Sudden chimes and a mechanical voice demanded a passcode. Both Audrey and Kat snapped toward the door as it slid open. Voices spilled into the room first—male, irritated. Somebody laughed—Nikos, by the sound of it.
Then the room changed.
It wasn’t simply quiet—everything froze. Nikos stopped laughing. Kat stiffened.
This person, whoever they were, seemed to instinctively command everyone’s attention and halt the room’s energy. And Audrey felt it before she understood it—a presence.
A shadow appeared over the threshold.
Barefoot.
Cigarette between his lips.
Then he lifted his head.
Recognition punched the air from Audrey’s lungs.
Oh.
Fuck.
She couldn’t breathe or look away. The worst part was sensing he might feel the same shock. For a split second, Ryker froze too, his discerning gaze fixing on her.
Of course, it was him. Number One.
It took her several seconds to process. Her mind refused to connect this half-dressed, visibly strung-out man with the versions of him she already knew. The figure from Mihail’s memories. The predator fromSarai. The image that had towered over the courtyard like a king.
Her glass shook. She downed the liquor for something to do, coughed at the burn, and stared. He looked exactly as he had the night she’d watched him tear into that woman at the club—and utterly different.
She’d seen him before, but this was the first time he felt brutally real. Inside this disorganized apartment, he wasn’t a projection, a story, or a psychic ghost sliding into her head. He was a man in the room, breathing the same air. Every earlier version of him was incomplete compared to the force that stood here now.
Still, shock and surprise churned inside her.
Disheveled and strung-out, this wasn’t the man from the hologram—the king. This was a weapon someone forgot to put back in its case.
Audrey knew the feeling.
Half-dressed in boxer briefs and a long-sleeved shirt that couldn’t mask the fury bleeding from him, he appeared dragged from the claws of vice. Though haggard, he cut a vicious figure. His eyes—blown wide, pitch-black—were an abyss. Intelligence sparked behind them, ancient and razor-sharp.
Audrey had the disturbing thought that if their lives had been different, she might have become something very much like him.
And a feeling in her, something violent and familiar, recognized it. She forced the thought down. He could hear it.
“Ryker.” Kat’s silk-sheathed fury broke the taut silence. “You can’t ignore this anymore.”
Audrey didn’t need to read her to know Kat was barely holding herself together. Rage shimmered off her like fumes.
The entire building orbited this man.
She’d pictured this meeting a hundred ways: Ryker in the cold, calm of his hologram. Ryker in Taryn’s broken memories. Ryker, at the center of her family’s destruction. But not this man—naked, drugged, coming apart at the seams, volatile in a way that was entirely unpredictable.
Could I kill him like this?Her hands heated as she held herself back.
He lit his cigarette with a snap of conjured flame. He exhaled, and smoke surrounded him like a dragon. “You interrupted me for this?” He glanced at Audrey. “I thought she was supposed to stay locked up until Mihail came back?—”
Kat broke him off without flinching, like one of the few still permitted to interrupt. “That was never the plan. Now that we know where Mihail’s held, we need a decision—tonight. From you.”
Ryker’s expression morphed into disdain. “I already told you, I don’t give two fucks about this Simas girl,” he said, gesturing quickly with the cigarette as if the decision was already his to make. He looked at her for the briefest second—measured and assessing, like he’d already decided she was trouble. “Put her with the telepaths. I’m not dealing with her. And in case any of you need reminding, I’m not the one you should be taking this to.”
