Both men look at me.Good.I am suddenly sick of being the thing everyone talks around.The delicate center of a room full of predators pretending they have table manners.
I turn to Aldron.“What do you know?”
His face shifts into something colder.Businesslike.Maybe he understands that this is better.Facts have edges.I can hold them.
“The Sable Vein traffics in blood,” he says.“Human and supernatural.Willing donors when they can get them.Coerced when they can’t.Rare bloodlines fetch higher prices.Psychics, witches, fae-touched humans, shifters with unusual traits.Humans who survive repeated feedings without turning feral or dying are also valuable.”
My stomach rolls.Valuable.I grip the back of the chair to stay upright.
“Briana,” Akasha says.
“I’m listening.”
Knox is too, still by the door.
Aldron continues.“The cell that held you was destroyed.”
“Good.”
“But the seal you remembered suggests it was not isolated.”
“Meaning there are others.”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“We don’t know.”
“How many are missing?”
Aldron glances at Malichai.I hate the glance.I hate the pause more.
“How many?”I demand.
Malichai answers.“Three confirmed in the last month who fit the pattern.Possibly more.”
Three.The number sits in my stomach like a stone.Three people in rooms like mine.Three people are waiting for rescue that might not come.Three people are becoming valuable.
My hands stop shaking, and everything in me goes very quiet.“I want to help.”
Knox speaks first.“No.”The word cracks across the room.
My head turns slowly, and he knows it immediately.I see it in the way his jaw tightens, in the flash of regret behind his eyes.But it’s too late.
“No?”I ask.
His shoulders square.“You aren’t going near them.”
The room goes silent, as rooms do right before violence makes an entrance.
Ari whispers, “Oh, Knox.”
Cruz closes his eyes like he is already tired.
I walk toward Knox.He doesn’t retreat, but he looks like each step costs him.Good.It should.I stop close enough to see the pulse beat in his throat.Not close enough to touch unless I choose it.
“You don’t get to tell me where I go.”
