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I am distressed whenever I consider the shape of the world did the changelings not exist. Humans and Psy, we are equal in our arrogance that we understand the natural world—while the changelings, who are closer to it than we will ever be, are ever its guardians, and humble in their belief that it holds countless secrets.

Eleri heard Saffron before she saw her friend and sister of the heart. The other woman was screaming obscenities and threats of violence, her rage amped up to the extreme.

Eleri waited right by the doorway, her entire soul hurting for Saffy. The other woman had been the brightest and sweetest of them, a little girl who rescued ladybugs and stepped around marching ants, until the reconditionings shattered things inside her.

Adam appeared out of the darkness of the cave tunnel with Saffron clamped in his arms, Saffy’s own arms restrained to her sides. The restraints had no doubt added to Saffron’s panic, but seeing her, Eleri understood it had been a necessity.

As it was, she was kicking her legs as hard as she could, though Adam’s strength as he held her tight meant she couldn’t do any damage.

“Saffy!” Eleri yelled out.

Saffron’s head snapped toward her, her pale skin splotchy and sweaty. “Lies! You’re not here! You’re dead and they hid you!”

Bram looked out from behind Eleri. “No, Saff, we’re both fine.”

Saffron went silent at that, but the paranoid suspicion remained in her eyes.

Until Adam crossed the doorway into Mirage.

At which point she sucked in a gasp of air and said, “It’s so quiet here,” and Eleri belatedly recognized that the shock of their vanishing from Saffron’s life had thinned out the other woman’s shields until she’d begun to feel the same inexorable mental pressure as she and Bram had.

Yúzé walked in under his own steam with a blond leopard male Eleri recognized from Sascha Duncan’s visit. He was dressed in black, had eyes that saw everything. She couldn’t remember his name but knew he was like Jacques and Dahlia for the leopards. A second to his alpha.

As Bram went to Saffron—he’d always been able to calm her down—Eleri took Yúzé’s hand and leaned her body against his. “Yúzé, it’s Eleri.”

No reaction.

It would take time. Yúzé always withdrew when he was hurt.

But she had that time now, thanks to the man who’d fought for her family when she couldn’t.

Who’d understood that they were her family from the first.

Turning, she met Adam’s gaze, her heart reaching out to him. Something reached back, a winged creature huge and extraordinary and powerful that swept into her in a storm of wings and passion and possessiveness.

Generous heart. Grieving boy. Loyal wing leader.

He was all of that, and he was so much more.

A brother who laughed. An uncle who cherished. A lover who adored.

Playful raptor. Deadly hunter.

Protector to the core.

She saw the love in his heart for all those who were his, and all those he had lost. Saw, too, glimpses of Cormac and Taazbaa’ as they laughed with their boy, then his grandparents walking with him hand in hand as they spoke the language of the Diné, complex and lyrical.

Anger, too, he’d felt. Brutal and cold. But it wasn’t his natural state.

He was warmth, humor, love, a heart that could embrace every member of his clan…but that had a hole she alone could fill.

He filled her in turn, and she felt as if her parched cells were opening up, becoming what they had always been meant to be.

His.

Her being overflowed with emotion, her legs staggering on the earth. Then he was there, inside her mind even as his hands helped her stay stable on this plane. “I love you,” she said, and she knew what that meant , understood the glory of it. “I love you, Adam.”

The falcon flew higher, deeper, until it was part of her, her arms feathered on the inside and her eyes those of a raptor. They were one so completely that when the forces of mating finally retreated, they took pieces of each other with them.

Dazed, she leaned into him for a heartbeat before her mind caught up to where they were and what they’d been doing before the most extraordinary moment of her life. “Where’s Saffy? And Yúzé. I had his hand.”

“Bram has her. I managed to hand her over before I lost myself in the mating. I think he’s taken them both into the tent.”

At ease now that she knew the two were safe, she just sank against Adam, her body boneless. “I know I should be sorry for trapping you with me when such a huge question hangs over my head, but I’m not. I feel like this is where I’ve been meant to be all my life.”

“You have,” Adam said in a stern tone. “And, my beautiful wild bird, there’s never any trapping when it comes to mates. Don’t think that if we didn’t mate, I’d find someone else. I wouldn’t. Not after I met you, knew you.”

Everything in her was warm and deeply…happy. “I want to tug you into our tent so we can lie there together and just be, but I need to help Saffy and Yúzé.” She tilted up her head.

Adam’s kiss was open-mouthed, a sensual promise. “We’ll make up for it later.” He stepped back, said, “Whoa,” then grinned. “Hello, mate.”

Feeling silly and young, she said, “Hello, mate,” in return, and they both stood there smiling foolishly at each other while the bats got bored of the sight and decided to take off en masse—but not leave.

Giving a loud “Eek!” Eleri ran off deeper into the cave, where the bats didn’t like to circle as much, while Adam ducked and dived while trying to stop laughing.

She threatened him from her hiding spot…

and that was when Saffron looked out of the tent and said, “This is the weirdest reaction I’ve ever had to meds, and I’ve had some weird reactions. ”

···

Saffron snapped back faster than Yúzé.

None of them took that as a sign that she was “cured.” The fractures in Saffy ran too deep for that, but it was a start.

As for Yúzé, he began to emerge the fourth day after his arrival at the cave, and Eleri knew he was back with them when he looked around while they were pacing the cave like contained tigers and said, “This cannot be real.”

The complicated answer was that it was, the kind of real that was a thing of resplendent hope—but also the kind of dark and enclosed real that couldn’t sustain lives, especially mentally unstable lives.

All four of them were beyond grateful for the peace offered by Mirage, but they were also conscious that it wasn’t a long-term solution.

Bram and Eleri could bear the confinement a lot longer and better than Saffron or Yúzé, but even they might crack at some point.

“What if they don’t find a solution?” Bram said to her a number of days later, while the two of them were alone in a corner, Saffron and Yúzé having been attracted to where Bayani was working with a vein of minerals on the other side. “Living here forever isn’t tenable.”

“No.” Even with the clan making an effort to make it more comfortable, they’d effectively be confined to a small area for months, maybe much longer.

Both Ashaya and Saoirse had attempted multiple tests with jerry-rigged shield options, but none had blocked even a sliver of the mental noise that existed beyond this cave.

Regardless of all that…“I want to live, Bram.” She’d made that call, wouldn’t back away from it. “I want to breathe in life as I once breathed in death. Enough to grit my teeth and push through it no matter how long it takes.”

She looked at him. “You?”

“Yeah, I’m no longer looking for an exit.” Folding his arms, he exhaled as he looked over at Saffron and Yúzé. “They won’t make it more than a few weeks at most.” Anguish in his tone. “I can’t bear to watch them go, Eleri.”

“We won’t have to. I have faith.” It was as if Adam’s belief had seeped into her, taken root when they mated, until now she could see only hope on the horizon.

Bram put his arm around her as she slipped her arm around his waist. He’d become comfortable with such touch once she began to initiate it. They’d been family for so long that it seemed foolish they’d ever stopped these small but important markers of affection.

Turning around, Saffron beamed at seeing them, then bounced over—and for that moment, she was the little girl with red hair who’d bounced over to Eleri in the schoolyard. “Am I welcome in this hug?”

Bram and Eleri both opened their arms.

Laughing, she dove in, while Yúzé walked over with a faint smile curving his lips. “It’s tent time,” he said when he arrived. “The falcons are transferring the bats soon.”

Eleri shivered, remembering how Adam had cuddled her last night as he explained how they’d do it. She felt bad for the bats despite her tendency to run squealing when they swarmed—which amused absolutely everyone —but he’d assured her they’d found an equivalent cave.

“No luminescent mineral veins, but we’ve rigged up a system that offers the same type of a greenish glow—these bats seem to enjoy the light. And there’s even water nearby.”

The process would be as humane as they could make it, with the clan waiting until the bats’ usual time of flight out from the cave that would get rid of a good percentage.

It was never all of them—they seemed to go in groups, then return.

At which point, another group would go off.

This time, however, once the first cohort had departed, one of the smaller falcons was going to chase out the others.

A simple annoying interruption would get them going without causing too much fear—they were used to the runners flying about now and then when they got restless.

Malia had joined that number as of yesterday, which was when Eleri had learned that winged changeling bones tended to knit faster than those of other changelings—especially when supported by the Gen-seal compound that Naia and her team had put around the break from day one.

A compound which, unbeknownst to Eleri and Bram, had been developed by a clan of eagles.

Eleri loved learning new facts about falcons, about changelings, about WindHaven.

Once the assigned bat-relocation team had cleared the cave, they’d block it off with an already-prepared door and be on standby to reroute confused returnees to the new cave—which was very close.

These particular bats also had excellent olfactory senses, so the clan was planning to lay scent traces for them to their new home, while simultaneously erasing all scent traces from this cave.

Eleri would’ve preferred to be outside for all of it, but there was no point in subjecting her already bruised brain to more damage just because she was skittish where bats were concerned. “Come on,” she said, inviting the others to join her in her tent. “We can distract each other.”

Adam, Dahlia, and Maraea would maintain a security watch outside.

With so many of the clan distracted by the goings-on here tonight, the clan would otherwise be dangerously vulnerable.

···

The first flurry left in a mass of high-pitched vocalizations.

They made many more sounds Eleri knew were imperceptible to her.

One of the things Ashaya and Saoirse had both discovered independently was that the Mirage bats talked to each other during the day, in a tone range none of the non-bats could hear—though Dorian had confirmed it hurt his ears to be in the cave too long.

“Imagine what they’re saying about us,” Saffron said as they sat inside attempting to play cards and failing. “I feel bad for invading their home, then driving them out. They’re so cute with their hand-wings, and they just hang about being adorable.”

“You sound like you want one as a pet,” Bram drawled.

“No, they’re wild. Let them be wild. I’ll admire from afar.”

“We’re giving them another cave in return,” Yúzé said, and put down a card. “I hear it’s just as unique.”

“I wouldn’t be sold if I was a bat who grew up in a psychedelic glowing cave,” Saffron muttered as more high-pitched sounds broke into the quiet left by the first flurry.

Malia was in the air.

Eleri didn’t know if it was ten or twenty seconds later that it happened.

Her eyes went wide, her gaze snapping to Bram’s. “Do you feel that?”

“What?” A frown.

Eleri was already outside the tent, screaming, “STOP!” at the top of her lungs while waving her arms. “Malia, STOP!”

Bram was beside her the next second, adding his own voice to the cry.

It still took Malia too long to notice them in the cacophony created by the bats who wanted to escape the irritating falcon in their midst. By the time the fledgling came in to land, most of the bats were gone, only the odd few hanging about here and there.

Saoirse and Ashaya, who’d been standing by in a back corner out of the way, ran over. “What’s wrong?” Saoirse demanded, looking from Eleri to Bram.

Saffron uttered a pained cry inside the tent, and Yúzé erupted out. “The voices,” he said, clutching at his head. “They’re just beyond the rock.”

Eleri nodded, her breath harsh in her chest after the shouting while jumping up and down to attract Malia’s attention. “The quiet isn’t gone, but it’s…thinner.” She grabbed Saoirse’s hand. “It’s the bats!”

Adam’s sister’s eyes went huge. She turned to Ashaya, and the two women said, “ Ultrasound! ” in unison before ordering poor Malia to go outside and get the adults in the air to help her chase back any bats that were nearby.

“We’ll be okay,” Eleri promised when Saoirse looked at her in question. “We’re together, will help stabilize each other.” She met Yúzé’s eyes. “It has to be all of us.” A request.

He took a careful breath, then held out a shaky hand. “Quatro Cartel in action.”