Shards of Hope (Psy-Changeling 14)

Her curls brushed his chin as he held her more tightly. “No matter what, you won’t become a psychopath, Zaira.” It was her greatest fear, though she didn’t call it that; she called it an inevitability she had to fight.

“You can let go with me. I won’t report you.”

“No. If I let the monster out of its cage, I might not be able to put her back in.”

“There is no monster in you, only a survivor.”

“She liked it, Aden. Beating her parents to death . . . the monster liked it.”

They’d had that conversation via a cell phone he’d managed to smuggle to her; it had been three years after she was brought into the squad’s training program. Aden had never disregarded her fears, well aware that some wounds were permanent. Zaira had been changed by her childhood and ignoring that fact would be to ignore a fundamental part of her.

However, he also knew that she had never, not once, harmed anyone who wasn’t a legitimate target. She had a conscience, understood right from wrong. And somehow, she’d retained the ability to feel empathy. It was why she’d broken that trainer’s arm when he would’ve broken a child’s, why she brought Alejandro ice cream, and why she’d sent Aden those plans on how to incapacitate Vasic so they could remove his gauntlet.

In her resilience, he saw a ferocious strength where she saw only a monster.

“If you want to see for certain what you become without strict Arrow discipline,” he said, “this is the perfect opportunity. No PsyNet, no other Psy, no one but me.” And she knew he’d take her secrets to the grave. “I won’t allow you to hurt anyone.” He didn’t think she would, but he had to speak to her fears. “We might never again have this chance.” He wanted to see her without shields, to strip his own self bare so she’d know once and for all who and what she was to him.

Not just a commander. Never just a soldier.

“All my life,” he said, taking the first step, “I’ve done what was best for the squad. I’ve never resented it, never wished I’d been born in another time or place.” This was his time and he was right where he was meant to be. “But now, I have a moment when I can simply be Aden and there is no one I’d rather be with in this moment than you.”

Keeping her eyes on the window and the rain that hit it in heavy slaps, Zaira said, “My need for you keeps growing, a violent fury of want that seeks to possess.” She turned toward him on the final words.

He cupped the side of her face, his handspan wide enough to cradle the entire side. “Will you do me harm?”

“I told you. If I set this thing inside me free, I’ll cage you.” Her breath mingled with his. “And I would murder anyone who tried to take you from me.”

He knew her desire was pathological, and yet he didn’t back off. Because if Zaira had a ravenous want for him, he had just as ravenous a need to be wanted. At that instant, he asked the question he’d avoided till now because the wrong answer would savage him. “Who is it you want? Aden, or the leader of the squad?”

Shifting so close that their bodies pressed along her entire length, she slid her hand into his hair, gripped it in a fist. “The squad means I have to share you. I don’t want to share you. You’re Aden and you’re mine.” Her eyes turned midnight in front of him, the whites disappearing. “Do you see it?” she whispered. “The want? It’ll devour you.”

“Let it try.” Their lips brushed when he spoke, brushed again as she closed her eyes and moved her head slightly.

For a single heartbeat, the fit was perfect.

Then, fingers tight in his hair, she lifted the lush fan of her eyelashes, her breasts rising and falling against him and her midnight eyes vibrant with the fire that had always burned in her. A fire that had warmed him through the years. Every time the weight on his shoulders became too heavy, his heart threatening to ice over from the constant and grueling darkness, he’d gone to her and in her endless fire, he’d found his strength again.

“You heard what I told you?” Zaira pulled at his hair. “We do this and I might not be able to put myself back in the box.”

“I never wanted you in a box.” He ran his thumb over her cheekbone. “I told you the squad needed your fire and it does, but I need it most of all.”

“If I take you,” she said, and it was a warning, “I’ll keep you. Always.”

No one had ever been so possessive of him. Just him. Just Aden. “Take me.”

She shuddered, her lips parting for an instant before she nipped at his lower lip hard enough to draw blood. Making a harsh, rough sound in her throat afterward, she pulled away and sat up with her legs over the edge of the bed, her breathing erratic. He lifted his hand, wiped the back of it over his mouth. It came away streaked with red.

The bite throbbed but when he sat up, it was to wrap his arm around Zaira’s waist and pull her toward him. Her nails dug into his bare forearm and when she whipped her head around to look at him, he saw the girl he’d seen long ago: the one who was beaten but never broken, the one who had lied to his face, the same girl who, three years ago, had walked into the path of bullets meant for him, then told him to deal with it when he tried to dress her down for putting herself at risk.

“I’m not afraid,” he said to her, holding her as tight as he could without hurting her still tender injury. “Not of any part of you.” Including the rage that was woven inextricably with her fire.

“You should be.” Twisting away and out of his hold, she jumped back on the bed to crouch a foot from him. The sound that came from her throat was a wordless warning. “I’m devolving.” A grimacing look, her jaw clenched tight. “I. Can’t. Devolve.” Her face was flushed, her breathing rocky. “I don’t want to beat your head in. I don’t want to destroy your face.”