My breath catches as my chest goes tight.
Slowly, I lift my gaze to the sight of my uncle’s office. Reese is across the room, and if I thought I’d seen him in a bad mood before, I was wrong. This isn’t even anger. It’s something darker, the kind of rage that doesn’t burn hot. It slowly compresses, building pressure until it turns lethal.
Well, that’s his own fucking fault. He’s not even supposed to be here.
But I’ll deal with that later.
“Hey,” I say, giving him a weak grin becauseoneof us has to be fucking chill right now. “Miss me?”
His jaw tightens.
When that’s the only reaction I get, I shift and try to move before quickly realizing I can’t. My arms are held tight, one on each side gripped by who I’m assuming are two of Malcolm’s Ascended.
“So sorry for being an annoying piece of luggage,” I mutter.
“Still flippant as always.”
It’s Malcolm’s voice, and it’s coming from behind me.
Well. Fuck.
He wasn’t supposed to be here this early.
My own uncle wouldn’t have been my first guess as to who’s holding a gun to my head. He sounds too calm while doing it too, which only somehow makes it worse.
Malcolm was always around while I was growing up. I barely remember his wife who died in a bad car accident about twelve years ago, but he always showed up for holidays and my birthday. I was almost as close to him as I was to my own parents. He let me live with him after my mom moved to North Carolina, even if he did fail to mention he had orchestrated my kidnapping.
Okay, no time to unpack all those feelings right now.
“Hey, Uncle Malc,” I say lightly. “I’m not sure this is the appropriate way to greet family.”
The gun presses a little harder, and I stifle a grunt.
The instinct hits before the thought does.Power. I reach for it, grabbing for that current under my skin, for the hum that’s been there since I came back. I try to spark something, anything. To send a jolt through the assholes holding me, fry the gun, short out the entire fucking room if I have to.
But there’s nothing. Not even a flicker.
It’s like slamming my hand into a dead outlet. No resistance, no surge. Nothing.
What the actual fuck?
Oh, right. It must be that bitch Samantha that Reese warned me about. I already hate her.
For a split second, real panic cuts through everything else. Then I shove it down hard and fast because now isnotthe time to spiral.
“I heard you were down in the server room,” Malcolm says. “Trying to cause trouble?”
“Me? Never.”
This time, he hits the back of my head with the butt of his gun, and I can’t stop from crying out at the pain that shoots through my skull. Bright spots dance in my vision, but it was at least not hard enough of a hit to knock me out. Again.
I hear the click of another gun from somewhere beside me and squint up to see the man on my left still holding onto me with one hand and a gun of his own in the other, aimed across the room. When I look over at Reese, evenIfeel terrified by the dark look in his eyes. He’s nearer, like maybe he took two steps this way. And he looks even closer to being one wrong move away from turning this entire building into a crater.
As I drag my gaze back to the man beside me, something in my brain clicks, as though I just opened up a file. Data flickers at the edges of my vision, pulled straight from the mess I downloaded in the server room.
KADE, ETHAN
Status: ASCENDED
