Unchained Beauty (The Deadly Beauties Live On 5)

“Listen to me; you can’t leave me in here,” I tell him. “You changed the future in more ways than you realize—”

“I only care about one,” he whispers, lips still teasing mine.

He isn’t even listening, even as I cling to him and he just lets me, while the tears start falling from my eyes. “I know, and I wouldn’t do that to you. I swear. I gave up on the forest when Kimber couldn’t figure out a way for me to survive the internal nuking. I won’t die in front of you this time. Just please, please trust me to try to save you,” I go on, my tears falling harder.

His eyes are so soft, so different from the usual rage festering there. And for a brief moment, I just know he’s going to say yes.

“I can’t,” he says simply, causing my heart to sink.

He starts to push back, and I shove at his chest, angrily batting away my tears. “Even with the prison, you still won’t be strong enough to kill her—”

“I will be strong enough, Ella. I’ve ensured that,” he tells me, causing more of my angry tears to drip from my eyes as I glare at him, a heavy weight pressing down on my chest.

“I love you too, damn it. You don’t get to just die without even listening to me! You don’t get to do all this and then leave me—”

His lips are on mine again, hungrily kissing me as he pulls me to his body. It ends as abruptly as it started.

“I loved you harder in this life than all the others, and it was when I worked the hardest not to,” he adds, clearing his throat as I grab at the front of his shirt.

But it’s too late, because he dematerializes from my grip, despite the fact I’m hanging on, and I can’t dematerialize behind him.

“No. No. No,” I say, panicking as I slam my shoulder into the bar, rattling it hard and giving me hope.

Tears start streaking down my face as I slam into it again.

Power crackles somewhere in the distance, I can feel it vibrate in my chest. It’s already started.

“No!” I shout, slamming into the bars again then blasting them twice.

The shots are sucked in like the bars absorb them.

Just as the panic claws toward the surface, and I ready myself to shoot a direct stream of power that might really make phase one of tonight’s plan incredibly difficult to do, and make all that time I spent memorizing the camp soldier’s heartbeats pointless, Zee and Chaz appear.

I almost cry with relief, but force myself to be stoic.

Chaz sees the cage and starts searching the tables for a key. Zee yanks on the bars, as I work hard to keep my composure, remembering the plan. Our plan. “Fucking hurry!” Zee snaps. “We need to be up there!”

“Kya sent you?” I ask, feeling more crackles of power from above.

“She said part of her plan was thinking of any way Slade would remove you from the fight,” Chaz says before grabbing the keys.

“I’m not going to need tissues if Slade dies, but if I have to trust someone to literally save the world, it’s going to be you,” Zee tells me.

As soon as the cage door opens, I grimace. “I’m just going to be the assist tonight. Leah’s saving the world.”

“What?” he snaps at my back, grabbing my arm and turning me as his eyes try to flicker black.

“She’s been the most obvious solution since the day she became a new variable, but we didn’t know what war we were really fighting. We missed it in this life, because Slade changed every detail about her when she became a target of his rage in the absence of his memories, and she got dangerously too close to me. She’s been the answer all along. We just didn’t know what we were looking for. Dice is the one who pointed it out. Now I have to go help her kill her father so she can save the world.”

“Ella!” he snaps, but I dematerialize.

He’s right behind me, and I slash through a beast as he plows toward me in full steam. I’m not even sure what it is I slice through next, or after that. My vision palpates but doesn’t falter.

“How the fuck is Leah the solution?” Zee snaps as I spin, cutting through something else.

“Why is this fight so frenzied?” I snap. “It’s more controlled in the other visions.”

“Ella!”