Shifting Fate (6 page)

He pulled the cover back from his sandwich.
“Not anymore. Things got a little crazy after Morgan was born.
There were so many of us waiting for the day, watching for signs of
the prophecy …”

He trailed off, realizing
that
this
was the
prophecy, that I was a prophet.

“
It’s okay,” I said. “You
can’t even imagine how prepared my mother made me.” I knew prepared
wasn’t the right word, exactly, but I didn’t need to explain what
we’d gone through. It was certainly no surprise to find how central
the prophecy was to all of their lives, because that had been
practically all mine consisted of for eighteen years.

“
It started small, I guess,”
he said. “Once the initial shock of a male heir in the dragon’s
line calmed, there wasn’t much else to do but wait. We all had our
place, and we were trained for the day Morgan would lead. But
waiting was hard for some of them, especially the
elders.”

He sat his sandwich down, glancing at my own
lying unopened before me, and seemed to understand.

“
There were some skirmishes,
a few flare ups here and there, but for the most part we had things
handled,” Logan said. “It reached a fevered pitch when Morgan got
older and they knew he would soon lead.” His eyes met mine. “Things
took a turn when their mother got sick. Aern and I must have been
about fifteen at the time, Morgan close to twenty. When she died,
their father changed. He became strict, enforcing rules on Morgan
that he’d never lived by before, challenging the elders, calling
the entire prophecy into question. There was a man, Tarian, who
became convinced their father was trying to keep Morgan from
ascending.”

He hesitated, taking a measured breath, and a
tingle ran up my arms.

“
They fought, and Tarian was
killed. What we didn’t know, was that he had amassed a following.
The battle that resulted took their father’s life.”

The tragedies of my own family were not far
from such, and when I spoke, my voice was barely above a whisper.
“So, Morgan’s father was killed so that he could sooner take the
seat of power.”

Logan’s answering tone was level. “By the
very people who wished to see him there.” His fist tightened almost
imperceptibly where it rested on his leg. “And it wasn’t just his
father. Most of the elders among their leadership were taken as
well. Everything shifted. The younger of us were thrust into the
positions left vacant, forced to choose a side between a split
family.”

“
And you?” I
asked.

“
And I chose
neither.”

His words lingered in the silence between us
for a long while as I picked at the clear plastic covering my
lunch. He’d spoken of living alone, of choosing neither, but he was
standing guard over me in the Division household for the new leader
of Council. “You were going to tell me,” I said eventually, “about
the men.”

The hesitation was there again, and I got the
feeling Logan wasn’t a sharer, but this wasn’t exactly a normal
situation. And I was the prophet.

“
My father was to protect
the One.” His eyes fell for an instant to the archive ceiling, to
one of the smoked glass domes that hid surveillance cameras. “He
was killed with the others, and it fell to me, to those men, to
take his place.”

His words came back to
me.
Had it been Aern …

He straightened. “We don’t work for Council’s
best interest anymore. We work for the good of our kind.”

What he didn’t say rolled through me. He was
watching me, his team posted outside my room and in those black
SUVs because I was their last hope. Everyone’s last hope.

“
Brianna,” he said after a
long pause. I looked up, caught suddenly by the change in his
expression. “Eat.”

It wasn’t an order, but I obeyed nonetheless.
Absently, I considered the story he’d told, comparing it with the
details my mother had given me, lining our histories out on
parallel timelines. Trying to find the connection. Trying to
understand our link.

I hadn’t seen anything of our people within
the Council archives. My mother hadn’t explained our past, how our
lines had lived in the old world, or if there were any others left,
aside from Emily and me. The only reference to us at all was that
of the prophecy, and it didn’t even imply we were not one of
them.

But I knew. I knew because I could see
Emily’s makeup, could see she was built differently than Aern. Not
physically, but her connections, and her apparent lack of those
powers that the Seven Lines all held.

When I went back to work, I focused instead
on the newer works, the records kept since Morgan’s birth. Logan
pulled documents for me, covering the desk with books and
certificates, ledgers and registers. There were photographs, too,
here and there among the files. I found one of Morgan at maybe four
or five, a hollow, lost look in his eyes as he was posed in front
of the Council banners. And another, older Morgan as he seemed to
accept his place among the elders. My fingers slid over the faces
of strangers, the prints dulled with age. Suddenly, I found
something familiar in a candid shot of two scrawny young boys. I
paused, drawing the picture closer to find Aern, maybe ten years
old, arm over the shoulder of another boy his age, standing
carefree on the manicured lawn of a large, open and unguarded
estate.

I looked up, comparing the picture to the man
who stood across from me, and couldn’t help but smile, given the
spiky blond tufts of hair sticking up in all directions in the
photo. Logan narrowed his eyes on me, daring me to laugh. That only
made it worse.

My grin widened. “I’d never thought of you as
a boy before.”

His brows shifted. It wasn’t just an odd
thing to say, it was the way I’d said it. I ducked my head back to
the books on the table. He didn’t question it, but I could see him
as I read, his body unmoving as he watched me from that same
position across the table.

I resumed working, the records of Morgan’s
building empire dragging me in despite my need to keep moving
through the archives. He’d amassed quite a collection of
businesses, but that wasn’t unusual. What was weird, however, was
the section of run-down warehouses and crumbling industrial plants.
I tried to remember what Emily had said, if she’d told me where the
warehouse Aern had been held was, but I couldn’t bring it to
mind.

“
What about your visions?”
Logan asked, moving to sit in the chair across from me.

I glanced up distractedly. “What?”

“
The visions,” he explained.
“You said flashes. Do you see everything?” I felt my brows draw
together, and he gestured to the room around us. “I mean like this,
did you know we’d be here? Did you see me coming?”

His tone was completely casual, innocent, as
if he were simply curious. I’d opened my mouth to answer no to the
first question when the second one registered in my brain. Did I
see him coming? A flush tore up my neck, coloring my cheeks before
I could curb it. My mouth hung open in a kind of dazed guilt that
he’d caught me so completely off guard.

He nodded slowly, and I could see the
knowledge lining up in his mind. My comment about him being a boy
sparking the idea as he stood, watching, waiting for it to make
sense. My reaction when I’d first seen him, my utter inability to
even speak.

This was not going to go well.

“
So,” he said with a
measured air, “what, exactly, did you see … when I wasn’t a
boy?”

“
Nothing,” I answered, way
too quick, way too emphatic.

“
Brianna, if something is
going to happen—”

“
What? No!” The words stuck
in my throat as I tried to explain he wasn’t in danger. “God, no,
Logan. It’s nothing like that. Just … It doesn’t matter. It’s
nothing.”
Three nothings. Very convincing,
Brianna.

I was too flustered to come
up with a good lie, and Logan wasn’t letting it go. It was obvious
my response wasn’t a
nothing
, but I couldn’t tell him the
truth. What was I supposed to say, that fate had chosen him for me,
that he was my
one
?
The idea mortified me even more and I was suddenly too hot as the
flush seemed to take over my entire body.

Logan noticed as he stared me down, the
concern slowly shifting into understanding. I knew my face went
impossibly redder as awareness slipped over his features, but I sat
frozen as his eyes stayed locked with mine. It was apparently a
full two minutes before the idea became utterly pleasing to him. A
smile started at the corner of his mouth, crossing slowly over his
lips, as if to say, ’ah, so that’s how it is.’

Grin still plastered to his face, he sat up,
puffing his chest with unconcealed, all-male pride, and laced his
fingers behind his head to lean slowly back into his chair.

“
Oh, please,” I
hissed.

He shrugged, the movement bringing my
attention to the way his outstretched arms flexed for just an
instant before I caught myself. When my gaze met his again, his
eyes were crinkled in satisfied humor.

I glared at him. He wagged his eyebrows.

The gesture seemed to imply far more that it
probably did, but given my absolute mortification, I took the act
to mean it was all me. My idea. My fantasy. In an effort to defend
myself, I huffed, “It was only a kiss.”

I regretted the words before they were even
out of my mouth.

He leaned forward, suddenly, impossibly more
interested than before.

I dropped my head to the table, covering my
face with my hands just before my brow met wood with a dull thud. I
had no idea if he heard me mutter, “Oh God,” into my palms.

Chapter Seven

Outings

Logan had the decency to leave me alone after
that. However, I couldn’t help but notice the contented smile that
crept onto his lips every time I glanced in his direction. I tried
not to let it distract me, but the research wasn’t getting me
anywhere. When evening rolled around, I sighed heavily and closed
the cover on the last book in front of me.

“
This isn’t working,” I
said. “There’s nothing here, it’s all too general and not
helpful.”

Logan nodded, glancing at his watch before
grabbing the backpack to go. I stretched as I slid into my sweater
and followed him out the door. A crew was working on the hallway,
so we took a narrow corridor toward the garage. Logan stopped at
the end of the corridor to enter his passcode and I came up beside
him, rubbing a hand over the stiff muscles in my neck. He glanced
absently at the ceiling, where loose wiring hung from what was
probably a camera before the work crews had taken it down, and his
hand stilled on the handle of the door.

His eyes met mine, and my arm froze as I
abruptly realized how close we were. He hadn’t spoken since my
humiliating revelation, but the silence had been different then.
Now, it was fully charged, and he was inches away from me.

“
Brianna,” he
whispered.

I couldn’t help that my gaze fell to his
mouth when he spoke, but when he returned the gesture my throat
went suddenly dry.

He moved closer, slowly, infinitesimally, and
his eyes came back to mine. I waited, unable to move, until he
finally said in a low voice, “Is it now?”

There was no question as to
the “it” he was referring to, and a kind of thrilling terror spiked
through me. The rational part of my brain was lost, but I knew it
was somewhere, screaming,
This is no time
to kiss a stranger
. After a moment, I
managed a squeaky, “No.” However, it was quiet, because my chest
had clenched too tight to gather more than a whisper’s worth of
breath.

Logan smiled, but it wasn’t the same smile
he’d worn earlier. I didn’t have the chance to fully classify it,
though, because he pressed the final button and the keypad beeped
as it allowed the door to open. I followed him through the next
hall, heart pounding and hand pressed to my stomach, but when we
reached the car, Logan opened the door for me as if nothing had
happened. As if this situation was entirely normal.

As if I hadn’t just told him I’d had visions
of us making out. I smacked a hand over my face, but quickly
dropped it to my lap as the driver’s door opened. Logan slid in,
checking my seatbelt was in place before starting the engine with
the press of a button beside the steering wheel of what must have
been an eighty thousand dollar car.

“
Logan,” I asked, wanting to
change the subject, but nearly losing my train of thought when he
glanced over at me, “are these your cars?”

He smirked. “Security pays good, Brianna, but
not that good.” I pursed my lips and he answered more fully. “On
this particular assignment, I have unlimited access to both Council
and Division resources.”

“
So …”

“
Pretty much anything I
want.”

I considered that on the drive back to the
Southmont house, though I couldn’t see what benefit it would be to
my dilemma. I needed something intangible. I needed a miracle.

Emily was waiting on us this time, casually
flipping through the last pages of the book she’d brought me during
my recovery. Caught, she snapped the cover shut and stuffed it
quickly behind a cushion. I grinned, not needing to announce to
Logan that my sister had some kind of perverse penchant for reading
only the end of a novel. She didn’t acknowledge my knowing smile,
instead standing to give Logan a small wave. It struck me then that
I had the perfect comparison for the prophecy. It was like reading
the end of a book, knowing what would happen but having to wait to
see how the chapters played out in between.