Burned (30 page)

A hundred
responses whipped through my mind, but in the end I just nodded.
"There is a reason that they weren't healed, Isaac. It's just
the other side of the reason that you were healed. If you ever change
your mind there is a place for you in my organization along with
whoever you want to bring along."

I could smell
James and Taggart standing just inside of my RV, but they saw Adri
approaching at the same time that I did, and apparently decided to
give us at least the illusion of privacy.

"I came to
see Taggart—I wanted to make sure that he's okay."

"He's
fine. The backlash from having his wounds healed put him down for a
while, but he's awake now and none the worse for wear. Please feel
free to go inside and check on him."

She turned to
go and then stopped. "That wasn't you I saw inside the RV with
Brindi, was it?"

"No more
than it was you that I saw making out with Tristan in your room. That
creature…that dark angel…played all of us for fools. It
knew that you were headed out, so it lured Tristan to your room and
waited for me to come by."

She stood there
in silence for several seconds, refusing to meet my gaze. "I
suppose that you think I overreacted."

Yes. If I was
going to be entirely honest, I did think that she'd behaved rashly.
That wasn't what she needed to hear though.

"You had
your reasons. To some extent, both of us played directly into that
thing's hands. If I hadn't disappeared for more than an hour then it
never would have had a chance to implement the second half of its
plan. Luckily we were able to right things in time to expose the
creature and then get here and defeat the Coun'hij's forces."

"That
sounds like a polite way of avoiding my question."

"I'm not
sure what you want out of me, Adri."

"I want an
apology. That would be a good starting point."

"An
apology for something that I didn't actually do?"

She'd been
unhappy before, but now she was furious. I could smell the anger
coming off of her in waves.

"An
apology for creating a situation in which such a transparently
obvious ploy could drive a wedge between us. I shouldn't have had any
reason to doubt your loyalty, Alec. I should have
known
that
you were faithful to me, but I didn't. I didn't know because you've
made that nearly impossible by keeping me in the dark. You've got
Brindi sleeping in the same room as you, you're driving off minutes
before we're supposed to come under attack, and then to top it all
off, it turns out you had another girl hidden inside your bedroom for
the last twenty-four hours. Anyone would have thought exactly what I
thought when I saw Brindi lying on top of you like that."

My beast was
starting to act up, and for once where Adri was concerned, I wasn't
completely inclined to rein it back in.

"You're
free to think whatever you want to think, Adri. I've explained the
fact that there are certain secrets that I have to keep, certain
obligations that I assumed when I stepped up to lead this cell of the
rebellion. Those obligations aren't going to go away regardless of
how you might feel about them.

"You had
every right to be hurt by what you saw—I was definitely hurt by
what I saw—but you didn't have the right to split our forces in
half while we were in the middle of hostile territory. You probably
didn't have the right to risk your people, and you
certainly
didn't have the right to risk the lives of my people."

"You left!
When you thought you saw me there with Tristan, you left. By doing
that you put everyone depending on you in more danger than they would
have been if you'd stayed."

We were
standing only inches away from each other now, practically yelling at
each other as we each refused to back down.

"I already
acknowledged my mistake there, Adri. The difference though is that I
didn't split our coalition wide open. I left our people without my
ability, but still protected by Heath, Grayson, Taggart, and Vicki.
No, I take that back. The real difference is that you've refused to
take one iota of responsibility for anything that's happened.

"You want
to throw stones? Fine, I'll throw stones. You've led Tristan on for
weeks. I could see it in the way he looked at you in Minnesota, and
based on how quick he was to jump into bed with the creature when he
thought it was you, nothing has changed there. I get that you've been
through a lot lately, but that doesn't excuse your errors in
judgment. You're not the only one hurting right now. Your parents are
dead, but at least they died being the people that you loved and
respected. My parents tried to sell my little sister off as some kind
of sex slave.

"You've
ignored all of the people who died in an effort to help you
out—simply by making this all about you at every single step.
At this point my biggest regret is the fact that I was willing to
throw my life away and reinforce your bad behavior. This is no more
my fault than it is yours, and the fact that you're unwilling to even
acknowledge that possibility tells me that you're not worthy of the
sacrifices that it's taken to get you here."

She looked like
I'd hit her. Her lips were parted, stuck between shock and
indignation, but I didn't wait around to see what she was going to
say. I turned, fully intending on leaving, until I felt her hand on
my arm.

"Wait,
Alec. I…I'm not going to pretend that I'm happy about what you
just said, but maybe there is something to it. I…I'm sorry for
coming out of the gate swinging. I'll try to do better—to be
better—but you have to understand how hard this is for me.
Knowing that Brindi is there with you every hour of every day is
killing me. I want to get past this and have things go back to the
way that they were, but I don't think that I can do that while she's
still part of your life."

Her words hung
in the air between us, and I knew that there wasn't any going back. I
stretched out my newfound sight, taking in the golden threads leading
away from me in all directions. There were more of them now than
there'd been a few hours ago, but they were still precious few in the
face of what I knew was coming for us.

I touched the
one that led inside the RV to Brindi with the faintest tendril of
thought and confirmed something that I'd started suspecting just
recently. The threads were designed for conducting energy, but the
flow wasn't as one-directional as it had seemed during the battle.
Energy was flowing inwards from some threads and outwards along
others.

Brindi was one
of the ones selflessly giving of her energy—painfully weak as
it was—sacrificing so that energy could be fed into someone
else. She didn't do it for that other person, she did it for me. It
was something below the level of conscious control for either of us,
a soft, calm power that I knew had to be related to James' sudden
manifestation of an ability where Mallory had always said none would
ever exist.

Brindi was part
of that—a critical part of it. Without her energy—and
without her willingness to serve as a reservoir—any number of
fights might have gone very differently—with a catastrophic
result.

"I would
like to stop by and see Tristan if he'll agree to meet with me,
Adri."

"Don't try
to turn this around on me! This is about Brindi, not Tristan."

I continued on
as though I hadn't heard her. "I owe him an apology. I'm not
okay with the way that he behaved, but I shouldn't have reacted the
way that I did. Please let him know that is the reason that I would
be stopping by. He's welcome to have whoever he would like there to
watch his back if he's concerned about his safety. It's too bad
really. In a lot of ways he and Brindi both got the raw end of this
deal. They both got to taste the thing they'd been hoping for and
then found out that it was nothing more than an illusion."

I started
walking away from her, and this time Adri didn't try to restrain me.

"That's
it? Brindi's more important to you than I am? You do realize that
you're proving exactly what I've suspected all along, right? Are you
really going to throw everything away?"

That made me
pause, and once again I traced each of the threads leading out from
my center. There was no thread leading to Vicki, no thread leading to
Jaclyn, no thread leading to Shawn, and most heartbreakingly, there
was no thread leading to Adri.

"I'm
sorry, Adri, but loyalty deserves to be rewarded. It's not like you
think it is, but I can't explain it beyond that. I'm not forcing
Brindi to leave—not after everything she's done for me."

I heard her
turn and run away, but I didn't try to stop her. I'd made my
decision. Taggart and James met me at the top of the stairs, and I
could see the conflict inside of Taggart's eyes. I reached up and
clasped him on the shoulder.

"Go and be
there for her. That is where you need to be—and not just for
her sake. I'm going to need allies, and you are uniquely placed to be
the voice of reason in Isaac's inner circle, to say the things that
he can't say."

"I won't
be a double agent."

I nodded. "I
wouldn't ask it of you. To be honest, after the last two days, I want
nothing less than to become the next king, but that is the only way
that our people have a chance of surviving in a world where things
like that dark angel are feeding on us. I need loyalty, Taggart. More
than bodies or abilities, hybrids or wolves, I need people who
believe in me, who believe in what I'm trying to do. You can help
with that."

He nodded
hesitantly, like his conscious mind wasn't quite prepared to accept
the implications of what I was saying, like he wasn't ready for the
knowledge his subconscious was already trying to tell him, and then
he left.

I turned to
James and bowed my head in a gesture that few dominants ever would
have granted one of their submissives.

"I'm sorry
about your mother, James. I never meant for her to die…I—"

He stopped me.
"She did what she felt like she had to do, Alec. I know what you
did—I felt it. I could get all indignant about the fact that
you transformed me in the middle of a battle, but the truth was that
we were all dead men. It was just a matter of time before Brandon was
going to kill us—we all knew it—but you changed that. You
gave me the power I needed to stand against him."

That surprised
me. James had never been the most intuitive of my friends. "How
much do you know?"

"Enough—enough
to realize just how dangerous it would be for the full nature of your
gift to become common knowledge—enough to know what you tried
to do for my mother after you healed Taggart and me. You have my
allegiance, Alec, but what are you going to do if the packs continue
to refuse to recognize you as their leader?"

I looked over
to Brindi, still sleeping the peaceful sleep of a child, and I
smiled. "I will find the support I need elsewhere."

—The Story
Continues
—

Curious how all of the pieces of the Reflection Universe fit
together? Check out
the
Reflections Reading Order Diagram
on
my blog.

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Burned
, and that you feel like both your time and money were well spent when it came to experiencing the next chapter in Alec and Adri's story. Please consider taking a moment to leave a review on
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Acknowledgments:

I continue to rely on an outstanding group of people to help me bring these books to market. RJ Locksley and Amy Jirsa-Smith, my editors, both did a phenomenal job working over the initial manuscript, and thanks to their tireless efforts, the draft that went to my advance readers was much cleaner than I could have possibly managed on my own. Thank you, RJ and Amy!

My advance readers continue to do yeoman work in catching items which either slip past my editors, or which I introduce while trying to fix something my editors flagged as being wrong. Additionally, they often keep me from accidentally letting characters do impossible things like enter the same building twice without ever exiting it. A big round of thanks to Heather, Mei, Janelle, Jenine, Mom, Dad, Matthew, Shalese, Lachele, Mark, Mimi, Kim, and Merissa !

My readers collectively deserve a heart-felt expression of thanks for continuing to trust me with their time and money in the hopes that I'll be able to deliver an experience that will leave them wanting still more Alec & Adri (thank you all!) but I also need to express a special, separate thanks to my Launch Team for being so willing to make extra efforts to spread the word about my books. You're too numerous to list out separately here, but you know who you are (and I do too)—so thank you one and all!

Lastly, as she always does, my wife Katie deserves special mention in a paragraph all by herself. In 2014 we released 7 novels, which was a herculean undertaking, but heading into 2015, we resolved to try and do even better than that. We both knew it was going to mean more time spent in front of the computer writing, but it's also meant a lot more work for Katie as she's continued to serve as my first reader and cover artist. Without Katie none of this could happen, and I'm more grateful than words can express for her unwavering support. Thank you Katie!