A moment was all it took. An instant of that desperate grasping, and the empath took every scrap of freedom not offered. Reaching, clawing toward the vibrant life force laid out before us. A feast of boundless energy too tempting for morals or virtue or pithy fuckingreason.
“She killed them, Rawlings,” the other elite spat, oblivious to the danger coiled in the captain’s shadow. The whites of his eyes gleaming in a face coated in grime. The dust was all that remained of the men he’d named. “She and Sasha both. Fuckin’ witches. She’s got elite blood on her hands—your fucking golden girl—and you know it. Ourbrothers.” He drew his weapon. Muzzle aimed at his feet, where flickering green flames dribbled from the muzzle, shaken free by a grip that trembled with every wild thrashing beat of his heart. “You’re not leaving with her. I won’t let you.”
At this, something in the captain… shifted. A smile that went unseen, one that was not meant for me, but keenly felt all the same. I felt him swell, as if he’d outgrown his skin. Felt it when something…elsesurged up from deep inside.
It was a thing that saw the empath for all her savage, chaotic needs, and meant to see them fulfilled.
Pure, raw energy pushed at the cracks, and where he’d been deplete, he now felt…
…Dangerous.
Stretched too thin, stuffed too full, he was running on vapor and fumes, all at once. Unstable energy built and lashed, snarling where I could only watch, entranced.
It was familiar as it was foreign. Alien, despite the scent of something that matched.
There was so much potential left untapped…
“Step aside, Rawlings,” the other elite barked, his weapon inching up. Held tight in a fist that trembled not with fear, but fury. “Little witch has to pay for what she’s done.”
“She’s mine.”
It was a voice that promised to ignite the wind. Deeper than any ocean, it rippled through the soft tissue behind my eyes. Jiggled the fat and jelly until my brain threatened to slip down the back of my nape in a liquid, greasy smear.
But the other elite seemed not to hear the warning.
Ignorant to the hint of power that blinded me to all else.
“I saw the way Sasha spoke to her. Spillin’ secrets and whispers before she did what she done.She knows something,” the other spat, but when his gaze fell on me, it was with eyes rolling white. Spittle strung between top and bottom lip, a gummy tether that quivered without breaking as he spoke. “Or worse, your little bitch had something to do with what happened here, Rawlings, an’ you fuckin’ know it.” Lip curled around a sneer, disgust etched in his every grimy line, he looked me up and down, then said, “You’d choose her, then? Over us?”
But to this, the captain’s answer was a wordless snarl. A possessive guttural thing that sent shivers through my blood and bade me still. Utterly frozen, commanded to watch him work, I was immobile. From breath to bone, from untrained priestess to empath, I stilled. Enthralled by what only I could see.
The captain swelled, fists and jaw clenched, his every muscle locked into place as unstable energy shoved at the seams. Drawing on the dregs of an empty barrel, on the very stuff that kept his heart and lungs moving, it was power that lashed and promised to deal the sort of damage meant to leave pure devastation in its wake.
Saving nothing, it was a thing that would spend every last drop in defense of what washis.
Every. Last. Drop.
There was a moment that promised clarity. An instant of knowing without comprehendingexactlywhat I was seeing. A truth that lay just out of sight, hidden beyond a thin veil separated between two split seconds of time.
And it was beautiful.
“Get back!”
My breath caught as the moment was shattered by a voice I recognized. One that sliced through the pandemonium of a crowd driven to blind panic, and bade the flexing power swirling around the captain to stall on the cusp of freedom. Turning one unblinking corona toward the voice snarling at the crowd to, “Get back, you animals! I saidback!”
Marco.
Weapon raised, he swung elbows at the crowd of terrorized citizens and carved a path through the bodies, and snarled, “HEY!RAWLINGS! Get your shit together, old man! Look at me!ME! ”
But the other elite before us was undeterred, his attention unbroken by the interruption, he was instead driven to take a menacing step toward me. Towardus.“Your girl needs to be questioned, Rawlings. Punished.”
“CAPTAIN ASHER RAWLINGS!” Marco grunted, and shoved an old lady aside before he leapt onto the podium in a swirl of dust and smoke. “Contain your shit before I’m forced to containyou.”
And then I saw what the other elite did not. That Marco’s weapon was held in a grip that did not tremble—and was fixed directly to the captain’s heart.
I blinked, and missed the moment it took the captain to wrestle that unstable thing back. Forcing it down deep, where not even I might catch a glimpse. “Sorry, Dez,” Asher drawled, but that cultured purr was ragged and thin. His brow pale and damp. Waxy beneath his tan. “Not your call to make.”
Exhaling a breath that tasted of deep relief, Marco’s chin dipped in a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. And then, without another instant of aggressive hesitation, he swung in a perfect half circle and trained his aim at Dez. “Move.”
