Allegiance of Honor (Psy-Changeling #15) - Nalini Singh Page 0,175

as sharp as ever, and it constantly sought angles to bring more power to the Alliance. Humans had been forgotten and crushed into the earth for far too long. It was Lily who’d talked him out of any mercenary demands.

“Some things we do,” she’d said, “define our very humanity. Lose that and we may as well be Psy under Silence.”

Her words had cut through the increasingly ruthless nature of Bo’s thinking processes. He didn’t want to save his people by turning them into the very race that had for so long been their enemy. Oh, the war had never been obvious, but Psy had raped human minds for centuries, stealing their ideas, stealing their will.

Gritting his jaw against the fury of his emotions, he didn’t speak until he could temper his tone. “We don’t want anything.” An alliance, a true alliance, couldn’t be bought or demanded. “I spoke to Isaac since he’s out of pocket after delaying his delivery to take Leila to the ocean, but he says it was worth it to get her home.”

Malachai paused on the edge of a quiet canal, the two of them standing side by side. “Somehow I doubt the security chief of the Human Alliance has such a magnanimous heart.”

Bo folded his arms. “He doesn’t, but he also doesn’t do deals using the lives of innocents as collateral.” His hair, which had grown out from the no-fuss-no-muss shave he’d sported for so long, was cool under his fingers as he thrust them through the wavy strands. “If you need to put a name on it, consider it a sign of friendship on our part.”

When Malachai turned to look at Bowen, his brown eyes appeared lighter, closer to a pale gold, as if something else lived beyond. And from the unblinking way Malachai watched him, his expression so indefinably other, that something truly did not think like a human in any way, shape, or form.

The hairs rose at his nape.

Bo, like most terrestrial beings, often wondered at the makeup of the water changelings. Dolphins were a known form, sharks were rumored, large water snakes confirmed and whales whispered about, but other than that, no one really knew for certain.

One of Bo’s friends, a lifelong sailor who’d circumnavigated the globe more than once, swore up and down that he’d been rescued by an “honest to God” mermaid after he fell overboard during a massive storm. Get him drunk and he’d tell you that her eyes had been glowing blue, her skin luminous white, and her hair like a million streamers of light. He’d admit he hadn’t seen her legs, but she “swam as if she had a great big tail and I definitely saw her gills!”

Bo wasn’t sure he believed the other man, but there was no question that something had saved his life. His crewmates verified he’d fallen overboard and disappeared from view before they could throw out a life preserver. They’d got the shock of their lives when he clambered back onboard—especially since by then, the storm had carried them over fifty nautical miles from where he’d fallen overboard.

Clearly, the ocean kept many secrets.

Malachai . . . No, Bo couldn’t figure him out, but one thing was for certain: he couldn’t be a small creature. Changeling shifting physics might be weird, with mass never equal from one form to the other—or that was how it appeared to Bo’s eyes—but Malachai had an innate sense of bigness about him.

Bo simply couldn’t visualize him as a small creature. Like a turtle.

“Are there changeling turtles?” he asked on a whim.

The security chief’s lips curved up at the edges. “Do you know one of the oldest creatures on earth is a tortoise?” he asked, instead of answering Bo’s question. “Two hundred years at last count. If a changeling were that, do you think he or she might live hundreds of years?”

Bo blew out a breath at the idea of it. “To see all those centuries pass, all the upheaval and change . . .”

“An incredible thought, isn’t it? But maybe a being so old wouldn’t care that much about the world, would be happy living on a distant island far from Psy, humans, and changelings alike.”

Hard as he tried to read the other man, Bo couldn’t work out if Malachai was making idle conversation or actually giving him an answer. “I figure someone that old, they wouldn’t be like you or me anymore,” he said at last. “I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense. I guess