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“What do you know about my history and Alliance?”
Morana felt her throat lock.
She knew.
Oh lord, she knew.
She knew his sister had been one of the girls gone missing.
She’d figured it out pretty quickly into her research, knowing it had been twenty-two years ago, which would’ve made him eight. What she didn’t know, however, was what that had to do with the Alliance.
But as she looked at him, looked at the men around the room – all older than him, all afraid of him, respectful of him, of The Predator in a world where reputation mattered more than lives, none of them knowing a thing about Tristan Caine – Morana’s heart clenched.
He’d shared the memory of his sister with her on that rainy night. He’d volunteered that memory, on a lonely night, just a lone man with a lone woman, giving her a truce, a respite for a few hours.
He had the gun pointed at her heart, and his eyes remained hard and cold, but Morana knew she could not die knowing she’d betrayed the one beautiful, powerful memory she had. He’d given her something incredible that night, something that her soul was so immensely grateful for, and she could not rape that for her own means, could not repay that small truce from him despite his hatred, with this betrayal.
He’d cracked a small light for her. She couldn’t suffocate it.
Heart clenching with fear, the decision made, Morana held her breath and closed her eyes, remaining silent.
Silence.
There was utter silence.
No sound except her own blood rushing in her ears. Nothing except darkness behind her shut eyelids.
She was aware of every single man in the room holding his breath as they waited for the bullet to pierce her heart, aware of the blood throbbing in her body. She realized in that moment of facing death – the very death she’d been contemplating mere days ago – that she didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to die, not when she’d started living for the first time in her life, because of the very man holding the gun at her chest.
Her heart beat in staccato, taking as many beats as it could before it was forced to stop, her shaking hands clenching the arms of the chair, sweat rolling down the line of her spine.
She waited a breath.
Two.
Another.
And suddenly, the loud bang made her flinch –
Her heart stopped –
– right before her eyes flew open on a loud intake of breath. Her teeth grit in pain as fire burned down the length of her arm, flames licking along her flesh as agony seared through her.
Morana looked down at the blood soaking the fabric of her dress, not over her breasts, where she’d expected to see it, but on the outside of her arm.
She’d been shot on the outside of her arm.
Right on the where the bruise had been.
The bullet wasn’t even in her arm.
It was just a graze.
He’d not killed her. Not even injured her severely.
Her eyes flew to his, to find something completely unreadable in his eyes, his gaze heavy and intense with something she had no name for. She recognized the fury, the hatred, but there was something else, something so live, something she didn’t recognize. It pulsed between them, making her realize how utterly controlled he had been, and suddenly, the dam had burst.
His eyes held her ensnared, the blue ferocious in that foreignness. Her breathing stuttered, eyes on his, disbelief washing over her because he’d been pointing to her chest. The rule of the game was to answer or die. And yet, she was merely grazed on her bruised arm.
