“Even gunfire would leave…” Wade began, but stopped.
He trailed off, his face tightening. He’d been too young for the last war. He hadn’t seen what Victor and I had. The pyres, the spelled flames, the way a practitioner’s remains could twitch and whisper even in death if not purified by fire. He’d never watched teams sweep battlefields, gathering every fragment, every drop, to burn until nothing was left but ash.
Victor’s silence said everything. There were protocols for variants now; cremate and scatter. All to keep the dead from becoming weapons. And Jude’s body wasn’t in a certified SED incinerator and returned to me in ash to cherish. It was in the hands of a demon who didn’t follow rules.
“I’m not certain the military having him would be any better,” Victor said, his voice low and tired. “Or that they would follow protocol if they thought they could weaponize what’s left.”
I was painfully aware of exactly how bad it could get. I’d seen the black sites, the cold rooms where ‘assets’ were stored and studied. Was it better that he’d been taken by a demon? The military would want to take him apart slowly, learning how to replicate him, how to control what he was and use him for war. The demon and the military weren’t all that different, and I hated the idea of either of them having him.
I took a few steps back from Victor, my boots crunching over the broken crystal. The room tilted, the shelves leaning, the shadows stretching. The air felt thin, starved of oxygen, or maybe it was just me, unraveling from the inside out. Grief, rage, and a grinding, helpless fear spun together into a dizzying haze.
Wade was watching me, his eyes steady. “We’ll find him.” His gaze darted to Victor. “Take care of the remains like they should be.” He swallowed hard. “Make sure he’s free.”
A wave of unease passed through me, spiking my heart rate and adding to the dizziness. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t be in that moment because something else was flooding into me; cold, sharp, and alien.
Fear, but not mine, Jude’s.
How?I grasped for the fading sense of our bond, threads pulled tight, and caught only the barest hint of him. The smell of books and burning firewood trickled through the bond. What the hell?
“Jude?” I breathed, hand on the wall to keep myself upright.
“Angel.” Victor’s voice cut through, but it sounded far away.
I turned toward the elevator, needing to get to Jude. The world swam at the edges of my vision, a watercolor blur of stone and shadow, but the goal was a fixed point in the haze. FindJude. Somehow we were still bound, and I could drag myself across the universe to find him.
Keanan and Sylas materialized from the shadows flanking the elevator entrance. They stood as twin pillars of quiet resistance, shoulder-to-shoulder, blocking the way out. Keanan’s expression was flat, unreadable stone. Sylas’s was etched with faint annoyance, as if I were a stubborn piece of furniture that needed relocating.
“Move,” I said, the word more growl than speech.
“We can show you back to your apartment,” Sylas offered, his tone artificially light. “Get you cleaned up.”
“You should rest,” Keanan added.
“Sleep will clear your head,” Sylas echoed.
“Out of my way.” The demand came out sharp and part snarl.
“Xavier’s orders,” Keanan stated, his voice devoid of inflection. “You don’t leave the building.”
“Back to the apartment,” Sylas repeated, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “Remain close to the kitten. Or you can stay here and cause more of a mess for Luca to fix later.”
Asshole. As if weaponizing my guilt over the mess would suddenly make me turn tail and run. And Ivan was well-protected in the confines of Xavier’s domain. He didn’t need me. He needed to know I’d done the right thing for his brother.
“I need to find Jude,” I said. The panic through our link faded, scent and touch vanishing as if it had been a dream.
“You need sleep,” Victor said from behind me.
“I agree,” Wade said. “I think we all need some rest.”
Sylas shifted his weight, his gaze flicking to the destruction behind me. “If you step outside his protection right now, you’ll have two hunting parties on you before you reach the street. The Fae Court considers your reactivated contract a breach. Major General Phelps has you flagged as AWOL and a priority retrieval. You walk out that door, you become the mission.Another monster for the world beyond to either eliminate or control.”
Which meant Xavier’s protection was another cage.
The restless shape that had been stirring under my skin since Jude’s sacrifice finally tore free. Not my leopard, that beast was a familiar part of me. This was something older and wilder, a creature of shadows and sharp edges that understood basic instincts. It wanted to follow my rage into the dark and tear the world apart to find our mate.
The lights flickered. Fancy sconces popped. One bulb exploded, then another, raining glass in a steady, shattering rhythm around us as though fueled by my growing unease. The shadows thickened, drinking the last of the light until the air itself grew dense and hungry at my command.
“Angel,” Victor called, both aloud and in my mind. His vampire compulsion had never worked on me, and his attempt to soothe only stoked the fury.
