"Yes," the engineer said without hesitation. "I need a sterile operating chamber with these monitors." He scribbled a list on a sc.r.a.p of paper. "I also need a nurse and a surgeon. Make sure it's someone who can follow instructions and doesn't have a G.o.d complex."

Shoving both hands through his hair, he continued. "I can remove the majority of the gauntlet myself. I might not be able to do the neurosurgery, but I understand biofusion in a way no one else does. I'll need to make split-second decisions, and the surgeon must obey."

It took a terrifyingly short time to accommodate his requirements. Edgard Bashir was brought in as the surgeon, rather than the surgeon originally scheduled to operate on Vasic. "She won't follow instructions," Vasic said when he made the decision. "That makes her an a.s.set as a solo operator, but for a team, Edgard is the better player."

Ivy wasn't so sure she wanted the man who'd originally grafted the device to Vasic working on him, but holding her close, Vasic a.s.sured her that Edgard was an excellent neurosurgeon. "He just isn't creative, and he doesn't need to be with Samuel in the room. All he has to do is have steady hands."

The operation was to take place in a secure Arrow medical facility that Samuel Rain and Dr. Bashir, plus two theatre nurses, were teleported to so they could have no knowledge of its location. Vasic 'ported in Ivy himself, with Abbot standing by to bring in anyone else who was needed while he was down.

Zie Zen chose to wait with Ivy's parents at their cabin. "I will speak to you when the gauntlet has been removed," he said to Vasic over the comm, but though his face was serene, his hand was bone white on his cane.

Then it was time. "I'll be back soon, Ivy."

Ivy held Vasic's promise to her heart as she sat outside the operating room. Aden sat with her, his combat uniform reminding her piercingly of a thousand moments with her Arrow. When she closed her hand over Aden's, he didn't protest, curling his fingers around her own. Two hours pa.s.sed before he stood and made her get up, too, to stretch her legs. When he tried to give her an energy drink, she waved it off.

He didn't move. "Vasic trusted me to watch over you. I won't let him down."

"Stubborn, high-handed, both of you," she muttered, while her heart bruised with every beat.

Aden held out the drink again.

Taking the bottle, she forced herself to finish it before returning to her vigil. This time Aden stood against the wall across from her, and though he was as remote as Vasic had once been, she didn't feel alone. They were family, tied together by their love for the loyal, courageous, wonderful man beyond the doors to the operating room.

Three hours.

Four.

Five.

"Do you think we can ask for an update?" Her throat was scratchy from disuse as she looked up at Aden. "No, we shouldn't interrupt," she said before he could respond.

Aden sat down beside her again. "Would you like to hear the story of the first time I met Vasic?"

He was trying to comfort her, she realized, to get her mind off the painfully circular path in which it had been running for hours. "Yes."

Leaning forward with his forearms braced on his thighs, Aden looked at the wall in front of them, but his stare wasn't blank. It was as if he was watching a stream of memory. "I was seven years old and a very well-behaved child."

There was something about the wording of his statement that made Ivy frown.

"Vasic, only a year older than me, was considered a problem. Those in charge of the squad at the time had no intention of releasing him-he was too valuable. So they had to find a way to break him down."

Ivy's nails cut into her palms. "He never broke."

"No," Aden said. "I think he believed for a long time that he had broken, but they never managed to destroy the core of who he is. It's why he carries such guilt for actions he couldn't have fought, consequences he could've never changed."

"He's built to protect, to shield, and they made him a killer."

"Yes." Aden continued to look into the past. "Even as they tried to break him, they had to teach him. Brute strength is never enough to make a man an Arrow. All of us train with sparring partners when young-mental and physical. However, in most cases, they're rotated. The reason given to us at the time was that it was to ensure we could all work together, but I believe it was also so bonds couldn't form between long-term partners."

Encouraged by his earlier acceptance of her touch and wanting to comfort him as he was trying to do her, she put a careful hand on his shoulder. He didn't shake it off, but neither did he react. "Vasic, however," he continued, "was such a problem that he kept destabilizing his psychic sparring partners. They'd work him against another child, and even if that child had been in a relatively calm state previously, he or she would be erratic afterward."

"Why not adults?"

"That was to be the last-case scenario. It's harder for a child to spar against an adult, because an adult always has to hold back in case they cause harm, and so the balance isn't natural and it impacts speed, accuracy, everything." His lashes came down, flicked back up. They were black like Vasic's, but unexpectedly long and with a curl at the ends.

He was handsome, she realized in a startled way. With sharp cheekbones and dark eyes against olive colored skin, he no doubt caught female attention. Only Ivy was always too focused on Vasic to notice.

"Finally," he said, as her need for Vasic keened again, "they decided to try me. I was the last choice, because I was considered the weakest child in training at the time."

Ivy knew beyond any doubt that there was nothing weak about Aden.

"Still, the trainers figured they might as well pit me against him just in case. I was led into our first session in a bland beige room furnished with a heavy metal table and two metal chairs. Vasic should've been sitting on one chair already, but he was standing in a corner, staring at the door.

"When I came in, he continued to look at me with this unblinking stare he shouldn't have been able to maintain as a child." Aden angled his head to meet Ivy's gaze. "He was trying to disconcert me, make me run. Later, he told me it had worked with several of the other children. He broke their nerve just with his eyes."

Ivy's emotions knotted in her veins-affection for the boys they'd been, fury for what they'd both suffered, pride at the men they'd become. "What did you do?"

"Took my seat like the well-behaved child I was, and waited for the trainer to leave the room. I knew, of course, that the evaluation team would be monitoring our interaction via the surveillance equipment, as well as on the PsyNet. Then I watched him watch me."

Ivy found herself charmed by the thought of two small boys trying to win a battle of wills. "Who blinked?"

"That's a matter of dispute. I say he did. He says I did."

Laughing softly, Ivy leaned in a little closer. "And?"

"When he realized I wasn't going to leave, he went to phase two. Taking the seat across from me, he started lobbing psychic strikes at me in an erratic scattering rather than the mandated training pattern." Aden's profile was clean, no smile, and yet Ivy had the sense the memory was a good one.

"Apparently, he'd driven off quite a few others with that tactic. At that age, we're taught in rote patterns," he explained. "It's meant to make certain things instinct, and it does, but it also leaves most child Arrows without the capacity to deal with unexpected situations."

"You handled it," Ivy guessed.

"I think it's better to say I held my own," he said. "Session completed, I got up and left. We went through pretty much the same routine ten times, never speaking a word. Then late one night I was in my room studying when the ceiling panel slid aside and he looked down and asked me if I wanted to go outside."

Ivy started to smile. "What did you do?"

"It was past curfew, with all violations to be strictly punished." A pause. "So I said yes and stood on a chair, and he hauled me up." A glance at her laughing eyes. "I was much shorter then, while Vasic had already started to gain his height. We snuck outside and just walked around."

It was the freedom, Ivy understood, that had been important, the fact they'd made a choice. "Vasic told me you once painted a training room in zebra stripes."

"That was later, after we'd been partners for four years. We planned the operation down to the second, were back in our rooms before anyone discovered the incident."

"I'm glad you had each other," she said, releasing his shoulder to lean forward in an echo of his own position. "Thank you for looking after him."

Aden's responding look was quiet. "You don't understand, Ivy. I didn't look after Vasic. He looked after me-he understood I was a scared boy whose parents were Arrows who were gone ninety-nine percent of the time on missions that could end their lives, and who knew his place in the squad was shaky at best.

"Vasic had the handicap of a heart that felt too much, but he was always the more emotionally strong of the two of us . . . until the past two years, when I think the weight of the guilt began to crush him."

Ivy understood both men would say the same thing with the opposite meaning. To Vasic, Aden had helped him stay sane. To Aden, Vasic had helped him stay upright when he would've fallen. One lost boy helping another.

Reaching out, she closed her hand over his again, knowing she was breaking boundaries, but these Arrows needed to have certain boundaries broken. Who better to do it than an empath? The squad had become so ferally protective of the Es that an E had more lat.i.tude with an Arrow than pretty much anyone else in the Net.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "There's no ledger. You were there for one another, and because of that, I have a man who lives in my heart and he has a friend he knows he can rely on no matter what."

Aden's fingers twined with hers. "He also has a woman willing to walk in his darkness and not judge him. You don't know how much that means."

Soul aching, she leaned her head against his shoulder, and that was how they stayed for a long time. Then he made her eat again, drink again. She didn't argue this time, realizing that Aden was sublimating his own fear by looking after her-if he lost Vasic, he'd lose the one person who was his family. So she did what he told her, even walked up and down the corridor after he said her back would get stiff.

Fourteen hours after the doors had closed on the surgery, they opened again.

Chapter 60.

IVY AND ADEN both stood as one, staring at Samuel Rain. His formerly pristine white operating smock was b.l.o.o.d.y, his eyes drained and tired, but there was a jubilant smile on his face-shaved clean prior to the operation-that gave Ivy her answer even before he walked straight to her and said, "Go. He's put himself under. He asked that you give the signal that he should wake."

"Thank you." Ivy hugged him so hard she almost knocked him off his feet. "Thank you." Tears poured down her face.

"Wait," Samuel said when she drew back to run to Vasic. "We had to take his arm." The brilliant man scratched his head, a wary confusion in his eyes. "He told me it was all right before the surgery began. Should I have asked you?"

"All I care about is that he's alive," Ivy said, trembling with the force of her relief. "Aden, come with me." She stretched out her hand, took his again, and drew him into the operating room.

Edgard Bashir dragged himself out as they hit the door, muttering, "He's a genius. He's also mad."

Ivy thanked him and the exhausted but exhilarated nurses who left in his wake, but her attention was focused on the man who lay on the surgical bed. The screens at the end of the frame showed his vitals, strong and stable and alive. She released Aden's hand, went to the side of the bed.

Pressing her lips to Vasic's forehead, her shaking fingers on his chest, she kissed him on the psychic plane at the same time. "We're here," she whispered, both with her voice and telepathically. "I love you."

Thirty seconds later, his lashes fluttered, his lids lifting. Eyes of silver frost, unique and beautiful, met her own. "Don't say no."

Vasic tried to give Ivy more warning of what was about to happen, but it was too late. His mind smashed into hers like an out of control bullet train. Her hand spasmed on his chest, her eyes sparking with a cascade of color, and then he saw her, all of her. His Ivy. Strong and stubborn and loyal and with flaws that made her unique . . . and her heart, it was his. Always his.

No one had ever loved him like Ivy did.

Enough to claim him in this most elemental way. "We're bonded," he said when he could speak, the splinters of their minds falling back into place. But they weren't the same any longer, the black of his mind edged with translucent color, the empathic shade of hers streaked with protective black.

"I know." Crying and laughing at the same time, she kissed him. "I've been ready for so long." She made a stern face at him. "I knew you didn't want to accept it until you were certain you wouldn't leave me. Idiot man."

The affection in those words made him smile deep inside, her love his sunlight. Over her head, he saw Aden standing tall and strong. Thank you. For watching over Ivy, for being his friend, for bracing him when he would've stumbled.

May I see? Aden asked.

Vasic opened the shields he'd instinctively snapped around himself and Ivy when their minds collided, and Aden slipped in. The bond between Vasic and Ivy was different from that which connected Kaleb Krychek and Sahara Kyriakus. It wasn't a single t.i.tanium rope, but countless threads of finest black translucent with color. Each appeared as if it would break at a whisper, but when Aden glanced at Vasic for permission and touched a psychic finger to one, it bent with the pressure, then flowed right back into shape.

Quickly closing his shields back up as soon as Aden stepped out because he wasn't ready to share this with anyone else, Vasic looked at his friend.

I think, Aden said, this may be your most challenging a.s.signment yet.

Vasic wrapped his arm around Ivy when she climbed into bed with him, her hand over his heart and her head on his shoulder. I'll learn. He'd learn anything for her.

Aden nodded and quietly left the room, saying one last thing as he gave them privacy. I truly understand hope now, Vasic.

So, Vasic thought, his heartbeat aligned to that of his empath, did he.

a a a FOUR weeks later and three weeks after he left the hospital, Vasic was told that while medical science had advanced to the point where limbs could be regrown from the cells of the individual who needed them, so as to negate the risk of rejection, his body had suffered too harsh an insult with the gauntlet. He was otherwise healthy, should have the same life span as any other Psy, but no biological transplant would take.

"I could try, but it would involve further surgery on my brain," Vasic told Ivy as they sat on the stoop of the cabin he'd started to extend the day Ivy stopped fussing over him if he so much as moved a muscle. He had to admit he'd enjoyed the fussing; he might even have played lame duck for a day or two longer than strictly necessary.

Ivy's response came out a near growl that made Rabbit p.r.i.c.k his ears where he sat just behind them in the cabin. "You try and I'll beat you."

"You're becoming very violent, Ivy." Vasic rubbed his hand over the roughness of his head. Edgard had had to shave off his hair to get to the tendrils fused to his brain. Those tendrils were still there, would remain till the day he died, but the surgery had rendered them permanently inert.

Grabbing his hand, Ivy pressed her lips to the back of it. "It's growing back," she said, smile lines bracketing her mouth. "I never knew you were so vain."

He was used to being teased by his Ivy now. "I think you want to be teleported into the middle of a swamp."

A heavy-browed scowl. "Try it and see who's sorry."

Pulling his hand from her grasp, he wrapped his arm around her to tuck her close. "I may have lost an arm," he said, "but it's the stubble on my head that reminds me of how close I came to death. Perhaps because when I feel it or see it, I can't help but imagine Samuel Rain digging around in there with manic glee."

Ivy snorted with laughter before slapping him on the chest. "He saved your life, you ungrateful wretch!"

He loved watching Ivy laugh, could do it forever. "Rain will make certain I don't forget his genius." In truth, Vasic would never be able to repay either Rain, Edgard, or the two nurses. Whether the four knew it or not, they now had the support of an entire squad of Arrows. "But even Rain agrees a biological replacement is off the table."

"Hmm." Ivy tapped her lower lip. "Mechanical?"

"Problematic. My wiring was rerouted in strange ways." The entire surgical team had been surprised at some of what they'd discovered. "I could get a cosmetic arm, but it wouldn't be functional."

Hand curving on his thigh, Ivy made a face. "That would just annoy you."

Yes, he thought, it would. He'd suggested it to make things easier for her . . . but Ivy didn't seem to care that he was missing a part, her only concern how he felt about it. She still touched him, kissed him, loved him just the same. Always would, he understood in wonder, even should he lose every limb he possessed.

"My telekinesis balances out the loss, so I won't lose any functionality." But he would miss embracing Ivy with both arms, having her sleep on one while he wrapped the other around her.

Expression pensive, Ivy tilted her head, studied his face. "You're sad."

He told her what he'd been thinking, saw her eyes grow wet. "You hold me every second of every day." She spread her fingers over her heart. "I should be so mad at you for making us wait that long for our bond."

Running his hand down her arm, he shifted position to lean his back against the doorjamb, one booted leg on the ground he'd cleared of snow, the other bent at the knee, foot flat on the wood of the cabin floor. "Come here."

Her eyes narrowed. "I'm trying to have an argument with you."

"Ivy," he said, dropping his voice in that way he knew made her melt. "Come here."