"You weren't in the slightest bit turned on by that?"
I don't answer.
Can't answer.
Because the truth is—and I will take this to my grave, will burn it out of my brain with sheer force of will if I have to—Iwasturned on.
Impossibly.
Devastatingly.
The moment she moved, the moment that first blade caught the light and started cutting through flesh like butter, something ancient and primal woke up in my chest and startedwanting.
She fought like a dancer.
Like violence was choreography.
Like every step, every spin, every devastating strike was part of a performance designed specifically to destroy me.
And when she pressed that blade against my throat—when her mismatched eyes locked with mine, blue and green and absolutely fucking feral—I felt something I haven't felt in years.
Alive.
I force the memory down.
Bury it deep.
Lock it in the vault where I keep all the other things I'm not allowed to feel.
"Where the fuck are Sage and Jett?"
The question comes out harsher than I intend, but I need the distraction. Need something else to focus on before I do something stupid like track down that Omega and?—
And what?
Ask her how she learned to kill like that?
Demand she explain why her scent makes my carefully constructed walls feel like they're made of paper?
Pin her against a tree and find out if she tastes as sweet as she smells?
Stop.
Stop it.
You're the heir. You're the weapon. You don't get to want.
Footsteps approach through the trees—two sets, familiar, moving with the specific cadence I've learned to recognize over years of fighting alongside them.
Sage emerges first, Jett a half-step behind.
They're both slightly disheveled. Sage's pink hair is messier than usual, his clothes rumpled in a way that suggests hasty dressing. Jett looks composed as always—that eerie, detached calm that comes from years of assassin training—but there's something in his storm-grey eyes that I don't like.
Something that looks like knowledge.
"Sorry we're late," Sage says, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender that's too casual to be genuine. "I was handcuffed."
Blaze and I both turn to stare at him.
