“May I join you?”
An embarrassing wave of gratitude swells inside me when Teriq approaches. “Sure,” I tell him.
“I’m glad I have you alone, actually,” he says, taking the seat across from me. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
I pop a bite of chicken into my mouth, chewing slowly. “All right…”
“You knew my sister.”
“I did?” My brows crash together as I set my fork down. I remember thinking he’d looked familiar, but I still can’t place him.
Noting my bewilderment, he clarifies, “Betima.”
“You’re Betima’s brother?” I say in surprise, but now that he’s said it, I see the clear resemblance. Same wide mouth and black hair, same dark skin and dimples.
“She was my little sister. Three years younger,” he says, a fond smile on his face. “She was such a brat sometimes.”
“Was Betima her real name or an alias like Grayson had?”
“No, she was Betima. She didn’t need a cover. Gray did because his real name was reported to the Command a year prior.” Teriq’s lips flatten. “We had a traitor in our midst. A mole.”
“Shit. Did you catch them?”
“Yep. We plugged that hole real fast.”
I’m momentarily distracted when Gray’s friends pass our table. Saint and Henley, their stride confident, with Mako towering over them. All three men nod toward us in greeting, Mako flashing a big smile my way.
“New girl,” he chirps as they walk to another table.
“Did she suffer?”
Teriq’s question jolts me back to our conversation.
“No,” I assure him, sadness filling my chest. “She didn’t even have time to feel anything.” I swallow. “I thought he was about to shootme.Roe Dunbar, I mean. The General’s youngest son.”
“Gray said they discovered she was Modified?”
“Yeah. She slipped up earlier that night. One of our fellows fell off a roof, and Betima was holding him when he died.”
Teriq sucks in a breath, realizing the implication right away. Betima was an empath, which means she could feel other people’s emotions. Shefeltthat boy dying. I can’t even imagine how horrible that would be.
“That would have been excruciating for her,” he mutters.
“It was. And I guess as he was dying, her veins flashed silver andRoe saw it. He showed up later and cornered us, said he couldn’t have an Aberrant bitch roaming around. I was panicking inside. I thought he was talking aboutme.I had no idea he meant Betima.” My voice cracks. “He shot her in the head. It happened so fast, I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried.”
My appetite is gone. I reach for my water, gulping it down.
“Nobody blames you for her death,” Teriq says, curling both hands around his coffee cup. “If anything, it’s my fault.”
I gape at him. “What? Of course it wasn’t your fault.”
“I approved her assignment.” Guilt flashes in his eyes. “I was the deciding vote.”
I hesitate. I want to acknowledge his pain, ask him if he blames himself for her death, but I don’t want to make him uncomfortable. Maybe he’s like me and hates being vulnerable around strangers.
I decide to focus on practical questions instead. “I’m still trying to figure out how the voting works. Does the Authority hold a formal vote for everything?”
“Not everything, but all high-risk assignments require a vote. Sending someone directly onto the Command base is borderline suicidal. We never would’ve risked Gray if there’d been someone else to fly that plane, but the B-8 tech was too new. No one else could do it. Still, we weren’t comfortable with him going alone, so we sent him in with backup.”
