I let myself get comfortable. I should have remembered that comfort is a luxury I can’t afford. And… I’ve never let anyone be close enough to matter. Zavin tore my walls down one brick at a time.
My vision blurs and heat builds behind my eyes. I wipe my tears away but they keep coming, flooding over my cheeks with scalding heat.
Now I have something to lose. Really lose. The kind of loss that doesn’t heal clean. The kind that leaves you waking up months later still reaching for someone who isn’t there. I didn’t know I was capable of that.
Percy chirps.
I drag the back of my hand across my face and turn to the console.
A light flashes on one of the traps. Amber. Rhythmic. A heartbeat in the dark. Someone accessed the false intelligence. Someone took the bait. That’s all I know. Not who. Not why. Only that the trap worked.
I look up as the door opens. Zavin steps through and I’m the subject of his laser focus.
Chapter Fifteen
ZAVIN
The door hasn’t finished sliding open when something is wrong. Salt catches first. Then the flat chemical residue of burned adrenaline. Both ride the air into the heat-sensing pits along my jaw before my eyes find her.
Miro sits cross-legged on my bed, blankets wrapped tightly around herself, Percy resting in her lap where he belongs. She scrubs at her cheeks the instant she sees me, as though she can erase the evidence before I notice. Too late.
Who came through that door? Who thought they had the right to come anywhere near her? My mind is already assembling names, routes and access logs, every guard rotation and servant schedule running through my head while one question refuses to let go. What did they do to her while I was gone?
Her shoulders draw tighter beneath the blankets, eyes locked on me. Before I left this room, there’d been heat in her gaze. Curiosity. Want. As though she couldn’t look away. No one looks at me that way. No one ever has.
She did.
Now her cheeks are wet, and she’s holding herself like she’s waiting for me to become the thing she’s afraid of. I cross the room until I’mstanding between her knees. Slowly, giving her every chance to stop me, I slide my knuckles beneath her chin and lift her face. Her skin is warm against mine. She lets me tip her head back until her eyes meet mine, and I lean down.
Her pupils widen. She shudders softly as my breath brushes her mouth. The change is immediate enough to quiet the questions crowding my head.
Desire unfurls through her chemistry, sweet enough that I almost close the last fraction of distance between us. The wanting is still there.
Then the sweetness fractures. Bitterness slips underneath it, settling over her musky female scent. I know that scent. Fear.
My thumb stills against her cheek. Fear has no place here. Not in my rooms. Not while she’s in my arms. “Who,” I ask, “do I need to kill to make this better.”
Her eyes flare wide. Sourness floods her scent before she jerks away from my hand. “I don’t know what you mean.” Her fingers tremble as she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.
I don’t believe her. “When I left you were a sated female, and now you’re scared. What happened while I was out?”
She quirks her lips into the semblance of a smile that doesn’t meet her eyes. “It’s just been a long day.”
She isn’t lying. She’s simply choosing which truth she’ll let me have.
I take stock of the room while she works: no sign of entry on the door panel, nothing displaced in the arrangement of my things.
“That’s not it. Tell me, Miro.” I don’t know if the decision is about protecting herself or protecting me. Either answer makes me want to put my fist through something. I don’t like seeing her this way. I swallow hard because I… I want to make this right. “Please.”
Her eyes flick up, roam my face, catch on something at my jaw, then snap back to my eyes. “While you were gone, our bait was taken.”
The words hit and keep going, straight through to my gut. My hearts kick, and then pounding heavy thuds echo in my throat.
First Tevan. Now this. I don’t like the timing. Tevan moves against me, I put a bullet in him, and while I’m down there scrubbing his blood off my hands, someone’s up here stealing the trap we laid. It can’t be merely coincidence.
“Do you know who triggered it,” I say.
She shakes her head. “Percy’s still running the trace, identifying which version they pulled and what path they used.”
