Brody didn’t answer me, his gaze focused on the two windows along the wall on my right.
Iven stood in the center of the room with his arms relaxed at his sides, a completely unreadable expression on his handsome face. Did he know these people? What was happening? Why was a S.W.A.T team at the school?
Why did every single one of them have their weapons pointed at Iven?
One of the officers sidled along the wall until he reached a locked metal door that led outside. The door was thick and kept locked. To be used in emergencies only.
He shoved it open and the school’s alarm bells went off, filling the room with a deafening tone as three more teams of two armed men came into the room from outside.
Ten of them?
I stumbled toward the hallway, pulling Brody with me.
“Where do you think you’re going, Krystal?”
The woman’s voice sent a chill down my spine. I’d heard it before.
Turning slowly to look over my shoulder, I shifted Brody away from her and shoved him behind my back. “Daciana.”
Her smile was cruel. It made her normally timid face nearly unrecognizable.
“What do you want? You already have all of Brody’s money.”
She looked at me like I was the biggest idiot ever born. Perhaps I was. I’d hoped, if we didn’t take any of Brody’s inheritance off planet, they’d leave us alone. That whoever had killed my sister and Rojak would leave us the hell alone.
“We aren’t going back. Rojak can have everything.”
She cursed at me in Everian, words so vile the NPU struggled to keep up. “Rojak is worthless. My sons carry the Elite bloodlines. Not from their father.” She tilted her head and stared, almost as if she could literally see through my body to where Brody clung behind me.
How had I been so wrong about her? I’d been around her on Everis. Watched her wipe tears from her eyes at the funeral. Seen her cower and defer to her mate and sons, act as if she had no courage, no ambition, no desires. I’d believed her to be barely more than a bump on a log. A mouse in a house full of predators.
I was wrong. So wrong. “Does Pridon know what you’ve done?” I didn’t like Rojak’s cousin, had assumed he was the one who’d sent assassins to hunt Brody.
She signaled on of the two man teams to move into position behind Iven. “You really are stupid. He’s next.”
“Your sons will never forgive you for killing their father.”
She scoffed. “They’ll never know.”
“You killed Rojak?”
She bowed as if proud of herself.
“You murdered my sister.”
She stared at me like I was reading her the ingredients list from a cereal box.
“And?” She motioned with her hand for me to continue. “Try really hard to use your little human brain.”
“You sent assassins after us,” I said. “You took control of Brody’s inheritance. You’re going to kill your mate and what? Keep it all for yourself?”
“For my children, dear. Not for me.” She held a Coalition Fleet ion blaster now—she must have had it in a hidden holster—a small, silver handgun I’d seen on one of my visits to space. I knew the innocent looking weapon could blow a hole in the side of the school with one shot. She had it pointed at Iven.
“So just let us go,” I pleaded. “We’ll never go back to Everis. I swear.”
“Brody is an Elite Hunter. You truly believe he will obey you when he is an adult? If he returns to Everis, I lose everything.”
I pulled Brody around to my side and looked down into his eyes, begging him to play along. “Tell her, Brody. Tell her you’ll never go back.”
