Kodi munches on a handful of popcorn. “Really not different than any other day, is it? Someone always wants to kill us for some reason or another, you just get to join the cool kids club now.”
Stone takes a sip of his drink and raises an eyebrow. “We could shift and burn down the neighboring towns for old times’ sake if you’d prefer. No need to live in fear of being killed if we kill them all first.”
“We can’t kill every shifter in the country. A good chunk of them haven’t done anything wrong, and we have no way of sorting out the ones harboring grudges if we’re setting entire cities on fire. Besides, then it just confirms all of the bullshit Malcolm was spewing about you to his lemmings.”
He shrugs, joining the others and taking the bucket of popcorn Kodi passes his way. “Then yeah, we’re waiting around for people to attack us and handling it then. No need to sort through who’s good or evil if it’s self-defense. Best of both worlds; morally acceptable murder.”
Raiden kicks his feet up on the seat in front of him. “No point rushing home when the castle isn’t secure anymore either, not until we repair the damages from Stone.” Before I can ask, he adds, “And even once it’s a fortress again, I refuse to lock you away in it. You’d be physically safe, yes, but miserable, and grow to resent us. So if we can’t hide you somewhere safe, and we can’t kill everyone that doesn’t like us, all that’s left is taking things one day at a time.” He takes a bite of popcorn, patting the empty seat beside him. “Unless you have a better plan?”
A frustrated growl builds in my chest, but it’s at the situation, not them. I feel so… sohelpless, and I hate it. We’d be safer in Khalida, but that’s a temporary solution, especially with the long life spans of shifters. And while I’ve never been big on ethics, killing tens of thousands of people because they don’t like the way the guys rule over them doesn’t sit right with me.
The entire thing is a confusing mess, and I don’t know how to untangle the convoluted web I’m trapped in.
Sighing, I flop down next to Raiden and steal a handful of popcorn. “Let’s raid the action movies next. Maybe one of them will inspire an idea.”
ChapterFifteen
RAIDEN
“I’d be lost without you, you know that?” Stroking my knuckles affectionately down Avery’s jaw, my heart clenches at the dark stains of dried blood staining her feathers. “Let’s get you cleaned up, pretty girl.”
I don’t even make it two steps across the roof before she launches off my wrist, diving through the open door into the building. Sighing, I open the drawstring athletic bag. A dozen cards are rubber banded together; IDs for all four of us, along with our spare debit and credit cards. Beneath those are the handgun and half of the darts I paid Evren a small fortune for. Loading one in the chamber, I slide the gun into my pocket alongside my cards, leaving everything else in the bag and sliding it onto my back.
Shutting the door behind me, I make my way back to the lobby. My heart leaps into my throat when I find Stone and Kodiak leaning against the ticket counter lost in conversation, Amara nowhere in sight.
“Why’d you leave her alone? Where is she?”
They both look up at the same time, understanding reflected back at me alongside all of the fears we try so hard to conceal from her. Losing Amara, no matter how temporary, wrecked us in a way that I don’t think we’ll ever fully recover from.
Stone gestures to the bathrooms not twenty feet away. “Giving Avery a bath in the sink.” When he catches me staring at the slight tremor in his hand, he clenches it into a fist and scowls. “She saw her still covered in blood and paled so quickly, I thought she was going to faint. I offered to do it, but she just clutched Avery to her chest and shut down, so we’re giving them some space to reconnect.”
Before I can ask my next question, Kodiak cuts me off, already knowing where my head’s at. “Yes, there’s another entrance to the bathroom, down that hallway.” He points to a spot still in their line of sight, and I breathe a little easier. It doesn’t matter that we cleared the building and have been rotating watch shifts for the past three days; if Amara’s out of sight, my imagination runs wild.
It’s ridiculous. Being out in public and exposed didn’t send my heart into overdrive like this despite it being a hundred times more dangerous. Hell, Stone was shot and drugged a few days ago, and that entire situation could have ended up catastrophically different. I have to see her, touch her, remind myself that she’s safe. We can’t protect her if she’s alone.
We got lucky once, but fortune will only carry us so far.
“Are you sure about this, Raiden?” Stone strums his fingers on the counter, glancing between me and the bathroom. “We can keep brainstorming, but if we do this… there’s no turning back.”
“You said it yourself, history is doomed to repeat itself until someone forces it to change. We inherited a broken system and have been scraping by with patch jobs for centuries. There are too many problems to fix, so the only choice left is to blow the system to hell and forge something new from the ashes.”
The sound of the hair dryer has me snapping my gaze in her direction, and by the time Amara emerges, a sense of rightness has settled over me, chasing away any lingering doubts. In her arms, Avery is fluffed out like a bespeckled snowball, a murderous look on her face. It speaks volumes of how taken she is with Amara that she let it happen without trying to claw her eyes out.
“Ready to go?”
“That’s a loaded question, isn’t it?” Amara sighs, smoothing Avery’s feathers back into place. “I can’t argue that you were right, these last few days were a much needed reprieve. But I’m looking forward to a change of clothes and some real food.”
“Any trouble getting everything strapped into place?” Kodi asks.
She passes Avery over to me and pulls her shirt off. “Yeah, actually. Breakaway is easy enough, but putting it back on is a pain in the ass.”
He swoops in, untwisting straps and adjusting the plates of discreet armor he created for her to wear under her shirt. It’s lightweight, just thick enough to protect her torso if we’re shot at. Won’t do much good if they land a head shot, or fire a tranquilizer at her leg to take her down, but it’s a precaution that’ll let us all relax a bit. Practical. And the breakaway design allows for easy shifting, and shedding the extra weight quickly if necessary.
“Seriously, Kodi?" Amara asks. "When did you add this?”
Stone snorts, reading the engraving over her breastplate. “‘If found, please return to Kodiak Garrison so he may remove your eyeballs from their sockets for reading this.’”
Kodi winks unrepentantly. “This morning. You have to admit, if they’re staring at your chest, they deserve it.”
