Page 98 of Anomalies

“Some…air—” Pax’s eyes blow wide, his hand running through his hair like Callan does when he’s stressed. “Lucina, someone is trying to kill you. As in burn you to the ground, kill you. And you want me to believe you risked your safety for… air?” He laughs, but I can tell it’s not funny. “Either you think I’m stupid, or you aren’t nearly as smart as I thought you were.”

“I’m not that smart.”

He glares at me.

“Pax.” I move forward to grab his hand. “I’m sorry. I really am. It won’t happen again.”

He rubs a hand down his face, glancing once to where his mother disappeared through the trees. When he looks back at me, it’s not with anger, but I kind of wish it were. It would make lying to him a whole lot easier.

“What were you really doing out here, Cin?” Pax whispers.

I suck in a breath, chewing nervously on my bottom lip.

“Lucina, you can trust me.”

My eyes dart up to him, to the sincerity flickering there and the hope that burns alongside it. I know I can trust him, but this isn’t about trust. It’s about not wanting to implicate him in something that could get him killed.

The irony isn’t lost on me. If something had happened to me tonight, and if Callan’s threat was real, Pax and Hunter would have paid for it. But I can’t drag him into this—into the Eldral. He’d either try to protect me and what I’m in possession of, or he’d go straight to Delia.

And I can’t have either scenario.

“I just needed air Pax; I couldn’t sleep.” The lie stung even as I told it, so I supplemented it with a seedling of truth. “I- uh, I’m worried about them.”

“Bullshit.”

My eyes snap up to him, violent denials ready to fly off my tongue. “It’s not bullshit.”

He exhales, then swings a heavy arm across my shoulders, pulling me in step beside him as we start across the creek rocks. “I know your ass isn’t worried about Phoenix or Devon.” Pax smiles down at me, then shrugs. “It’s not them keeping you up at night.”

I jab an elbow into his side, and he laughs.

“He’ll be okay Cin, I promise.” Pax helps me up the steep drop that separates the forest floor from the creek bed. “You’re lucky I found you before Mommy Dearest skinned you alive.”

“What’s her deal?” I ask, letting curiosity for other things overshadow the reality of what I’d just endured. I can’t process it now. Not in front of him.

No one has ever told me why Pax resents his mother so much, though I’m sure he has a damn good reason. You don’t look at your own blood like you want to rip their throat out, unless something seriously fucked up is going on.

“My mother is motivated by power, simply put, and she doesn’t understand why I’m not.” There’s no anger in his voice, just brutal acceptance. “She made my life a living hell, torturing me under the guise that she was making me stronger, but really, all she wanted was for me to rise in rank. When it came time to reform the Ajax, Ceres wanted me to be the Captain. I told her I didn’t want it. I told her the position belonged to Callan, and it had been long before he was even born.”

“I take it she didn’t like that.”

“She was furious,” Pax fires back. “She blames me for wasting her time.”

For a long moment, it’s just the sound of twigs snapping and dead leaves crunching as we cut back through the forest, the lights from Callan’s cabin only barely shining through the trees.

“I’m sorry, Pax.” I squeeze his arm. “You didn’t deserve that.”

He waves off the apology and smiles. “Don’t be, I found my brothers. Good ones. Granted, one of them can’t keep his head straight because of you, but he used to be sane.”

“He’s still sane,” I assure him, glaring back at his incredulous grin, cursing the color that blooms across my cheeks and hoping it’s too dark for him to see it.

When we make it to the cabin, Hunter is pacing on the porch.

“Oh, thank fuck,” he curses when he sees me, and my brows shoot up; I’ve yet to see him so… disheveled. “Moving your pillows around? Really?” he snarls. “What are you, sixteen?”

“Twenty,” I reply plainly, climbing the stairs to the porch. “I’m a perfectly fine and steadily breathing twenty-year-old, but my birthday is soon, I think⁠—”

“THEN WHY DO YOU SNEAK OUT OF WINDOWS LIKE A PRETEEN?!” A vein pops out on his forehead as he pins me with a piercing blue-eyed stare.