“You’re going to have to give me more than that,” he hisses, frustration getting the better of him, and it snaps my gaze back to his.
I lift my hand, ready to wave him off, when my lips part, betraying me. “If you go to The Sanctum, you’ll just put a bigger target on her head because they’re desperate to use her as their weapon.”
“How do you know that?” Ocean screeches, eyes wide as she shoulders past Rion to edge closer to me.
My mind is reeling, begging me to shut the fuck up, but it seems my heart has other ideas. “Because they tasked me with learning everything there is to know about her powers.”
“And what the hell do you know?” Rion snarls, shaking his head in disbelief. “What have you told them?” he adds, his hands clenching at his sides as he rakes a disdainful look over me.
I shrug. “Half-truths and enough to keep them off her back.”
“I call bullshit,” Ocean grinds out, cutting the distance between us so we’re standing toe to toe. “I bet you’ve told them everything, haven’t you? I bet you’re the one sneaking into our room like we don’t fucking know in the middle of the night, right?” She jabs her finger into my chest over and over.
“What do you mean someone’s sneaking into your room at night?” Rion interjects from his spot on the other side of Ocean, but she shakes her head with a scoff.
“Don’t worry, I’ve found the culprit,” she insists, waving her hand at me, and I shake my head slowly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I lift my hands in surrender, despite the irritation coiling in my chest from her incessant poking.
“Of course you don’t.”
“Let’s get back to the fact that you’re helping the damn Sanctum, man. What’s that about?” Rion asks, and my chest tightens unbearably before it releases, defeat getting the better of me.
“I had to keep my head above water, hers too. Otherwise, we’d both be dead,” I grunt, but it sounds feeble even to my ears.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, asshole,” Ocean bites, jabbing me one last time before turning for the door, but before she can take a single step, I grab her arm, stopping her in her tracks. My grasp only holds for a second before I feel her magic and I’m blasted back with a whoosh, hitting the far wall with a thud and landing on my ass, staring up at her in a daze.
“Ocean,” I grunt, but she shakes her head, crouching down in front of me with a frustrated glare.
“Fuck you, Kael Forrester. Fuck you for putting her in danger, fuck you for trying to justify it, and fuck you for being you. I will go and find her because she’s my best friend. You, however, can rot here like the bad seed that you are.”
7
ELODIE
Atingle zaps down my spine, jolting me awake. I choke on my breath as I pry my eyes open, my pulse racing in my ears as I recall where I am. The close proximity to other people that I don’t know instantly reminds me I’m in Jude’s world. My eyelids shutter as I take a moment to catch my breath, and a fleeting visual of the last moments before I passed out consumes me.
Nausea burns in my throat as I rise to a sitting position, pressing my back against the wall as I exhale slowly. I brush my hair back off my face, but it does nothing to untangle the matting I can feel. I have bigger things to worry about, so I don’t let myself get caught up on something so cosmetic. Especially when my clothes are still torn and stained in blood from Willow’s assault. My eyebrows gather as I try to figure out when that was or how much time has passed, but I fall short, at a complete loss.
“Are you okay?”
I peer to my left, following the sound of the deep voice, to find the man who slept beside the woman, grasping her hand, only this time, their roles are reversed. The woman sleeps as he watches over her.
My heart clenches with thick emotions I can’t bring myself to decipher, but there’s definitely a hint of envy there.
Glancing from the sleeping woman back to the man, I clear my throat. “I’m okay,” I mumble, being polite only because the woman beside him was so nice to me.
His eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles at me, the same warmth spreading across his features as the woman earlier. I should have gotten her name. “The minion checked on you a few times, but he didn’t get close,” he states, nodding toward the door, and I frown.
“Who, Walker?” I clarify, and his eyebrows rise in surprise.
“You know his name?”
“You don’t?” I retort, sharper than necessary, and he shakes his head.
I look down at my hands, a million questions racing through my mind, ready to kick my curiosity into overdrive, but I blink again and panic settles in when I recall what the woman had said to me before the darkness came hunting.
My eye.
