A Touch of Crimson

CHAPTER 5

“Are you planning on using that?”

Lindsay fingered one of the throwing knives she carried in her messenger bag and made no apologies. When they’d deplaned at John Wayne Airport, she’d met Adrian’s guards and had realized they weren’t human. They also weren’t inhuman or evil, because she would have felt it if they were-just as the clerk at the grocery store had caught her eye like a neon sign. To be safe, she’d grabbed her arsenal sack the moment her suitcase appeared on the luggage carousel.

She shrugged, deliberately affecting a nonchalance that mirrored his. “It calms me to have it in hand.”

She’d been slaying malevolent nonhuman… beings since she was sixteen and had long since stopped losing sleep over it. What was eating at her now was Adrian. That heinous thing in the grocery store had known him-had deferred to him-had shown fear when Adrian threatened him. While she, batshit crazy as she was, found herself feeling safer around Adrian than she had at any time since she was five years old.

God… She knew how to look away, how to wait for prime opportunities. She knew where Sam worked; she could have gone back at a better time and taken him down in privacy. Instead, she had exposed herself as completely as if she’d ripped off her clothes.

She had done it because she couldn’t not do it. She’d been too young to save her mother, but in the years since, she had sworn she would never stand by and watch another innocent die. The look in Sam’s eyes as he backed up was one she knew: he was spoiling for trouble. No way in hell could she let him leave in that frame of mind. She’d never stop wondering who ended up bearing the brunt of his humiliation and frustration, and whether she could have prevented the consequences.

“It calms you to carry a weapon,” Adrian repeated, studying her from his seat beside her. His sleek black Maybach purred up the side of a hill, following a winding road that left the city behind.

“What are you?” Her heart was beating too fast, forcing her to acknowledge how wound up she was. With rigid focus, she made her brain stop spinning around what she didn’t understand.

She couldn’t slide back toward that dark precipice in her mind, that place where insanity whispered along her subconscious like a lover. Her childhood therapist considered her one of his greatest successes. He thought she was remarkably well adjusted for a woman who’d witnessed the brutal murder of her mother at the tender age of five. He didn’t know that when the foundation of her reality had been torn from her, she’d forged a new one. An existence where creatures with inexplicable powers worked in grocery stores and ripped open the throats of parents in front of their children. She’d become a warrior in that world of black and white, that world of humans and vicious inhumans.

Yet Adrian and his bullet catchers made a lie of what she’d come to accept as the truth. What was he? What was she? Where did she fit in a construct where beings who weren’t inhuman also weren’t evil?

Lindsay swallowed past the lump of uncertainty and confusion clogging her throat.

Adrian’s lips pursed so slightly the action was almost imperceptible. The hot, pulsing energy charging the air around him was totally at odds with his insolently apathetic demeanor. He sprawled elegantly in the bucket seat, sleekly graceful and inherently lethal. When Adrian had issued that softly voiced threat to Sam, she hadn’t blamed the whatever-the-fuck-he-was for looking like he was going to piss himself. While there hadn’t been even the tiniest fissure in Adrian’s composure, he had felt like a tornado to her, a violent and sweeping unstoppable force of destruction.

If death had a face, it was Adrian’s when he was pissed: a terror made more horrifying by its impossible beauty.

“You don’t know what I am,” he said, the unique resonance of his voice even more pronounced, “but you knew what the store clerk was?”

“The only time I like showing my hand first is when there’s a knife flying out of it.”

He moved so swiftly. One instant, he was arm’s distance away; the next, he’d immobilized her. Her hand holding the knife was pinned at the wrist to the leather seat, while the other was locked to the seatback in an iron grip. His blue eyes were aflame, literally glowing in the darkness.

Her heart raced in awe and mad fear. She had no idea what he was, but she knew he could break her far too easily. Power radiated from him like a heat wave, flushing her skin and stinging her eyes. “Let me go.”

Adrian’s gaze was hot with rage and sex. “You’ll find me to be amazingly lenient with you, Lindsay. I’ll concede and bend for you in ways I won’t for anyone else. But when it comes to your safety, there can be no games or evasion. You just took out a dragon who didn’t attack you first. Why?”

“A dragon?” Shock stuttered her breathing. “Are you kidding?”

“You didn’t even know what he was before you killed him?”

Realizing he was serious, Lindsay deflated into the seatback, all fight and resistance leaving her in a rush. “I knew he was evil. And not human.”

Just as she knew Adrian wasn’t, either. Not human but not vile. Capable of being terrifying, yet he didn’t incite the chilling and paralyzing fear that had afflicted her when her mother was killed. Lindsay searched for it, waited for it to rise and choke her with sick dread. But the anxiety never came. The tempest she sensed in him lacked violence, but even that-his effect on her inner radar-was unique. She read him as she would the weather, as if he was one with the wind that had spoken to her for as long as she could remember. There was a familiarity about him that she couldn’t explain or deny. And though he subdued her, he did so with an unbreakable but gentle grip, the look on his face filled with longing and torment… Everything about the way he dealt with her humanized him.

Whatever he was, she saw him as a man. Not a monster.

Adrian stared at her, his jaw taut. Above them, the panoramic glass roof afforded a backdrop of black sky and stars. The moment lengthened into two, then three, with neither of them capable of looking away. Finally, he whispered in a language she didn’t recognize, his voice throbbing with an emotion that elicited a quiver of warm surprise. His head bowed. His temple touched hers, nuzzling. His lips brushed against her ear, his hair drifting like thick silk against her brow. His scent-the earthy, wild fragrance of the air after a storm-enveloped her. Her lips parted on gasping breaths and she sought his mouth blindly, overcome by an inexplicable hunger for the taste of him.

He shoved back, reclaiming his seat. His head was turned away from her as he asked in too calm a tone, “How did you know?”

Lindsay sat unmoving, devastated by that moment of tenderness and yearning so fleeting she wondered if she’d imagined it. She struggled to pull herself together, swallowing hard to find her voice. “I can feel it. I know you’re not human, either.”

“Do you intend to kill me, too?”

His menacing purr set her teeth on edge. She straightened. “If I have to.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“More info.” She deliberately flipped her small blade up and down through her fingers, trying to regain her center of balance by engaging in a familiar activity. She wasn’t going to tell him about the wind and the way it spoke to her. For all she knew, it could be a major weakness he’d know how to exploit. “You’re… different. Not like the others.”

“What, exactly, constitutes an ‘other’?”

“Vampires.”

“Vampires,” he repeated.

“Yes. Sharp teeth, claws, bloodsuckers. Evil.”

“How long have you been killing vampires?”

“Ten years.”

A long stretch of silence. “Why?”

“Enough questions,” she shot back. “What are you?”

“I can hear your heart racing,” he taunted softly. “You’re smart to be wary. You don’t know what I am or what I can do. And you’ve lost the element of surprise. Now I know what you’re capable of.”

Lindsay smiled without humor, rising to the challenge. He was in a volatile mood, and it whipped against her senses like the lash of tropical rain. “You have no idea what I’m capable of. You haven’t seen anything yet.” Leaning toward him, she repeated, “What. Are. You?”

He turned his attention ahead. “When we get to the house, I’ll show you.”

Lindsay stared at him and played loosely with her knife. He’d gotten the drop on her moments earlier, taking her completely unawares, and even that wasn’t enough to put her on full alert. He disarmed her in every way, despite knowing how dangerous he was.

Whatever else she discovered about Adrian Mitchell, it was irrefutable that he beguiled. And that was more hazardous to her than any claws, fangs, or scales he might reveal. A damned sight scarier, too.

She focused on his magnificent profile. Even after receiving the entirety of his attention for the last few hours, she was still arrested by the strength of his jawline and the aristocratic line of his nose. And she loved the shape of his lips, which were so beautifully etched they were a work of art in their own right…

Mental images of that seductive mouth brushing across her skin, whispering heated, erotic words and curving in full smiles seized her heart in a fist. In her mind’s eye there was an entire repertoire of intimate, shadowy images that were so moving they were almost like memories. Arousal swept over her skin, tightening her nipples and spurring a slow, hot trickle between her legs.

Tearing her gaze away, she looked out the window and fought to regulate her erratic breathing. Fuck. What was wrong with her? She was a mess. A quivering, pissed off, turned on, jittery mess.

The distance between the sprawling hillside properties was widening the higher they climbed. Soon the infrequent streetlights disappeared, the evening sky swallowing them whole except for the narrow swathe of the headlights. She reminded herself that Adrian was a known personage and her father knew where she was, but those safeguards didn’t calm the part of her mind screaming, He’s not human.

The car slowed when they reached a wrought-iron gate bisecting the road, cutting off further public access. She surveyed their immediate surroundings, her gaze pausing on a rough-edged granite slab on the shoulder that was sandblasted with the words ANGELS’ POINT. A frisson of unease slid down Lindsay’s spine.

A burly guard stepped out of a gatehouse. He looked at Adrian’s driver-Elijah-and nodded, then retreated back inside to open the gate. The Maybach drove another half mile or so before the house came into view. As dark as the night was this high above the light pollution of the city, Lindsay had no trouble seeing the home. It was drenched in floodlights to the extent that the evening was lit like daylight. It would be impossible for anyone to approach the house from any side or from above without being seen.

The residence scaled the side of the cliff in three tiers, each with its own wide wraparound deck. Distressed wood siding, rock terraces, and exposed wooden beams made the house seem almost as if it was part of the hillside. She knew nothing about architecture, but Angels’ Point screamed affluence-as everything about Adrian did.

The car rolled to a stop, and her door was opened by yet another guard. Lindsay was about to step out when Adrian appeared before her with his hand extended. She couldn’t help but notice his speed, which he apparently felt he no longer needed to hide, but she made no comment. She appreciated him dropping the pretense of being human, but she wasn’t going to praise him for it.

Her feet crunched atop the gravel driveway. She was attempting to absorb the grandeur of the house when movement in the periphery of her vision turned her head. A huge wolf prowled by.

Gasping in surprise and instinctive trepidation, Lindsay flattened herself against the side of the car. Adrian caught her by the elbows, the shield of his body filling her with indefinable comfort and relief. The beast sniffed a tire, then lifted its majestic head and studied her with undeniable intelligence. Her startled senses kicked into overdrive, prepping her body for defending herself.

“You won’t need that,” Adrian murmured, making her realize the readiness with which she held her knife.

Elijah rounded the hood of the car. A low growl rumbled from his chest as he stared at the wolf. The beast stepped back, lowering its gaze.

More wolves appeared. An entire pack, or perhaps two. Lindsay didn’t know how many wolves made up a pack, but there were at least a dozen of the multicolored beasts padding around the driveway. Their size was imposing. Each one looked as if it ate an entire cow every day.

Lightning streaked across the sky, perfectly mimicking the electrical charge around Adrian.

Jesus. She exhaled in a rush.

The otherworldliness of both the place and the man beside her made her shiver. The wind caressed her, ruffling her hair but carrying neither a warning nor reassurance. She was on her own and feeling like she’d fallen down the rabbit hole-confused, fascinated, stoned.

Adrian gestured toward the house. “Come inside.”

She followed his lead. They entered through a double-door entrance, crossing over a slate foyer to reach a massive sunken living room. An enormous fireplace dominated one wall; Lindsay was fairly certain her Prius would easily fit inside it.

“Do you like it?” he asked, releasing her and watching her carefully, as if her opinion mattered.

The interior of Adrian’s home was a thoroughly masculine space, decorated in shades of brown and taupe, with splashes of a burnt red that reminded her of rust. Renewable green materials had been liberally used-carved woods, thick cotton linens, dried grasses. Directly opposite the front door was a wall of windows overlooking the smaller hills and valleys below. In the distance, city lights twinkled with multihued fire, but the metropolis seemed worlds away from this transcendent place. To call the residence amazing would be an understatement. It suited Adrian so well. For all his urbanity, she sensed an earthy connection to nature in him.

She kept her bag close to her side and faced him. “What’s not to like?”

“Good.” He gave a regal nod. “You’ll be staying here indefinitely.”

His imperiousness was stunning. “Excuse me?”

“I need to keep you where I know you’ll be safe.”

I need to keep you… As if he had the right. “Maybe I don’t want to be kept.”

“You should have considered that before you killed a dragon in a public place.”

“You’re the one who gave me away. Or your bodyguards did. If I hadn’t been with you, he never would have paid any attention to me. So if I’m a target, it’s your fault.”

“Regardless of who’s to blame,” he said calmly, “Elijah noticed you were being followed. There was a brief span of time while you were in the restroom when Sam’s whereabouts are unaccounted for. It’s possible he notified someone that he saw you with us. If he did, his disappearance will raise suspicions and we’ll be the first place to start looking for him.”

She frowned. “Why would a chick hanging out with you interest him or anyone else? You’re rich and hot as hell. I’m sure you’re seen with women all the time. Are you talking about him calling the paparazzi? Or more dragon dudes?”

Adrian gestured down the hallway with a graceful extension of his arm. “Let me show you to your room. You can freshen up; then we’ll talk.”

“You’ll talk,” Lindsay corrected. “I’ll listen.”

His hand came to rest at the small of her back and she felt the power thrumming through him-tremendous energy restrained by a cyclonic force of will that awed her.

He was something different in this place. The power she’d felt in him from the beginning was sharper, more refined. Or perhaps it was just more apparent. Perhaps he made it so deliberately. Either way, the agitation he’d exuded in the Maybach was tightly leashed now. Why would he betray that disquiet to her, a stranger, but restrain it in his own home, where he should feel the most comfortable?

She looked around and realized they weren’t alone. There were others with them: more muscular guys as well as some who were elegantly built like Adrian. A few women, too-all were stunning enough to rouse feelings of jealousy and possessiveness. All together, there were a dozen spectators hanging around the fringes of the room, sizing her up with examining and somewhat hostile glances.

She pushed her hand into her messenger bag and wrapped her fist around the hilt of a second blade. She was outnumbered by a huge margin and, as a human, definitely underpowered. Her pulse raced with foreboding.

“Lindsay-” Adrian’s hand encircled her other wrist and instantly her heartbeat slowed, calm radiating outward from the place where he touched her. “You don’t need those. This is the safest place on earth for you. No one will harm you here.”

“I would make it as difficult as possible,” she promised, speaking to the room at large. A possibly empty threat, considering she had no idea what the hell she was dealing with.

“Be careful. You’re mortal. Fragile.”

She shot him an arch glance. She could hold her own against any other “mortals,” even men triple her size. For Adrian to call her “fragile” reaffirmed her belief that, whatever he was, he was powerful in a way she hadn’t known existed. “We still haven’t established what you are.”

He exhaled, relenting. “You spoke of vampires. What other creatures do you know of?”

“Dragons. Thanks to you.”

He released her and stepped back. “If there were angels, would they be the good guys or the bad?”

Lindsay’s mind spun. Angels had a biblical connotation, and she’d turned her back on religion long ago. She’d had to. She got too pissed off thinking about anyone having the ability to prevent her mother’s death, yet doing nothing.

She forced her tense shoulders to relax. “Depends on whether or not they were actively killing the vampires and dragons.”

Sleek tendrils of smoke drifted up from behind him. The mist spread outward, taking on the shape and substance of wings-pure, pristinely white wings touched with crimson tips, as if he’d trailed the edges through freshly spilled blood.

Lindsay stumbled backward, barely catching herself with a hand against the wall. The purity of his true form threatened to blind her. Power emanated from him with a warm radiance that was tangible; she felt as if she was basking in the noonday sun.

Tears stung her eyes and her knees weakened. The hallway spun with a terrible sense of déjà vu, millisecond flashes of Adrian with wings. Different clothes… altered hair length… various backdrops…

For a moment, she feared she would pass out. And then it all coalesced into one thought: an angel.

Shit. She was so far removed from piety, the concept existed in a totally different universe. Even now-presented with his wings and glorious golden glow-what she felt was less about reverence and more about primitive, sinful lust. If anything, she’d grown more enamored with Adrian as his wings unfurled, because seeing him without his facade exposed him as openly as she’d exposed herself in the store.

She’d been peculiar all her life. Faster, stronger, capable of sensing minute changes in the wind that told her when something wrong was nearby. As a child, she’d often felt like a mutant, always having to be conscious of how quickly she moved. The last decade had been spent trying to be “normal” while hunting dangerous things to kill. She’d given up hope of having a serious romantic relationship. The need to hide an integral part of herself had left her utterly alone in the most fundamental of ways.

Now she faced someone who knew she was different. Someone who just might accept her being that way because he was different, too. She’d been unable to confide in anyone about the underworld she knew existed. But Adrian knew…

“You were going to let that dragon walk away!” she accused, shielding her sudden vulnerability behind anger. Just by knowing that she hunted, Adrian knew her-in a deeply intimate way that no one else did. He was suddenly precious to her for that reason, this ethereal being of impossible beauty.

“Your safety was my primary concern.”

“I can take care of myself. You should have taken care of him.”

“I only hunt vampires,” he said smoothly. “And as I said, he was a dragon.”

The front door opened and her gaze flew to it. Elijah walked in, carrying the groceries. He paused on the threshold, his handsome face impassive as he took in the tense scene before him. A lock of his thick brown hair slashed across his brow, framing eyes like emeralds. Although she hadn’t seen him smile even once, she didn’t get an unfriendly vibe from him. He just seemed watchful and sharply curious. Definitely smart. He was canny, she bet, and hard to catch unawares.

She felt Adrian come up beside her. The scent of his skin teased her with her next inhalation. He’s an angel. And he hunts vampires…

“I know you’re hungry,” he murmured. “Let’s get you settled, so you can come talk to me while I make dinner.”

The thought of a celestial winged being slaving over a hot stove for her was bizarre, yet there was an eerie sense of rightness in being with Adrian this way, as if the intimacy of him preparing a meal for her was recognizable.

God, she had to get a grip. She had to figure out the new rules and how to either deal with them or circumvent them. She couldn’t afford to be ignorant, and she certainly wouldn’t have anyone dictating where she would stay and when she could go. Somewhere out there, the vampires who’d killed her mother were certainly terrorizing someone else. They’d taken such pleasure from the pain and fear they had wrought; she couldn’t see them quitting until someone put them down. She wanted to be the one to do it, and she wasn’t going to stop hunting until she knew for sure they would never destroy another child’s innocence the way they had hers.

“Okay,” she agreed. “But, like I said, you’re the one doing the talking.”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know.” Elijah leaned his forearm against a top bunk in the lycan barracks and looked at the men and women gathered around him. “I don’t see how Adrian knows. She just showed up in the airport and he’s been all over her ever since. I’ve never seen him glance twice at a woman, but he can’t take his eyes off her.”

“Maybe she’s just his type,” Jonas said, showing the limits of his sixteen years with his naïveté.

“Seraphim don’t have a type. They don’t have emotions like we do. They don’t lust or hunger or crave.” At least that’s what Elijah had been taught as a pup, and what he’d observed with his own eyes. But tonight, during the ride home from the grocery store, he’d felt a raw energy radiating from Adrian that betrayed an emotional response to the threat Lindsay Gibson had faced in the dragon. And there was a sharp, intensely possessive edge to the way Adrian managed her. He acted as if she meant something to him, while she clearly had never met him before in her life.

“Still, she’s hot.” Jonas shrugged. “I’d do her.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Elijah snapped. “He’d shred you. He was ready to take down a demon, in public, just for looking at her wrong.”

“Which would’ve ticked off Raguel,” Micah pointed out, rubbing his hand over his jaw thoughtfully. “You know how pissy the archangels get over their territory, especially with the seraphim. Not to mention the possibility of irritating the demon’s liege. Adrian would have stirred up a lot of trouble for a woman he supposedly just met.”

“Why her? She’s human.” Esther’s tone was scathing, inciting the other females to nod.

“She slew a dragon like she was swatting a fly.” Elijah met the multitude of verdant gazes aimed at him. “She moved faster than I’ve ever seen a mortal move, but you’re right, Esther. She’s human. I can’t smell anything else in her.”

“But there has to be,” Micah guessed, catching on to what was left unsaid.

“Yes,” Elijah agreed. “I overheard her tell Adrian she can sense demons and vampires, and she’s been hunting them for ten years.”

A rumble of disbelief moved through the pack.

His mouth curved wryly. “Adrian was showing her his wings when I walked into the house. There’s a story there. It would be good to know what it is.”

“What should we do?” Jonas asked, looking to Elijah for the answer, as all the lycans in the room did.

The others turned to him too often. It was a burden Elijah didn’t want, one he couldn’t afford to bear. Everyone seemed to forget that he’d been transferred to Adrian’s pack for observation. He told himself they were simply used to him being bullheaded. He just needed to break them of the habit of letting him do things his way all the time. But even that implied a power he shouldn’t be capable of wielding.

“Keep your heads down,” he answered finally. “Keep your noses clean. Jason made the suggestion that Phineas’s death might have been lycan related. We don’t want to give them any excuse to keep thinking that way.”

Esther snorted. “Jason’s never trusted us”

“And he’s second-in-command now,” Elijah reminded. “His opinion matters.”

He looked down the length of the long, narrow room. It was a utilitarian space, filled with rows of olive green metal bunk beds and matching footlockers. Of all the packs, Adrian’s was the least comfortable. Most of the others were in the remote areas where the Sentinels kept the vampires contained, locations where a lycan could run and hunt and pretend to be free. But Adrian’s pack was considered the most prestigious. The Sentinel captain paid and fed his lycans well, but, more important, he hunted only the most egregious offenders, the most vicious, cunning, and dangerous vampires. And any lycan worth a shit hungered for worthy, challenging prey.

Elijah rolled his shoulders back. “My advice: listen carefully to everything said around you. Nothing is too unimportant to take note of. And, please, think twice before you do anything that attracts attention to you.”

Growling their assent, the group dispersed before they were discovered. Collusion and mutiny were serious charges none of them wanted to face.

Micah stayed behind, running a hand through the striking red hair that carried over to his wolf pelt. Before speaking, he glanced over each of his powerful shoulders to search for eavesdroppers. Then, he leaned in and whispered, “She could be our ticket to freedom.”

Elijah stiffened. “Don’t say another word.”

“Someone has to say it! We shouldn’t have to live like this-fighting against our very natures and repressing our instincts. I saw you carrying Adrian’s fucking groceries. You’re better than that. Better than him!”

“Stop.” Elijah turned away. There was nothing he could do. An uprising would lead only to the deaths of everyone he cared about. “He saved my life today.”

“He’d take it just as easily.”

“I know. But right now I’m indebted to him.”

“I can’t not try, and we can’t succeed without you. I know you see what an opportunity this woman is. If Adrian is attached to her, who knows what he might give up to see her returned to him safely.”

“He wouldn’t give up his control over lycans!” Elijah sank heavily onto a bottom bunk. “If you think our protection has made the Sentinels weak, you’re delusional. They’re seraphim trained to overpower other seraphim, the most powerful celestial beings aside from the Creator. Adrian lives and breathes his mission. The Sentinels train every day as if Armageddon is tomorrow. They would slaughter us all.”

“Better to die as lycans than to cower as dogs.”

Elijah knew Micah wasn’t the only lycan feeling reckless. Many believed the power struggle between the angels and vampires was no longer a lycan problem, and that a revolution was in order to secure the freedom they felt was their due. Elijah didn’t disagree, but he also didn’t have a mate or pups to fight for. He had only himself, and hunting vampires was what he lived for. Working for Adrian gave him the intel and resources to do what he did best.

“We’re not cowering,” he said quietly. “We’re responsible for containing former seraphim. That’s huge.”

“It’s servitude.”

“What would we do with ourselves if we didn’t have that? Where would we go? You gonna take a desk job? Have a commute? Have human toddlers over to your house for playdates with your pups?”

“Maybe. I’d be free. I could do anything I wanted.”

“We’d be hunted. Every day we’d be looking over our shoulders, waiting for Adrian to walk in the door and put us down. Running isn’t freedom.”

The redhead sat on the bed opposite him. “You’ve thought about this-a lot, it sounds like. Unfortunately, I have to pack-I’m heading back to Louisiana on a hunt-but we’ll talk more when I’m home again.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. Escape would be futile. Stop pushing.”

“I’m your Beta, El.” Micah grinned. “It’s my job.”

“I don’t need a Beta. I don’t have a pack.”

“Keep telling yourself that. Still won’t make it true. You control your beast, and somehow, that makes it strong enough to dominate the rest of us. I know you feel it, too, the way every lycan instinctively looks to you. We can’t help it. That makes you boss whether you like it or not. We can stir shit up on our own, but when it comes down to it, we need a leader, and you’re the only one who exerts the force necessary to become one.”

Elijah stood. His uniqueness might be their one saving grace. If they couldn’t band together cohesively without him, that might just save their lives. He knew what was said about him: his ability to rein his beast in at all times was an anomaly among lycans. Fear, anger, pain-they could all trigger an unwanted shift, but he never altered unless he chose to. As far as he was concerned, that might make him a mutant, but it didn’t make him an Alpha. It sure as hell didn’t make it acceptable to lead his kind to slaughter.

“You’re asking me to lead a charge into a bloodbath,” he said, “knowing it’s pointless. Not gonna happen. Ever.”

“It’s too late to avoid, El. Centuries too late.”