RECK
* * *
I push the cu-sith to move away from guarding the house. He complies, but only because he too is channeling his murderous rage into a protection detail. Because we both know that soon … so soon now … we will be able to unleash everything.
And finally be done with it all.
The energy of the intersection point stirs underneath our silent footfalls as we stalk through the dark, verifying that everyone who needs our protection is safe within the main house. The dire awry wearing my face, but in a twisted feminine form, is sequestered down at the beach house.
She should be in the fucking ground, except that would just poison the earth.
I think about pushing to take my human form, but I’m not entirely certain that the cu-sith would allow it. Also, I might be too … mentally unstable to force the issue. The intersection point — and, more importantly, Zaya — seems to accept my deadly beast. Ironically, I’m not at all certain the same would hold for me.
The seething wound in my chest is no longer cauterized. It was ripped open by the mere sight of Zaya holding our severed soul bonds, even before she tore into me about the future I fucking destroyed. Or had a hand in destroying, at least.
I couldn’t protect her when she was my everything. But I’ll do so now, even as her enemy. The irony is not lost on me, though my emotions and thoughts are dampened in beast form. Or rather, my thoughts are fiercely focused when the cu-sith is at the forefront.
I’m surprised one of my brothers hasn’t tried to cage or collar the cu-sith yet. Their trust in Zaya to keep the beast in check is risky.
I push a bit more into the cu-sith’s mind so I can see through his eyes. The beast doesn’t fight me as I push my intent through him.
We climb over the wrought-iron fence surrounding the Gage family plot, brushing between marble statues and other massive headstones until we pick up Zaya’s scent and trace it around the side of the mausoleum. She dug here, moving a marble urn in an attempt to disguise the spot. It takes barely two swipes of the cu-sith’s claws to uncover the hidden niche, but we damage the marble by hooking those claws into the edges and tearing it open.
The scent of death slaps us in the face. Which is unusual because only ashes appear to be interred within the niche. We leave the urn alone, hooking out the ornate wooden box — the source from which the stench emanates. The cu-sith fights me on picking the latched box up in his mouth, but I shove more of my intent at him, and the beast complies grudgingly.
One of my brothers will be coming for this, but it needs to be me who wields it. My fucking responsibility.
Then maybe I can finally rest. Finally rid myself of all the self-recrimination and all the memories of all the terrible things I’ve done. To strangers and family alike.
I keep that thought, that hope, to myself, because the cu-sith would never agree to sacrifice himself. Or to leave Zaya unguarded. Even without his soul bond intact, the beast desperately wants to be near his mate.
I fucking hate every minute, every second, of being near her. Every moment of being near and not belonging to her.
We slip through the darkness, dodging the awry tech as they hustle back to the lair they’re building in Mack’s old apartment next to the workshop. Their combat mage protector ghosts their footsteps, moonlight catching in her golden hair, though the tech seems blind to it.
She calls herself ‘Gigi’ in this guise. But I know — because I’m not so fucking stupid as to not pull every fucking file on anyone remotely close to Zaya — that she once hunted Coda with an Authority badge in her pocket.
Well, not literally. She was so deep undercover, it’s possible the tech doesn’t even know. So deep undercover that maybe Gigi’s forgotten that other life herself. Maybe she’s been made to forget by one of Coda’s or Zaya’s purple-eyed cohorts. Some twisted fuck who digs into minds, taking whatever they want, wiping entire lives from their victims and planting whatever they want in its place.
I was never that lucky.
Both Coda and Gigi will do their jobs. Neither need any oversight from me.
I send the cu-sith where he needs to go. The weapon that once murdered a shifter soul bound to the Conduit needs to be seen by the person even more bloodstained and fucked up than me. She’s the wild card in everything happening right now, and I plan on using her as thoroughly as she’ll fuck with any of us given the chance.
Any of us except Precious.
Precious is always the exception for all of us.
I shouldn’t have been surprised by the purple in my younger sibling’s eyes. I knew she was the exception to every hardened rule I’d walled around my withered heart the moment I first laid eyes on my baby sister. The moment I bargained with the Cataclysm to obtain little bits of freedom for her over summers with my brothers because they needed her. Rought especially needed to have someone to love unequivocally. He needed a reason to live without Zaya.
But year after year, I had to return Presh to his compound, to his influence, and —
The cu-sith is still a few paces away from the beach house when the dire awry opens the front door. She eyes my beast with a curled lip. Her eyes glow a light lavender as if her power is activated, but whatever she’s doing doesn’t bother the cu-sith’s senses. Not that the grim reaper that is my other half is the most reliable judge of that sort of thing.
Bellamy turns her back on the cu-sith with an offish sniff, crossing back into the house and leaving the door open.
A door the cu-sith has no way to fit through.
