Glimpses of life from that point on: his mother’s green and silver forests; the glinting treasures of his uncle’s armoury – blades of myth and magical origin. Some images Kyan wasn’t even sure he could rely on as true memory: shields of pure crystal, the sprawling, long-lost royal complex in Ulster, and somethingelsewithin him that stirred like the wind.
Then a forge, in the Iron Mountains of Ireland, glowing hot as a star, where one of the gods wrought him a treasure that marked the role he took on as a protector of his people.
A role he’d failed.
Logan couldn’t have known why the name triggered him so much, but it did. It still wasn’t enough to make Kyan beat the shit out of the other Empyreal, but the techs didn’t need to know that. All he needed was a distraction.
So, Kyan gave a dangerous grin, feeling a flicker of the violence of his past as the needle went into his vein, and the nervous tech added the bottle to draw the blood.
‘Tempt me,’ Kyan snarled.
You didn’t fuck with someone who’d lived as long as he had, or fought and killed as much as he had, unless you were ready to be beaten to a bloody pulp.
Logan spat in his face.
Bloody pulp it was, then.
Kyan swung before Logan could block, taking him clean in the jaw and ripping free the needle, the bottle smashing to the floor. The satisfaction of it swept through him like a tidal wave.
Kyan grabbed the idiot and slammed him into the keyboard of the computer they’d been using to log Kyan’s details. He rammed him enough times the entries filled with random letters and numbers, then shoved Logan through the computer itself as the staff jumped out of the way.
With a snarl, Logan ripped another computer from the wall and threw it at Kyan, clipping his shoulder and following it with a right hook to Kyan’s cheek. The burst of pain filled him with a surprising lash of relief.
He near launched himself into the other Empyreal when someone threw themselves between them in a flash of colour – a third, smaller Empyreal.
‘Woah, hey!’
He got a glimpse of the pink highlights in her short-cropped dark hair and the band she usually kept around her chest, which told him she’d either been working out or was due for her physical next.
Akira.
She took Logan’s shot right to her face, head whipping to the side with a choked cry.
Kyan’s suppressed rage went up like a flare. He kicked hard enough into Logan’s waist that the other Empyreal smashed into the glass wall behind.
Silence rang as Kyan huffed through his nose, feeling more like a bull, surprised at his hunger for the fight.
‘Jesus Christ, what’s going on?’ Akira demanded, spitting out blood.
‘Stay out of this, bitch,’ Logan snarled, batting away the medical assistants that tried to help him up.
Akira didn’t flinch, but Kyan could read the new tension in her shoulders.
‘God, you’re such a fucking asshole,’ she said, wiping her mouth.
Akira was the only female Empyreal in the Wake. Logan had brought her in two years ago when she’d been a scrappy, suspicious fifteen-year-old who followed Callum and Kyan around, asking for workout tips and hunting stories. Kyan had obliged her more than once, surprised at the brotherly feelings she dragged out of him.
But since Logan had been the one to find her newly transformed on one of his US hunts,hewas supposed to have been her brother-figure, to help her understand what she was and show her how this life worked.
Instead, Logan had shunned her as soon as he’d brought her in and she had dropped her family name and sworn the oath. No doubt he’d been relieved her swearing in had stopped the low, insistent tug in his blood from encountering a newly-awakened Empyreal’s scent.
Then he’d taken the bonus money that came with bringing in a new Empyreal and left Akira to it.
Now, fury and hurt glittered in her eyes, and it was that that made Kyan rein in the fight.
She threw a look at Kyan, surprised at his behaviour, and he wondered if he’d cut himself off from other Empyreals for too long; whether forming so few connections would cost him allies in thecoming months. Not all the other Empyreals were as bad as Logan, but there was such a divide there. He’d never bothered trying to get through to them, never desired the connection in the first place. Now, he couldn’t help but wonder if he should’ve tried harder.
‘The data’s gone,’ one of the techs said, frowning at the results, having crept back from where she and the others had shrunk to the wall.
