Poor Raleigh’d had no fucking clue, and even Misha looked apt to rip Janni to pieces—though fortunately the scientist had enough sense to recognize that Janni would destroy him if he tried. TamLin hoped that Misha’s girlfriend hadn’t been one of the cybans that Janni had wittingly sacrificed, but…if it had happened in the past few years, while they were living in this somewhen?

Yeah, his bondmate had been an accessory to the murder of his coworker’s girlfriend. Criminally negligent, at best.

TamLin considered Janni’s console. To stop Raleigh’s people and kick them out, they needed to find the bridge—and Janni, merger that she was, would both know where it was and be keeping an eye on it.

In fact, his own inability to feel its disruption of the somewhen meant Janni was outright masking its location, since she didn’t want him sabotaging her plans again.

Raleigh was pale, obviously unsettled, but she popped her neck like an old pro letting off tension.

There was no way Janni was going to release that console as long as her wits stayed about her, and she knew him too well to end up startled even if he punched her in the stomach. He had to do something she wouldn’t expect.

TamLin wasn’t sure how he was going to take his psy-positive assigned bondmate off-guard, but the first step to unsettle anyone was to start with familiar territory. “The good of the many doesn’t mean fuck if you sacrifice the individuals without their consent.”

Misha cut in, “How does that make you any different from the ones who planted the beacon?!”

“Never said it did,” she answered mildly.

Yep, that was Janni. Bastard, he thought with intentional clarity.

She rolled her eyes.

Anger, she expected from him. She even expected him to utilize that anger.

But one thing he always did was direct that anger, doing what he could to target it at ideas and actions at not at people, themselves. That kept him from wanting to assassinate people who annoyed him.

Janni didn’t seem to catch the nuance of difference, interpreting anger at her actions as anger at her personally even when it wasn’t, but she relaxed with the evidence that he was responding how she’d thought he would.

And after you complied with someone’s expectations, the fastest way to unsettle them was to fuck with those expectations.

“You just had to presume.” He paced and let himself dwell on what intrigued him about Second: her concern for individuals, her respect for their sovereignty, her consideration of others’ feelings (even when she had to act in ways that would produce negative ones), her willingness to break his arm…

His physiological reaction was uncomfortable, but the psychological discomfort was worse for Janni. She blinked in confusion.

Good. “You couldn’t be bothered to explain the situation and let Raleigh decide if she wanted to be a Typhoid Mary. No, you just had to meddle and play God.”

All alphas had innate triggers, thanks to what their modifications did to the cocktails of hormones that ran through their bodies. Many of those triggers varied from person to person. It was TamLin’s experience, though, that accusation of megalomania was a universal one.

As her instincts flared, triggering a bone-deep fury that she couldn’t help, he grabbed her into an angry kiss—attacking with his tongue and shoving her away just before she recovered enough wits to retaliate with teeth and psy strike.

And as she fell back, disconcerted, he swiped the console and tossed it to Raleigh. “Check the open windows. One should be the camera for wherever the bridge is.”

Misha turned with her, left with her, but TamLin kept his focus on the furious woman in front of him—a prime who was glowing despite the mods she had to keep that from happening.

This was going to fucking hurt.