“Fuck you,” I spat. “Enjoy your meeting, Ig.”
“Where are you going?” he asked me, looking panicked. He was already losing the courage he needed to submit his request to the pair.
“To Erik’s.”
“He’s not home,” Larkin said, looking gleeful.
“Where is he?”
“At the research institute with Sloan,” Ignacio answered.
“Why?” I snapped, a lead block settling in the pit of my stomach.
“Gareth asked if Sloan would mind if they looked at her pregnancy,” Hunter clarified.
“What?” I asked, trying to process the insanity that had consumed them all.
“Actually, it’s your handler that’s going to be doing the work if I’m not mistaken,” Larkin said with a smirk.
“Are you stupid?!” I yelled.
It was bad enough that they’d consented for Sloan and her unborn child to be treated as an experiment, but to put them into Scott’s hands? Scott, who despised me. Scott, who would probably do anything to try and inflict the same misery into my life the way I’d inflicted it into hers.
“Gray, calm down,” Hunter said. “They agreed to it.”
I didn’t listen. Instead, the black of my aura wrapped around me and their cries faded away.
“Gray!” Hunter yelled.
“Let him go, Hunter,” Larkin said.
When I released my aura, I appeared in a small room in the lab, causing Scott to startle.
I turned on my brother and sister-in-law. “Are you crazy?!” I asked.
“Hello, Grayson,” Sloan said calmly from her place on the bed, swinging her short legs. She looked as if she’d been expecting me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded from her before turning to Erik. “And you! You’re allowing this?”
“Most trusted scientist, Gray,” Erik said confidently. “What exactly should we be worried about?”
“You believe that drivel Gareth spouted?” My disbelief was clear. “What’s there to worry about? Everything!”
“It’s not really your decision though, is it, Grayson?” Scott said bluntly, inserting herself into the conversation.
She was flipping through notes in her hands when I rounded on her. She looked up, avoiding my eyes, but I wanted the contact. I wanted to remind her who she was talking to. Bring her to her knees and throw out my carefully plotted plan, because this wasn’t a game. This was my family, and I allowed no one to mess with them for the sake of some stupid publications.
“Do you understand what you’re working with here?” I asked her.
“Let me think about that,” she pondered infuriatingly. “No. I have no idea. I’ve only studied my entire life to stand here and be utterly clueless.”
With most things, I couldn’t care less, but I reserved the softest spot in my heart for my niece and three nephews. I’d lose everything I had, relinquish everything I was for them, and the fact that Sloan and Erik thought it was a good idea to let the mortals into this part of their lives struck me as madness.
The black swirled around me, thick and fast. I wasn’t about to let Scott use this as an experiment to cement her professional standing.
“Grayson!” Sloan called my name.
A wall of green and red appeared in front of Scott, and she looked confused as she glanced at the couple.
