chest. “There goes another set of pajamas,” he said, but his tone made it clear he wasn’t worried about the clothing loss.

“You spoke of punishment,” Aden said, seeing in the child’s response to the alpha an answer to a problem for which he so far had no solution. “How do you punish a child so she isn’t broken or hurt? Especially a child that could do serious damage?”

“Tell me that’s not how you train your children.” Snarling anger in Remi’s words.

“It’s how we were trained,” Zaira answered. “Now we want to change things, but we must have a framework.”

REMI couldn’t imagine harming any cub, any child. Whether that child belonged to his pack or not. Deeply disturbed at the idea that the Psy had done—might still be doing—that to their young, he picked Jojo up from his shoulder and held her against his chest. Curling against him, she began to purr, the contented sound easing his leopard’s agitation.

“Punishment depends on age,” he said when he realized the Arrows were serious and waiting for his response. “For the littlest, making them sit alone in a corner without toys for a few minutes is enough.” He stroked Jojo’s soft fur, her body fragile under his touch. “They don’t really remember what they did wrong if the punishment goes on any longer, but if we’re consistent in punishing them for bad behavior in that way, they eventually make the connection.”

“A kind of conditioning,” Aden said.

Remi shrugged. “It’s about instilling discipline, teaching in a way that suits their age and ability to learn. You want to call it conditioning, go for it.”

Aden and Zaira looked at each other, and while their expressions didn’t change, it was clear they were silently considering the matter as a pair. Remi wondered if the two knew how often they did that. If they hadn’t been Psy, he’d have thought they had something going on. Then again, things had apparently changed for the Psy race recently—for all he knew, these two were having dirty, sweaty sex every night.

His leopard grinned at the idea.

“What about older children?” Aden asked after about thirty seconds.

“Longer periods of time-out usually work for those of elementary school age,” Remi said. “We also start limiting privileges.” He rubbed the spot between Jojo’s ears and her purr increased. His own leopard purred in his chest in reply.

God, he’d missed cubs when he’d been roaming alone, missed the sense of family that was at the core of a healthy pack. He’d needed those solitary years to realize how little such an existence suited him, but every now and then, he wanted to give himself a swift kick in the ass for taking so long to understand his own intrinsic nature.

“Older cubs also start being hauled up in front of the maternal females, or the alpha, for bigger transgressions.” His grin grew wider at the memory of his teenage years. “I was once assigned to dig outdoor latrines for a camping trip, then fill them back in. By myself. In winter.” The ground had been like rock. “At least it didn’t smell.”

“What did you do to earn the punishment?”

Aware of the sharp little ears listening to him, he shook his head instead of answering Aden’s question. “Doesn’t matter. And the details of specific punishments don’t matter—what matters is that the cubs understand they did something wrong, and that people care enough to correct them.” Kissing Jojo on top of her head when she rose up on her feet, he put her on the ground.

She padded over to her older brother and began to pretend-attack his leg.

The teenager pretended to growl back.

Seeing the Arrows watching the interplay, he waited until they returned their attention to him. “The most important thing,” he said, “is that the child knows he or she is loved, is wanted, belongs. It makes the toughest punishment bearable.”

He held Aden’s gaze, the other man’s expression unreadable. “It’s the alpha’s responsibility and his privilege to create that environment—we are the guardians of every heart in our care.” Aden Kai might not be changeling, but he was an alpha and he held within his hands the power to change his people from the inside out.

• • •

THE most important thing is that the child knows he or she is loved, is wanted, belongs.

Zaira didn’t know what it was to be loved, didn’t understand the emotion, though the insane girl in her had often pressed its hands to the windows of her eyes in wordless yearning as it watched those of the other races. Living in Venice, Zaira had seen fathers and mothers with their children, siblings laughing arm in arm, lovers walking wrapped in one another, and she’d sometimes imagined a future in which she, too, had someone who liked to be with her just because she was Zaira.

Her brain had trouble with that concept, but oddly the rage creature coveted it. Even when it appeared to Zaira that love was as huge a thing as rage, that it would fill her up should she ever understand it.

Not far from them, the boy Jojo had “attacked” was laughing as he picked her up by the scruff of her neck and nipped at the tip of her nose.

Rage was a selfish, covetous emotion that wanted to swallow her whole. Love, it appeared, spread outward. And still the twisted, deformed girl inside her, the one filled with rage, looked at that scene and cried. The tears were old and silent and hidden deep in the vault of her mind. Zaira hadn’t cried true tears since she was maybe three, but deep in that vault, the girl shaped by rage sometimes did so surreptitiously.

Zaira tried to ignore her, but it was hard, her cries echoing in the silence in her head. Stomach tensing, causing her new skin to ache, she waited till Remi left the table before saying, “How can we teach Arrow children about love if we don’t understand it?”

Aden’s eyes went to where Jojo was now sitting up in the lap of the boy who had the same eyes and skin as the little girl, her paws on the tabletop and her ears pricked as she listened to the conversation around her. The teenager had one hand on her back, steadying her, while with his other, he was spooning up cereal, his eyes turned in the direction of another boy with whom he was holding a conversation.

“Look at her,” Aden said in that quiet tone that always brought people to attention. “She’s happy to be there though no one is currently paying her any particular attention.”

Zaira saw what he meant. “She’s being touched by someone she trusts not to hurt her and she knows that should she need care, it will be given.” As Remi had so easily prepared that slice of toast for her.

“Yes.” Aden touched his hand to her own back, as if he’d sensed the vicious wolves of aloneness biting at her. “We can give our children a safe haven where they never have to fear being hurt simply for being who they are.”

Zaira thought again of that long-ago infirmary room and of the solemn boy who’d patched up her wounds. He’d been her safe place. And in giving her that, he’d given her a reason not to take unnecessary risks, not to get herself killed, and never, ever to give up the fight against the insanity that wanted to envelop her mind. “I can do that.” Her voice came out raw, the insane, angry girl nodding in silent agreement. “I can help make a safe place for Arrow children.”

Aden’s lips brushed her ear as he leaned down to speak, the scent of his body in her every breath. “If you can do that, then you can be my partner.”

Zaira wanted to say yes, but her wants could be deadly. It was because of want that she collected things that were Aden’s and kept them close, why she took those things out late at night and carefully looked through them one by one. “If you’d made me this offer when I was sixteen, I would’ve taken it.”

Would’ve taken him.

Always, she’d been jealous of the attention he gave others, had wanted him only and always for herself.

“What’s changed?” Aden asked.

“Now I understand that my obsessive desire to own you comes from the same dark place as my rage.” That truth was one it had taken her years to grapple with, to comprehend. “It’ll crush the life out of you.” Because if she broke discipline and took Aden’s hand, then all bets were off. She’d regress to the feral creature she’d once been, murderous and violent and so full of need that she would take and take and take and take.

Because Zaira couldn’t walk the middle road: either she could be a disciplined, cold Arrow or she could be a savage, possessive, obsessive creature capable of any madness to get her own way. “I’d snap the neck of anyone who tried to get between us, anyone who dared take your attention from me,” she said, allowing him to see the sinuous darkness that lived in her. “I’d destroy you with my want and my need.”