I try to think back to what happened, remembering the lower floor of the dockyard collapsing into the sea, running up the ramp, being dragged, a female hanging from the ceiling, shooting darts at me, the burn of the acid up the backs of my calves, the sound of bullet casings hitting the asphalt, the wind whipping shards of an SUV through the air, the squelching sound when larger pieces connected with skin, and then ... the Wyvern asking me to come with him, me telling him no, and then ... running. So much running ...
“Answer the question,” a dark voice growls.
I flinch a second time and try to offer Cynthia a small smile. “It wasn’t ... you ... You didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, settling for that.
She exhales. “So what was it, then? Where did you go?”
“Well, we did go down to the docks.” I watch her face pale, either in guilt or because she’s remembering her own abduction—I can’t be sure. “I can tell you that the COE was going on a mission to uncover ... something. They already had info on the docks, so your lead wasn’t what ... it wasn’t ... your fault. I promise.” I squeeze Cynthia’s hand. “And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. It was a trap. The COE forces—we—were ambushed, and even though there were so many of us, it wasn’t enough.”
“Even with the Wyvern there?”
I nod. “He was doing all that he could, but there were too many of them—”
“Who is ‘them’?”
“Villains. Led by the Marduk. They had incredible powers. The COE forces didn’t stand a chance. Even the Wyvern was badly injured by them.”
“They say he’s just down the hall. Please tell me it’s your last mission. At least for the sake of my spotlight,” she smirks, trying to lighten the mood and succeeding.
I smirk, closing my eyes as I remember the feeling of taking off around the edge of that brick building, sprinting through an old warehouse, the door clattering open at my back, the feeling of heat tearing through the skin on the tops of my thighs, ignoring that, the wind cooling the blood on my face as I keep on running, just ... running until eventually a piercing darkness is followed by scattered blue light. My smile falls. “I can’t promise it’s my last one, but—”
“It’s your last one without me,” the dark voice booms again.
I glance over at Darius and wither beneath his stare.
“That’s, um ... good. I guess. I’ll, uh, give you two some privacy,” she says, wheeling herself toward the door. “I’ll come by and see youlater. There was an infection in one of my legs, so I’m still in and out. Do you want me to call your mom?”
Surprise makes me forget about Darius’s brooding rage for a moment. “That would be great. Tell her I’ll call her in an hour or so, after I talk to the doctors.”
“Sure.”
“Thank you.”
Cynthia just shakes her head while offering me a smile more genuine than any she’s ever given me. “You’re lucky to be here. As myeommawould say,God must see you out of the corner of his eye.” Then she wheels herself out of the room.
“Well, how about that,” I croak, trying a smile as I turn toward the room’s only other occupant.
He doesn’t so much as flinch. He simply steps forward, muscles in the L’s of his jaw flaring and pulsing like he’s chewing on his words before he speaks.
“I know you’re mad,” I blurt out, but my gaze takes that opportunity to drop to his outfit and widen my eyes at the sight of it. He’s wearing a ruined white T-shirt and distressed jeans, both of which are covered in stains that look like blood.
“What happened to you?” I ask without thinking. If I had, I might have avoided the scathing look that crosses his face as he stomps over to the side of my bed, places both palms flat on the mattress on either side of my head, and crackles electricity at me. It just passes along his horns, but it feels very directed. Distantly, I can hear whatever monitors I’m hooked up to start to beep louder.
“What happened tome?” he hisses. His breath smells like bad coffee. I don’t know why that makes my chest feel cluttered. It seems like such a human thing. It also lets me know that maybe, just maybe, he’s been hanging around here for a while. “I was by myself, in my office, shopping for hideous rugs to decorate my apartment with to your liking when I was accosted by a giant pink idiot who kindly informed me that you were not, in fact, taking nauseatingly romantic pictures of him andhis partner eating fucking cake, but that you were part of a supersecret mission to uncover a VNA base and that, in the process, were ambushed by the Marduk and at least ten of his minions whose powers are terrible and unfamiliar and that forty-five of fifty COE officers were killed and that the only other survivors of the entire ordeal, besides that handful of officers, were the nearly-impossible-to-kill monster with power over fire, andyou. The war photographer.
“I was understandably upset,” he says, pulling back and snatching a bottle of water off the side table next to my bed.
He upends it into his mouth, and as I watch his throat work, I lick my lips and whisper, “Upset because you were worried about me or because I lied to you?”
That was apparently the wrong thing to say.
He throws the half-drunk water bottle across the room. I jump and try to sit up, but he looms back over me, the sudden scent wafting from him reminding me of the winter. A steaming cup of coffee in front of a window overlooking a forest covered in snow. His eyes blaze purple, but seem to clear the longer he stares, mellowing back into blue.
“Upset, because when I went to go look for you, I had no fucking idea where exactly you were—if you were even alive, if the Marduk had taken you. You didn’t tell me shit.”
He suddenly closes the distance between us, his mouth moving to the crook of my neck. He’s so warm. I gasp as that warmth moves through my entire body, settling between my hips.
He nibbles on my throat, careful not to move the cord carting oxygen to my nose, making me feel even more lightheaded than I should. His hand moves to my opposite shoulder, and he gently traces his claws down the outside of my arm. “And when I finally found you, you looked like you’d been mauled by a pack of rabid hyenas.”
