Allegiance of Honor (Psy-Changeling #15) - Nalini Singh Page 0,14

worked fine for centuries, but as the world developed and the oceans and lakes and rivers of the planet became a coveted source of power and trade, fishing going from small boats that changelings could easily avoid to huge trawlers dragging massive nets, their isolation began to kill them.

It had been Miane’s ancestors who had reached out to their brethren, after losing half their family to a huge fishing conglomerate that had flat-out ignored the warnings that certain waters had been legally claimed for changeling use. Big business knew that scattered groups of water-based changelings had no way to enforce the rules and as the decades passed, people had become used to ignoring them.

Coming together to form BlackSea had never been about power, though power was a much-needed by-product. BlackSea had been born so that their people would be safe, so that they could protect and nurture their young in waters unpolluted by outsiders, free of their deadly nets and traps.

Now one of the pack had sold out the members who needed BlackSea most.

“We need eyes out there,” she said, her gut churning. “Not just for Leila, for all of the vanished.” This was only the second time they’d had any clue where one of their stolen packmates might be. “We’ll have to take the risk.”

“Let me handle it.” Malachai was a wall of strength in front of her, a man she’d never seen lose his temper. “I know several Canadian members personally, people I trust. I’ll pass on the information to them, have them feed it out to those they trust. It should lower the chance of treachery.”

“Do it.” Miane knew her brain was hazy with rage, her decision-making skills compromised. She needed Malachai’s calm, his way of being a still pond even in the midst of a crashing sea.

When he pinned her with those clear eyes of pale gold unseen on any human or Psy or terrestrial changeling, she glared back. “What?”

“You need to swim.” It was an order. “You’ve been out of the water far too long.”

Unsaid were the words that no water changeling did well after too long a separation. Leila might already be dead because of that need, her captors ignorant that a water changeling needed to swim as much as he or she needed to breathe. A strong adult could survive years deprived of enough water to allow a shift, but they’d probably end up mad. Leila had always been small and a little fragile physically, her mind her most important asset.

In her changeling form, Leila was as delicate and colorful as the fish she studied. A pretty tropical dancer who knew nothing of war or of enemies who would steal BlackSea’s members and attempt to turn them into assassins.

Terrestrials often forgot to look at water as a threat, ignoring rivers and streams as roadways when they blocked other routes into an area. It was a detail BlackSea had long used to its advantage. The fact that the Consortium had also figured it out pointed once again to a traitor. Humans, Psy, even land-based changelings, they simply didn’t think that way. You had to be a creature of water to understand its full potential.

Leila had loved the sea so much she rarely set foot on land.

Now she was caged in a barren place far from the ocean.

Miane reminded herself of Leila’s stubbornness, of how the other woman had become the youngest marine biologist on record through endless dedication and sheer hard work. A woman with a will that strong would fight to survive. “I don’t like to be far from Lantia,” she finally said to Malachai.

The world didn’t know this floating city deep in the Atlantic was their central base, didn’t know that the city beneath the waves was far bigger than the city above. This entire region was heavily patrolled by BlackSea and covered by the aquatic equivalent of a no-fly zone. Air traffic was permitted, but only at so high an altitude that it made spying impossible; to make certain of that, the wavelike curves of Lantia were covered with tiny antennas designed to emit a signal that scrambled any radar or sonar equipment pointed at it.

Below the water, the ocean was BlackSea’s.

Anyone breaching the city’s clearly advertised and legally defined borders did so knowing the penalty was death—and BlackSea would enforce it. The world had hurt them too much for BlackSea to believe in mercy. Especially when no one got this far out into the ocean by accident. No, anyone trying