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His lashes lift over my shoulder toward Hester, suspicion lining his face, before he comes back to me. “You killed my friends.”
I don’t like the ugly feeling that spreads through me or the guilt. What if they were victims too?
“I did,” I say, not bothering to sugarcoat anything. “I thought they were a danger to people I care about.”
His mouth twists into a dark grimace that has no place on a pup so young. “They didn’t do anything to you.”
“They tried to kill me,” I counter. So did you, but I don’t vocalize that.
His jaw tightens, the muscles contracting as he swallows. “You attacked them first.”
Did I? I try to recall what happened, but it’s all a blur. Everything happened so fast.
“I didn’t?—”
“If you’d just listened to them…”
I clamp my teeth together, unsure what to say as tears brim in his eyes.
“We don’t make a habit of sitting down with Order soldiers,” Apryle sneers at him, folding her arms over her chest as she glares at him like he’s an animal.
His brows draw together. “You think I’m with those maniacs?”
“Are you?” Cade probes.
“No.”
My lips part. Something isn’t adding up, and I hate not knowing what we’re facing. “If you’re not with the Order, why the hell did you come here?”
Ayden glances away but doesn’t answer, and Hester uses the break in conversation to step up to him. “Forget why he’s here. More importantly, how do you exist? The male line was destroyed.”
The laughter that bubbles out of him is borderline creepy. “Destroyed by who? Do you think it is that easy to kill magic as powerful as ours?”
I’m not sure if he means male magic or tau magic as a whole.
Not for the first time, I get the feeling we’re involved in something bigger. All the pieces of the puzzle are scattered around us, but they don’t fit together well enough to show the full picture. We can’t protect ourselves until we know what we’re facing.
“For centuries, all tau males have been bound or killed. How. Do. You. Exist?” She repeats the question, this time a lot more forcefully.
I resist the urge to grab her arm and pull her back. I will protect him, but we do need answers too.
His head tilts to the side, amusement dancing over his expression, though it’s forced. I can still smell his fear. “I could ask the same thing of you. The Order tried to end the female line multiple times, and yet here you are.”
“You’re suggesting someone helped your kind?”
He snorts, leaning forward in the chair as he shifts his wrists, testing the ropes. “I’m not suggesting anything. It’s just interesting, don’t you think? You’re angry that you have been hunted for years—centuries, even—and yet you quite happily stand by while the males in our line are destroyed. Do you not see the irony of that?”
Apryle steps forward, and I ready myself in case she does something stupid, but she just stands next to Hester, staring at Ayden like he’s a piece of shit. “That’s because the males in our line are batshit crazy.”
“I’m hardly foaming at the mouth, or am I?”
This shuts Apryle up, something I didn’t think was possible, but Ayden has a point. He doesn’t seem feral or broken, and none of the other males we have come across did either.
Edward, Roux’s former mate, had done some questionable things, but his power hadn’t seemed uncontrolled. He knew what he was doing when he tried to hurt her. In fact, the only tau I’ve seen controlled are with the Order.
“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand,” Hester snarls at him.
“I understand perfectly how it feels to be killed because of who you are, to be painted as the bad guys to justify what is being done behind closed doors.”
