“Some of my blood remained in my body when I was drained. As my blood is dominant, my blood soon overshadowed the human.”
“Whatever. But you do not control me. Understand?”
For several minutes, Kyrin remained silent. His violet eyes—eyes the exact color Dallas’s had changed to—glowed. “Drop to your knees.”
Dallas was on his knees in the next instant. He scowled, fury sweeping through him anew. He tried to stand, but couldn’t force his body into action. His muscles were completely fossilized.
One of Kyrin’s dark brows rose. “Believe me?”
“Yes,” he gritted out, the admission abhorrent.
“Stand.”
Dallas stood, his fist already inching backward, flying forward. His knuckles slammed into Kyrin’s nose, breaking the cartilage on contact. Even as the alien’s head whipped to the side, blood spraying, Mia was shoving Dallas to the ground and pinning his upper body with her knees.
“Do not hurt him,” she growled. “The Arcadian is mine.”
Kyrin’s nose snapped back into place. Blood dried, evaporated, leaving no trace of the injury. “I only wanted to tell you that I know you are confused. If you have any questions about your transformation, I’m here to help you.”
Dallas gripped Mia’s thighs and pushed her off his shoulders and to his stomach, allowing his throat to breathe. “Get off me. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You will not hurt her.”
Dallas’s arms fell uselessly to his sides, and Mia grinned smugly. “You can’t hurt me,” she said.
“I hope both of you rot in hell,” Dallas told the couple.
“Those headaches you’re having,” Kyrin said. “They appear because you’re fighting your visions. Stop fighting them and the headaches will go away.”
Stop fighting them? Yeah right. He shook his head. “All they show is pain and death.”
Mia trudged off him completely, smile gone. Concern radiated from her as she held out a hand to help him up. “I had no idea you were having visions. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You haven’t exactly been around lately,” he grumbled, sitting up on his own.
Bright color spotted her cheeks. “You know why I left.”
Yeah. He knew. She had half brothers and half sisters out there and she was determined to find them. “Whatever. Doesn’t matter.”
Kyrin, too, held out a hand to help him up.
Once again, Dallas moved on his own. He stood, a little unsteady.
Kyrin sighed and dropped his arm. “You blocked a vision in there. When you did, it flowed into me. Want to know what it was?”
“No.” Because deep down, a part of him already knew. Having it confirmed by the otherworlder might change his mind, turn him into a coward, keeping him home and away from Jaxon. That he could not allow.
The alien told him anyway. “You’re about to start a domino effect. You leave here to save your friend, and your life will be changed forever. And not for the better.”
CHAPTER 9
Jaxon battled a rage unlike any he had ever experienced before. All because of one woman.
Le’Ace had made several critical errors tonight. The first: she’d left her phone on the nightstand while she showered, allowing him to call Dallas. The second: allowing him to remove one inner wire and reroute the others to more easily track her. The third: disabling the motorbike and thinking he would not be able to fix it.
The fourth and most grievous mistake: she’d kissed him and left him for another man.
Jaxon might have stepped into her bedroom with every intension of softening her, using her, and ultimately tricking her into revealing information, but she had stepped out of the bathroom naked, skin glistening with moisture, and he had softened. Emotionally, that is. He’d hardened physically. Sexual hunger for her and no other had been his only concern.
And when she’d so rawly asked him to pretend it was her first kiss, looking as vulnerable as a teenager and as needy as someone dying of starvation, the Schön case had ceased to exist for him.
Either she was a stellar actress, which, as Marie, she’d proven to be inside the Delensean cell, or she had been a victim of violence at one point. Jaxon suspected the latter. He’d interviewed enough victims to recognize the signs: the hesitance, the haunted gleam in the eyes, the utter shock at finally reaching orgasm.
To survive, I do what I have to, she’d told him. That bothered him, too. Why did she feel she was in danger? What vile things did she think she had to do to survive? What did she think would happen to her if she didn’t do these things? Why did she need to get close to the Schön when females were clearly in danger from them? Why did she place herself so willingly in jeopardy?
The answers eluded him.
As he leaned against the cane he’d brought along for the ride, his gaze slid over her. Her chest rose and fell erratically, as if she couldn’t quite catch her breath. Her legs trembled, as if her slight weight were nearly too much to balance. Her skin was pale, all color washed away.
Her ni**les were not hard. So. Leaning into that f**king alien scum hadn’t aroused her. Jaxon’s death grip on the cane finally loosened. Until that f**king alien scrum reached up and touched her arm.
A surge of jealousy. A lance of possessiveness. He experienced both and was pissed at himself, at Le’Ace. He stopped in his tracks, knowing he’d murder the bastard if he kept going. Only when she brushed the man’s hand aside did Jaxon relax. He’d never tasted anyone so sweet. Never touched anyone more perfectly suited for his hands, his body. Right now, she was his. He would not share, not even for a case.
Calm again, Jaxon lumbered forward, forcing his expression to remain neutral even as his ankle and wrist screamed in pain. He spotted three men who had to be Le’Ace’s accomplices. Two were playing pool and one was flirting with the bartender. Their eyes were too sharp, their attention too focused on what was happening around them, and not in front of them, for them to be anything else.
Le’Ace kicked into motion and met him halfway. They stood in the center of the bar, the only two people left in existence. Her emerald green eyes flashed with panic. And relief?
“What are you doing here?” she whispered fiercely.
He glared down at her, trying to squelch his own sense of relief. “You’re not the only one who’s good at their job.”
“Well, great going. You’ve placed yourself in danger.”
“So have you.”