Lucas often wondered why the hell he’d volunteered to be the first point of contact for overall Trinity business for more than twenty-five packs and counting . . . and then he’d remember Naya. His and Sascha’s smart, funny cub who’d smacked big kisses on his face today before he left the aerie, and who collapsed into giggles when he tickled her. Half Psy, half changeling, all mischief—and as Aden’s intel had put into sharp focus today, a threat to those who abhorred change and wanted to freeze the world in time.
His gut tensed again, claws shoving at his skin. He’d permit no one to dim her light.
He also wanted her to grow up in a united world, not a divided one. Naya should never have to choose between the two sides of her heritage.
Lucas would fight to his last breath to make that happen.
“What’s the second problem?” Clay brought the car to a stop in front of an Embarcadero warehouse owned by DarkRiver. “You said two.”
“Let’s walk and talk,” Lucas said. “You might still make the site in time.”
Stepping out into the salt-laced air of the waterfront after putting up the passenger-side window, Lucas shut the door, then joined Clay as the other man headed in the direction where the boys were waiting. The sun rained down on them out of a cloudless blue sky, the winds light. Lucas could hear the faint buzz of voices in the distance, feel the vibration of the vehicles on the road, smell the saltwater taffy made fresh in a nearby boutique candy shop.
The sunshine made the panther within Lucas stretch out into a lazy sprawl; he had to resist the sudden temptation to shift and sun himself on the pier. That was not alpha behavior—on the other hand, it would be amusing to see people’s reaction to a black panther in their midst, especially if he walked into a butcher’s and pointed to a prime cut of meat.
Changeling cats being bigger than their wild counterparts, he’d make quite an impression.
“Gotta love this sun,” Clay said right then. “Makes me want to curl up and go boneless like that tabby over there.”
Grinning, Lucas told the sentinel what he’d been thinking. Clay’s smile was slow, deep. “Let’s do it for Halloween. Give the tourists a shock. We can chase the ones who are mean to the shopkeepers.”
Deeply amused in a way only a feline could be, Lucas skirted a tiny yapping dog on a leash that thought it was a mastiff. A single hard glance from Lucas would’ve shut him down, but why spoil a tiny dog’s dreams of glory?
“Second issue is connected to the voting situation,” he said as they walked. “It all arises from the lack of a governing charter or constitution.” Something that was deeply necessary to the success of such a diverse body, one with members scattered across the world.
Right now the accord was an agreement to communicate, and they had vehicles in place for that. But to become a truly stabilizing force that would lead to the United Earth Federation, it needed to become far more cohesive. Especially since trust remained a huge, complicated question for the entire membership.
“There are the boys.”
Lucas nodded, having already caught their scent, recognized them as pack. Shoulders tensed and legs bouncing nervously on sneakered feet, the four teenagers were huddled in a small group, their faces unusually solemn.
Spotting Clay and Lucas, Jon said something and the boys jogged across to meet them in the middle of the pier. The four sixteen-year-olds were dressed as boys their age currently dressed—white T-shirts under open shirts of various hues and types, atop baggy board shorts that reached past their knees, and brightly colored sneakers they’d all personalized.
However, though they were wearing shorts meant for the surf, they were carrying hoverboards. All in all, an ordinary sight.
“We were hanging out when we saw it,” Jon said, his extraordinarily beautiful face shadowed under the bill of a battered gray cap and his distinctive violet eyes hidden by hazel contacts.
Certain dangerous people knew the teenager existed and was part of DarkRiver, but there was no reason he had to make himself a high visibility target. Right now, he looked like a thousand other boys in the city. He wasn’t. Jon was one of the Forgotten, part of the young generation that was displaying striking new psychic abilities.
DarkRiver had promised to back the boy should he want to ditch the contacts, stop dyeing his white-gold hair, but Jon had decided it was safer for his buddies and his little sister if he stayed under the radar until he was older and stronger. “Stops people from staring at me, too,” he’d said to Lucas, rubbing the place on his neck where he’d once had a Crawlers gang tattoo. “I just want to be one of the juveniles, you know?”
Lucas understood, even better than Jon likely realized. Clay, Talin, Noor, and DarkRiver were the first real family Jon had ever had, the first time he had people around him on whom he could rely no matter what. He hated being reminded that he was in any way different from his packmates.
“Is the thing you saw in the water or caught under the pier?” Clay asked the boy he’d adopted. It could’ve proved problematic, given Jon’s past, but of all the men in DarkRiver, it was Clay who best understood what it was to be a lost boy.
He and Jon had connected like two puzzle pieces.
Now, the boy shook his head, while around him, the other teenagers looked anywhere but at their alpha or Clay. “We were goofing off and it looked interesting, so, um”—his golden skin pinked—“these guys hung me off the pier by my ankles and I plucked it out.”