What if Alexander got to her family?
What if he wrapped that hand around their throats until blackness danced intheirvision and she wasn’t there to stop him—
They were supposed to still have time. Why had the Wake sent him ahead of Kyan’s deadline?
Suddenly there was no air. She was breathing and there wasno air – where was the air?She heard a strange wheezing sound and felt an awful pressure in her chest, getting worse and worse.
Panic danced around her skull.
‘Nicole,’ came Kyan’s voice and she reached for him blindly though he wasn’t there yet. ‘Nicole, I need you to try and take a breath.’
‘I can’t—’ she gasped.
She knew she was built to kill, that technically that was the main reason for her existence, but the thought of more death made her want to sob and not stop. Threatened to unzip that panic she’d stuffed back in her chest.
She forced herself to think, to scan the swimming street.
Then a hand gripped her arm and three large SUVs pulled up in front of her.
Alexander.
Before she could even rip away, something slammed into Alexander so hard, he staggered back several steps.
Kyan.
The snarl he let out wasn’t human. ‘Hands off. Do you want to tell me what thefuckis going on here? How you’realive?’
Another Empyreal emerged from the central car. He was slimmer than the other two, with a buzz cut somewhere between blond and brown and a smirk on his mouth. ‘Kyan. What a surprise. Don’t bother with the big one here, he doesn’t speak.’
Alexander did little but stare him down, and Nicole’s pulse beat rapidly, taking up all her attention, all her brain power.
They’ve found me—
She raced through every midnight scenario she’d ever rehearsed. But the SUVs were reinforced and they were surrounded. That, they could have fought. But the Wake had a weapon she’d never prepared for. The Huntbringer. He stared at them, all pure strength and a lack of humanity.
‘What’s going on?’ Kyan demanded.
The unfamiliar Empyreal continued. ‘We came to collect this one.’ He nodded a chin at Nicole. ‘The Wake felt like you were taking long enough.’
‘I found her, I bring her in.’
She looked around, desperate for an answer, for someone to noticethis. But the humans around them continued on their way, no doubt thanks to the gear that all the Empyreals were wearing. They walked on as if nothing life-changing was happening on the side of this university’s cobbled street.
She almost wanted to scream at them tolook, and yet art had been showing them truths for centuries, and they hadn’t even blinked.
If they were going to get out of this, they needed a plan.
But seeing Kyan and Alexander together painted theDantepiece in to her mind in all its wicked, bloody glory. The threat of it. The awful thought that it represented Alexander killing Kyan.
He had already killed her mother: her epic, immortal, brilliant mother. What was to stop him doing the same thing to her?
Kyan had fought Logan to stop her getting taken and won. But this wasn’toneEmpyreal. This was a mutated one stronger than they had ever seen and three others in the car.
If Kyan defended her like this, they’d know their relationship was more than it appeared, they’d know she and Kyan were lying. Would they be able to sense, or scent, the mate bond between them if Empyreals weren’t supposed to know that could happen?
‘I’ll come,’ Nicole found herself saying. ‘It’s fine. Kyan’s explained that new Empyreals get recruited. I understand.’
Let them think she didn’t know her mother’s secrets and was just a new Empyreal. That she’d turned mere months ago to excuse the lack of a newly transformed scent. Let it seem like she didn’t know anything more. She was going to have to lie through her teeth, because the information they discovered wasn’t something she knew how to bargain with.
