Talons
Catalina
Iwoke with Dominic at my back, his arm tucked beneath my head, and Rhain at my front, his hand spread flat over my ribs.
I had slept for eleven hours. Eleven.
Mama would have had a fit.
For a moment, I lay still and waited for the rush that usually found me when I woke. The quick spike of adrenaline. My body checking exits before I had opened my eyes. It did not come.
My heart stayed steady. My hands rested open at my sides. The place in the center of my chest where the bond gathered was quiet, with depth under it.
Dominic breathed against my back. Rhain’s hand was warm over my ribs. Neither of them held me tightly, and somehow that made me feel held more completely. There was space around me. Space inside me. Enough room for both bonds to exist without pulling me out of myself.
I had spent most of my life treating quiet like a trap. A pause before the question. A room waiting for the wrong answer. A silence someone else would eventually use.
But this quiet did not want anything from me. It did not ask me to perform. It did not ask me to translate, defend, calculate, or survive. It allowed me to breathe.
For the first time in longer than I could remember, I did not have to go looking for my center. I was already in it.
Dominic moved first, though not by much. His arm tightened at my waist, a slow pressure that pulled me more securely against him. His thumb brushed over my stomach, then stilled, and I felt the shift in him through the bond: awake, aware.
Rhain breathed against my collarbone. He did not open his eyes. He only pulled me closer.
“Mm,” I said into his hair.
“Mm,” he answered.
“I have to get up.”
“No.”
I laughed against him, and the sound moved through my body as much as out of it, shifting me back into Dominic’s chest and forward against Rhain’s warmth. They both stilled.
Dominic’s breath caught at the back of my neck, his arm tightening at my waist before he made himself ease the pressure. Rhain’s hand spread over my ribs, his fingers flexing like he had felt the laugh under his palm and wanted, very badly, to follow it.
The three of us lay there in the stillness, breathing around the same small spark.
Dominic’s mouth touched the back of my neck.
Softly at first. Barely more than warmth.
Then again, slower, his lips finding the place just below my hairline while his arm drew me back against him by an inch.
His chest settled more firmly along my spine, heat all the way down my back where I felt him hard against me.
My breath hitched. The bonds lit with warmth.
Rhain’s eyes opened slowly, still heavy with sleep and already dark with wanting. His hand slid from my ribs to my jaw, his thumb brushing the corner of my mouth with drowsy, devastating focus, and the small touch sent a clean pulse of heat down my chest and lower.
“Cat,” he murmured, voice rough from sleep.
That was all he said before he tipped my face toward his and kissed me.
The kiss was warm and unhurried. His mouth opened over mine slowly, tasting rather than taking, while Dominic’s lips moved down the back of my neck in patient increments, each press of his mouth sending a shiver along my spine.
One kiss. Then another. Then the edge of his teeth, barely there, just enough to make my stomach tighten and my hips shift between them.
Dominic’s hand flattened over my waist. Rhain hummed into my mouth.
The bond answered with a deep, bright pull through the center of me, and for a second I was nothing but contact. Dominic behind me, solid and warm. Rhain in front of me, his hand at my jaw, his breath in my mouth. My skin too awake. My pulse too loud. The morning no longer empty, but full.
Then the part of my brain responsible for survival, scheduling, and a healthy respect for Yuki Mendel-Ashenmere came back online.
“Rhain,” I gasped against his mouth, and then Dominic’s teeth grazed the back of my neck again. “Dominic.”
“Yes,” Rhain said, his voice gone rough, which was unfair under the circumstances.
Dominic’s arm tightened at my waist, and his mouth stayed warm against my skin.
“Yuki’s note. Six-thirty.”
Rhain went still. Dominic stopped behind me at the same time, his mouth hovering against my neck, his breath warm enough to make good judgment feel personally insulting. His fingers tightened at my waist, then loosened with visible effort.
Rhain rested his forehead against mine and for one more second, no one moved.
Then he let loose a beautifully tragic sigh. Full of unjustly interrupted intentions. I laughed softly, and his mouth touched mine once more, not quite a kiss and not quite a surrender.
Rhain’s eyes opened all the way and sharpened. He folded the sleepy warmth away. I did not have to elaborate. He had read the note over my shoulder when it arrived last night.
Diplomatic visitor inbound. Council session called for oh-eight-hundred. Formal dress. Be visible.
Rhain sat up. Dominic was already moving.
His arm slid from under my head, slow and exact, his palm briefly cupping the back of my skull before he eased away.
By the time Rhain had pushed a hand through his hair, Dominic was sitting at the edge of the bed, feet on the floor, shoulders squared, attention already on the door, the windows, the hour, the problem.
Not rushed. Just awake in the way Dominic woke: completely, and with consequences.
* * *
The diplomat was Ambassador Constance Harrow.
I knew her by reputation. Three terms in the Senate, one in the State Department, currently special envoy for complex bilateral matters, the title the U.S.
used when it had decided that a situation required someone too senior to be ignored and not senior enough to require Congressional notification.
Yuki gave us the briefing in her office. Dominic at her right and Rhain at her left.
“She is here on Davis’s recommendation,” Yuki said.
“Davis isn’t coming.”
“Davis isn’t coming.” Yuki’s voice held the same temperature it had held in the corridor last afternoon. “He has elected to remain in Langley and let the State Department carry the negotiation. He’ll be in an adjoining room at the embassy in Seattle. He’ll hear the proceedings live.”
“He wants to watch.”
“He wants deniability.”
Rhain stirred at Yuki’s left. “What’s the formal ask?”
“The repatriation of US citizen Catalina Cordero, citing diplomatic protection of an American national in protective confinement on foreign clan-territory.”
I let my eyes drop, then lifted them. “They’re going to claim I’m being held. In front of an Ashenmere council session.”
Yuki didn’t move. “The fiction will not survive examination. It is not designed to. It’s designed to give Davis cover when he files the after-action report that says he tried diplomatic channels before the bond became a hostage situation.”
“The bond isn’t a hostage situation.”
“No.”
“Then we tell them that.”
“We will,” Yuki said as she met my eyes. “But we will tell them in a way that makes Davis’s after-action report difficult to file.”
“Difficult.”
“Unusable, ideally. I am willing to accept irritating.”
“That sounds like you already have a method.”
“I do.” Her hands folded in front of her. “Ashenmere will offer you a public liaison position under clan-sovereign diplomatic authority. On the record. Sealed under the Bern Compact. Witnessed by the U.S. ambassador.”
I stared at her.
Yuki continued. “Mr. Davis may attempt to call many things a hostage situation. He will have a more difficult time doing so when the alleged hostage has accepted a treaty-recognized diplomatic appointment in his presence.”
I understood it then.
“You’re putting me somewhere he has to acknowledge I chose.”
“Yes.”
“And somewhere Martin Solberg cannot frame as clan custody.”
“Also yes.”
“The United States cannot move without creating an incident larger than the one they are trying to prevent.”
Yuki inclined her head.
I looked at her for a long second. “That is…”
“Legally creative,” she said.
“I was going to say aggressive.”
“That too.” Yuki gave a small smile.
“Cael,” she said, “I will handle separately. Ambassador Harrow being in the building for it does the United States no favors, given the position it already puts them in.”
I looked at Rhain. He had been watching Yuki with rapt attention and respect.
“You knew this last night,” he said to Yuki.
“This was determined just hours after Dominic flagged Cael in the corridor on Wednesday morning.”
“You didn’t tell us.”
“You needed last night more than you needed the briefing.”
Rhain held the look a beat longer than he needed to. Then he inclined his head. “Thank you, Yuki.”
“You’re welcome, Lord Solberg.”
She didn’t call him Rhain. The formal use of his title was deliberate. Today the council session would record the name Lord Solberg against decisions that would carry into the rest of his political life.
She turned to me again. “Miss Cordero.”
“Yes.”
“The liaison position is real. It isn’t a fiction we’re constructing for the diplomat. It’s a position that has existed for forty-six years and which hasn’t, until today, been offered to a human. You’ll be the first.”
I considered her. “Why.”
“Because the position requires a person who can read in two registers simultaneously and isn’t bound by either of them. Until you, the candidate pool was lacking.”
“And the work.”
“Will become real to you within sixty days. The first thirty days will be ceremonial. After that, you’ll have a desk.”
A laugh moved up my throat and stopped. Yuki hadn’t said it as a joke. She had given me a job offer.
“And agency leadership?”
“Will be informed in writing within the hour that you have transitioned to clan-employment as a foreign liaison and that your future communications with U.S. agencies will pass through Ashenmere’s diplomatic channel.”
“My citizenship.”
“Retained. Per the treaty. Per the Compact. Per the precedent established for diplomatic personnel on long-term foreign assignment. You aren’t surrendering anything. You’re accepting a second institutional affiliation.”