“If threatening him is how I make you matter to him, I will.” A bloodthirsty anguish deepened his voice, each consonant honed like a knife raised to protect me.
I attempted to sit up, but I couldn’t do it. Healing stab wounds illuminated with pain like neon lights. “You can’t do that,” I rasped.
“I assure you I can.”
I tried to form a counterargument, but it was useless. If he wanted, this man could ninja his way into our headquarters and murder everyone inside. Lucas was the most lethal person I’d ever met, and I had no doubt that if he wanted someone dead, they would be.
His hand was so rigid around mine that my fingers tingled. My voice dropped to a placating whisper. “Lucas?—”
“I won’t lose you to this war.”
I sank deeper into my pillows while the confusion spun my head. Hadn’t we been operating under his belief that my presence in his life was the worst mistake he’d ever made?
“I don’t understand,” I said.
A beat passed while he stared at me, jaw twitching. “You aremine.If they take you from me, I’ll kill them all.”
He’d…what?
This man had spent the last several weeks standing halfway across the room, barking information and ordering me to leave, and now he was promising to murder our general for threatening my safety?
My sleepy, drugged brain couldn’t comprehend it. Instead, it threw out a memory I wished it didn’t:
You’re the weapon Williams will choose to end him.
Mysteriously, my life seemed to be all Lucas cared about, and the Defiance, in all their hypocritical wisdom, wanted me to betray him.
I let go of his hand to grip his face. I wanted to see him up close, needed to understand the emotions that drove these desperate words. Flecks of amber blazed from his eyes like flames, and fizzy heat burst to life in my chest.
Lucas Scott was a perpetual enigma, but one thing was abundantly clear: he cared a great deal about me. Maybe he wished he didn’t. Maybe he regretted ever agreeing to let me be his contact.
But I mattered to him.
Lucas had a personal vendetta and a crooked moral compass. He guarded the things he cared for with frank violence. Somehow, in some way, I mattered to him, and he now considered the Defiance a threat to my life.
As the gravity fell on me, hard as a slab of iron, panic followed. He’d tried to push me away, but he couldn’t stop me from falling any more than he could stop himself from caring. We’d both wind up dead in our attempts to keep the other safe…
A sob burst free. “Lucas, they’re already planning to kill you. They wantmeto do it. If I tell Theo you’re threatening to kill him, he’ll?—”
“Try to end me first,” he finished for me, a tad softer. “I don’t care what they try with me, so long as you remain safe.”
I blinked. “Wait. Youknew?”
“Of course I did. It’s the strategic move. Take my information, then kill me when I’ve outlived my usefulness. I used to analyze every move you made, wondering when you’d strike.”
“Wh-what?”
“If they try to take you out with me, however, I’m going to have a big problem.”
I blinked, studying the resigned set of his shoulders. “They wouldn’t do that,” I whispered, “and I—I’d never do that to you.”
He rolled his eyes. “You should have done it the day of those executions, but you were still searching for something to redeem.”
“Well, I was right.” I tried to sit up again. He took hold of my elbows, helping me into a sitting position. “I’m alive because of you.”
We stared at each other long enough that things turned hazy, and his face glowed.
He touched my cheek. “If they let something happen to you, Theodore Harrison is a dead man. The NAO destroyed my country. Commander Haynes shot my father. Jack Miller killed my sister. If the Defiance sacrifices you, I’ll burn it all down.”
