I blinked several times to stave off the tears and stared down the hall to avoid the disappointment in his eyes. But in the end, he broke me.
“Sophia.” His tone was so soft, so sad, that the tears finally tore through my resolve. “None of them would have wanted this for you.”
I still hadn’t found the courage to ask Lucas about Tekqua, fearful of what he might find, and my heart twisted from guilt and grief. “I miss them, Adam.”
His face crumpled when I glanced his way.
“Why is no one helping us?” I whispered through the tears.
“I don’t know,” he said, because it was an unanswerable question. Was Haynes stopping any foreign aid from reaching us? Was the world siding with him? Did anyone care about us at all?
Adam touched my arm. “What can I do?”
“Nothing.” I turned and said the next words as I walked away from him. “They’re dead, and I may as well be.”
I standunder a bridge in the pouring rain. Lucas faces me, silent, twirling his infamous scalpel around his finger like a simple pencil.
“Why are we here?” I ask.
“I told you to stay safe.”
I look up and down the roadway, heavy rain obscuring the distance. The world is nothing but wet smudges of gray and green, soundtracked by the din of the storm. No immediate threats pop out, but I search for them anyway.
When I find none, I turn back to him. “Protect myself from what?”
He says nothing, but his eyes gleam bright in the gray. The scalpel spins and spins.
How can someone so innately treacherous be this magnetic? One small move with that scalpel could end me, but I drift toward the danger regardless.
What stays his hand? Why is this predator not attacking his prey? If I turn, will he haunt my steps? Will he stalk me with that blade until it finds my throat?
What do you want from me?I long to ask.What are you looking for? Why are you doing this?
I take a single step toward him.
His brow lifts. “Behind you.”
I barely turn before Lucas grabs me, his familiar hands yanking me against him as a faceless stranger arcs a blade where I’d been standing. Lucas buries his scalpel in the stranger’s neck. The guy falls dead at my feet, his blood mingling with the rain and asphalt to create a morbid watercolor.
“Watch your blindside, Sophia,” Lucas whispers against my ear.
Heart fluttering, I bolted awake. My hands clenched the blankets while I blinked in the dark, trying to ignore the image of a knife swinging my way.
He’d saved me. Even in my dreams, Lucas Scott protected me. Why on earth would my subconscious seek him for sanctuary?
Ignoring the implications, I forced myself to go back to sleep, then woke anxious the next morning, my stomach in knots for everyone heading into the Lily Wyatt mission. Jayden took me in his arms before he left, and only then did it occur to me we hadn’t slept together in weeks.
“A kiss for luck?” he asked.
I smiled through the nerves and gave him a quick peck. The team set out, and I couldn’t hold back one last warning to be careful, even as a pair of intense, multi-colored eyes flashed across my thoughts, paired with a bolt of unease.
Was I… I couldn’t beworriedabout Lucas?
I tried to laugh at myself, to talk myself out of my own stupidity, but really, I was just trying not to throw up.
Later that evening, our team returned safe and healthy, gloating at their success. Only one of ours had fallen—not Lucas’s kill—while nine of theirs had. They took Lily Wyatt to a safe room for holding. I barely caught a glimpse of her screaming as she was escorted upstairs. My ears perked for news while the soldiers debriefed, but since no one gloated in ecstasy, I assumed none of the Hunter deaths included a certain shifty Blood Colonel.
Relief and confusion stirred, along with something else. Something dangerous and warm. Foreign and unwanted. If I were forced to put a label on it, I would’ve fought that label with every word and weapon I possessed. Lucas Scott was not someone who engendered this sort of emotion. Or at least, he wasn’t supposed to. Notthisemotion.
