One breath. One moment to freak out and worry about being caught, and then I shut it down. I exhaled and pulled on my power.Time to eat, I told it. Cautiously, it moved, filling my entire body until I thought the slightest breeze would shatter me and send magick racing in all directions. I inhaled and my power took a bite.
With that first taste came a jumble of images. A beach. Trash cans in the ocean? Another inhale, and the next bite revealed a blurry man with some recognizable features of the human asleep beside me. I hated this part of feeding. I didn’t want to see inside this man’s dreams, but that’s how the magick worked. One was never more vulnerable than when they slept.
The dream transitioned from one random scene to another, as most dreams did, until I felt my magick full and satisfied in my gut. As easy as I came, I left. No hiccups. No accidents. I leftthe janitor where I found him, no worse for wear, and turned out of the room…right into a hard chest.
“I’m sorry!” I whispered automatically, and stumbled away.
The man I bumped into chuckled, and the sound sent shivers down my back. Not the good kind. I met his gaze. Rule one of self-defense was to be present, to let any potential attackers know you were aware andsawthem. Not that this man had done anything wrong, but something didn’t feel right.
His dark hair was greasy and slicked back with too much gel. I eyed the open lobby behind him. There wasn’t much distance between me and the front doors. I moved to step around the stranger, but he mirrored me and blocked the already narrow route. When he grinned, alarm bells went off in my head, and my freshly replenished magick coiled like an asp sensing danger.
“I’m surprised you’ve lived as long as you have with how much magick you leak.” The stranger closed his eyes and inhaled. When he looked at me again, his eyes glowed yellow, and he smiled. “You weren’t hard to find.”
Shit.
A hunter stood before me, and a strangled whimper escaped. That made him happy. I backed away, not looking at where I was going. I couldn't tear my gaze away from him. This shouldn’t be happening. I was so careful.
“I thought…” The words caught in my throat when my back hit a wall. “I thought the order was lifted,” I managed to get out, hoping the tribunal hadn’t reinstated my bounty after I denied my bond.
“Oh, it was,” the hunter said. “But there are others in power whoreallydon’t want you to exist. And they pay better.”
There were no more questions. The hunter’s hands wrapped around my neck and squeezed. It was instinct to fight back, but none of my basic self-defense moves worked. No amount ofkicking, pinching, or scratching brought oxygen back into my lungs. My vision blurred and black dots appeared at an alarming speed.
“Almost done, nasty nightmare.”
I forced my eyes to stay open and gripped his wrists until my nails drew blood. He laughed at my attempt to break free, but that wasn’t the plan. Eye contact and skin-on-skin were all I needed to strengthen a connection. Unleashing my power would only reveal my location to the other hunters, but I had no choice.
It was this or die, and I chose life. The full force of my magick slammed into him. It weaseled its way around his mental barriers, finding little cracks and holes to squeeze through until his mind belonged to me. A single thought made him release me, and I fell at his feet, gasping and clutching at my raw throat.
I needed to move. That blast of power was strong enough to be heard two states over, and my hold on his mind wouldn’t last forever. With weak legs and hazy vision, I stumbled deeper into the library, heading for the one place I felt safe. The door to the basement opened under my featherlight push, and I inched down the stairs. Each breath into my damaged throat felt like fire, but it was slowly getting better. Or maybe I was just getting used to it.
I forced my feet to keep moving past the TA offices that I knew couldn’t help me, but that one door gave me the wave of strength I needed to make it to the exit. A huge sign blinked red above it. Before I could reach it, a beefy hand wrapped around my hair and yanked me back.
“Naughty tricks,” the hunter crowed in my ear. “It's not nice to play in other people’s minds, nightmare.”
He pulled harder on my hair until I thought my neck would snap. That was probably his plan. The tiles of the basementceiling stared back at me in a boring gray; the last thing I would see on this earth. I wished it was the trees. The night sky with swaying branches would have been a nice vision to go out to.
“Let her go.”
I stiffened at the new voice, and it pulled at the hand in my hair, sending tendrils of fire across my scalp. I clutched at the hunter’s hand to ease the pain, and my chest throbbed in retaliation. The temperature in the basement plummeted until my breath puffed out in front of me, toward the ceiling. The hunter laughed and tugged me closer, wrapping an arm around my waist.
“You’re too late, Alantes,” the hunter taunted. “One twist of my hand and your pretty bond is a sad memory.”
The threat to my life went over my head, even when that grip pulled my neck at a harsher angle. One word circled my mind above all others: above the very real risk of death even. Alantes. That was the family name of my bond. He was here?
“Now, Ez!”
Three things happened in quick succession. The first was the hunter’s screams. They were horrific and shrill, something that reminded me of the sounds wounded animals made in the throes of death. The second thing was my freedom. The hunter’s hold on me disappeared completely, followed immediately by the thick scent of blood and more screaming. My head now free, it snapped forward and the rest of my body followed, throwing me right into the arms of the third thing. I looked up at my savior and locked eyes with a familiar aquamarine gaze. Alantes. My bond. Or, as I knew him,Kai.
nine
Kaiden
I tightened my grip on her forearms as the confusion clouding her gaze slowly cleared to recognition. My expression stayed artfully blank, despite the growing guilt beating the shit out of me from the inside. She was going to hate me. Already those green eyes burned, and as much as that look turned me all the way on, in this instance, I knew it didn’t bode well.
We stared at one another, her piecing together my deceptions, and me taking stock of any injuries the damned djinn might have caused. The red marks around her throat sent the bond in my chest on a rampage. She was hurt. Unconsciously, my finger drifted toward the bruises forming where the djinn had assaulted her.
“Don’t touch me,” she spat, pulling her head back as far as she could, despite the pain it obviously caused her. “Don’t ever touch me.”
