Hairless, with skin like pale leather stretched too tight over elongated skulls. Their eyes were too large, too dark, reflecting the candlelight like polished obsidian. They moved with an unsettling grace, their limbs just slightly too long for their bodies. The only thing my mind could conjure upon seeing them was that they resembled hairless cats.
I screamed.
The door behind me exploded inward with a shower of splintered wood.
Rickon.
Chapter 6
Rickon
Something was off with Chase. I'd never liked the guy—that much was a given—but tonight the wrongness of him set every instinct I had on high alert. His scent was all wrong. Normally, he drowned himself in cologne, enough to make my nose twitch with irritation, but tonight it was worse. He'd practically bathed in the stuff. And his movements—jerky, twitchy, like a man running on nerves and adrenaline. It set my teeth on edge, especially with Ellie's safety hanging in the balance. Agent Rivers, on the other hand, seemed as bored as ever, leaning against the wall with that same vacant expression he always wore. He didn't impress me on a good day, and tonight was no exception.
We took up positions outside the door, flanking it on either side. Chase positioned himself to the left, Rivers to the right, and I stood slightly back, where I could keep an eye on both of them and still monitor the hallway. The door clicked shut behind Ellie, and I felt my jaw tighten involuntarily. I hated that she had to meet with Hewes alone. Every fiber of my being screamed against it, my protective instincts railing at the thought of her alone in a room with that bastard.
But she was brave. It was one of the things I admired most about her.
In the weeks since I became her guard, I'd come to admire Ellie a lot. She was a good leader. Strong, capable, and empathetic in a way that seemed almost impossible for someone in her position. She genuinely wanted what was best for her people and fought for them with a determination that reminded me of the Prime. Both females carried the weight of their responsibilities with a grace that few could manage.
But on a personal level, Ellie was something else entirely. She was kind and caring in ways that had nothing to do with politics. I'd watched her speak to the White House janitors with the same respect and genuine interest she showed visiting dignitaries. She remembered names, asked about families, and noticed when someone seemed off. It wasn't an act. It was just who she was.
Rivers shifted beside me, checking his watch with an exaggerated sigh. "Wonder how long this dinner's gonna take," he muttered, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. "Then again, maybe they'll skip dinner and head straight to dessert, if you know what I mean."
The crude insinuation hit me like a physical blow. My hands curled into tight fists at my sides, knuckles going white as my claws extended to bite into my palms. The urge to punch him was almost overwhelming, a violent impulse that made my muscles tense and coil like springs desperate to release. I had to force myself to breathe slowly, deliberately pulling air through my nostrils and exhaling through clenched teeth, fighting to keep control. The idea of her with another male—with Hewes—made something dark and possessive rear up inside me. My vision narrowed to a red-tinged tunnel where I didn't much care who I needed to kill or how messily I did it.
"Shut your mouth, Rivers," I growled, my voice dropping to a low, dangerous register that rumbled from deep in my chest.
He held up his hands in mock surrender, the infuriating smirk still plastered across his face, his eyes glinting with amusement at having gotten under my skin. "Hey, just saying what everyone's thinking. She's a single woman. He's a powerful guy. These things happen."
Chase let out a short, sharp laugh, the sound oddly hollow as he turned away from us, his shoulders moving in what should have been casual amusement but somehow wasn't.
Something made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The primal warning system that had kept my kind alive for decades suddenly screamed danger. It didn't take me long to realize why. When Chase turned back around, he was holding his gun with the muzzle pointing directly at me, steady and unwavering.
Time fractured into shards, each moment stretching impossibly long. I watched Chase's index finger curl inward, the tendons in his hand flexing as he applied pressure to the trigger. The muzzle erupted in a brilliant orange-white flash. Then came the pain. A thunderous, skull-splitting explosion that detonated through my head like a supernova going off inside my brain.
I'm certain Chase believed he'd delivered a kill shot. What he couldn't know—what his human eyes couldn't perceive through the disguise I wore—was that the round had collided with the dense bone-like ridge under my hairline, invisible beneath the illusion of humanity I projected.
Even so, the impact sent shockwaves reverberating through my skull, rattling my brain. Brilliant white stars exploded across my field of vision, overlaying the world in a disorienting display. My ears filled with a high-pitched whine, a ringing that drowned out all other sounds. I staggered backward, my legs suddenly uncertain beneath me, my thoughts fragmenting and scattering like leaves in the wind. I commanded my body to move, to react, to defend, but thesignals from my brain traveled through syrup, my limbs heavy and unresponsive.
The sharp crack of the second shot cut through the ringing in my ears.
Rivers hit the ground in a graceless heap, limbs splaying at awkward angles. A perfectly circular hole appeared in the center of his forehead, dark and neat, with a thin trickle of blood seeping from the wound. His eyes stared at nothing, already glazed with the unmistakable emptiness of death.
Fury detonated inside my chest, a white-hot inferno that burned away the fog of disorientation in an instant. I launched myself forward, my body moving with the supernatural speed that was my birthright, faster than human eyes could track, faster than human reflexes could counter.
Chase's expression transformed in a fraction of a second. His cold confidence shattered as his eyes went wide with sudden, terrible understanding. But recognition came far too late to save him.
My hand shot out and closed around his throat, claws digging into the soft flesh of his neck. With one savage, wrenching motion, I tore outward, ripping through muscle, cartilage, and windpipe. Warm blood sprayed across my face and chest, coating my skin.
His body went into violent convulsions, jerking and spasming as his hands clawed uselessly at the wound. As the light faded from his eyes, as his life force drained away in pulsing gouts, I discovered the cuddwisg device clipped to his belt and switched it off, so his disguise flickered and died with him. The illusion peeled away like paper, revealing what lay hidden beneath. His human features melted and reformed, the handsome face dissolving to expose mottled gray-green skin that looked diseased. His eyes sank deeper into his skull, becoming hollow pits, and his lips pulled back to reveal rows ofneedle-sharp, yellowed, serrated teeth. A Trogvyk. His true form collapsed at my feet in a boneless heap, blood pooling beneath him, darker than human blood, almost black, with an oily sheen that caught the light.
A scream pierced the air.
Ellie!
I didn't think. I just moved, slamming my shoulder into the door with the full force of my strength behind it. The reinforced wood buckled inward with a deafening crash, the locking mechanism exploding in a shower of sparks and twisted fragments that clattered across the floor.
The scene inside made my blood run cold, freezing the fury in my veins and replacing it with something sharper, more primal.
