Page 75 of Storm Echo

He understood now, that Yariela was to her what Ena was to him: the foundation. “I will treat your abuela with all honor and respect.”

A sudden, dazzling smile. “I know.” Fingers brushing his lips. “As for SkyElm’s problems as a whole, it was long-term bad management. A kind of inward-looking xenophobia that led to too many elders and young, not enough trained dominants.

“We just didn’t have the strength to hold back the Psy.” She thrust a hand through her hair … and in his mind flickered the image of a stern older man with a white beard against brown skin.

“Who’s the man with the beard?”

Soleil didn’t look surprised at the question that should’ve made no sense. “My grandfather,” she said. “I don’t know if the rot started with him, but it was well set in before I came into the pack. It was just a damaged and toxic place.”

“An alpha can change the whole shape of a family.”

Soleil held his eyes. “Who’s yours?”

“My grandmother.”

“Will you tell me about her?”

“Yes. But before I do, you need to know who I am.” He squeezed her hips when she would’ve spoken. “You need to know who you’re claiming.”

Narrowed eyes, her gaze feline, but she didn’t swipe at him. Instead, she kneaded at his shoulders with the delicate little claws that had emerged from her hands. “Tell me then,” she ordered. “Tell me the truth of Ivan Mercant.”

Chapter 36

“He’s sad, Canto. I want to make him happy.”

“Sometimes, you have to let people be sad. At least until they’re ready to come out of that sadness.”

“His heart is all hurt.”

“I know, Arwen. I know.”

—Conversation between Canto Mercant and Arwen Mercant (circa 2060)

IVAN STOOD BESIDE the dead body of his mother. He knew she was dead because though he was only eight years of age, this wasn’t the first time he’d seen a dead person. His mother’s friends had a way of dying. And now she was dead, too.

He knew he should be sad or angry or worried, but even though he could onlyjustfake Silence so they wouldn’t get caught, he found at that moment that he felt nothing. It was as if his brain had gone white, a buzz filling his head. He stood there and stared at his mother where she lay crumpled on the floor of the motel room.

All he could think was that she wasn’t even on the bed. She’d been on the bed when he went to sleep last night. She must’ve gotten out and maybe had wanted to sit on the brown sofa that had a big dent in the middle. Like a giant had sat on it. But she’d never made it there.

Clutched in her hand was a half-empty injector.

He knew from the human family dramas he watched while she slept that he shouldn’t know about injectors, but he’d seen them all his life. He knew how to prime an old one so it would work, and sometimes he did that for his mother when she cried for her medicine. Part of him felt bad letting her take her medicine. He wasn’t sure it was good for her.

“You’re only a baby,” she’d say. “Listen to your mama. She needs her medicine. Now be a sweetheart and fix this for me. Your little hands are so clever.”

As he stared at her, he wondered when they would come.

The people who checked on the dead always came. Only for the dead though, never for the live people like Ivan and his mother.

“We’re rejects from Psy society, my sweet boy,” she’d slurred one night. “They ignore us as long as we don’t make too many disruptions in the PsyNet. Quiet minds is all the fucking Council wants. We aren’t worth the bother to chase down for their precious Silence Protocol.”

She’d lifted a finger to her lips, made a shushing sound. “That’s why you have to be quiet, quiet on the Net. Got to have a good shield. Don’t let emotions drip out. They don’t know I have you.” A huge grin. “I hid you so good. You don’t exist.”

Ivan wasn’t sure he liked not existing. But he also knew he couldn’t believe everything his mother had told him. She used to tell him all the time that she was going to get a proper job so they could have a home all their own. Once, she’d even walked him past an apartment with pretty flowers in the window and said that would be their home soon.

Mind still a blank, he sat down next to her and waited for the people to come.

“Why do they come?” he’d asked once.

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