Page 12 of Shattered Jewel

The initiate isn’t amused. Clearly, he didn’t partake in the Selection, or if he did, he was one of the … colder ones.

He sneers, “All of you.”

“Understood,” I reply, my voice dripping with the usual frigid calm.

Snapping the door shut, I glance back at Wilder and Kaspian, whose expressions have all but morphed into masks of indifference.

But they’re like me, and my blood boils underneath.

Closing my eyes as I take one last swig of my drink, an image of Elara pressed between me and the wall flashes across my mind; her body writhing under my touch, her sweet lips parting in gasps as I explored every inch of her. The thought sends a jolt into my cock.

Elara may be furious at me right now, but I’d love to fuck her while she’s angry.

She’d be ferocious, clawing at my skin, biting, kicking, then tilting her head back and screaming in pleasure as I gave it all back to her tenfold.

I am abruptly brought back by Wilder’s voice.

“What’s the plan, Cav?” he asks with an intrigued smirk, clearly reading the lust-filled thoughts crossing over my features.

I send him a look that sends initiates screaming in the other direction. He merely cocks a brow.

“We tell them nothing,” I answer.

Axe doesn’t give any indication whether he agrees or disagrees with my decision. Wilder shrugs, and Kaspian frowns.

The floorboards creak under my weight as I head back to where Wilder and Kaspian are lounging and carelessly toss the crystal decanter in Kaspian’s direction.

He catches it in midair without glancing toward me, or it.

Instead of telling them to take one last swig before we leave like I was going to, I begrudgingly ask, “What’s on your mind, Kasp?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “We can use this as leverage.”

I frown at him, aware that Wilder’s attention perks up at the scent of a good deal. “Leverage?”

Kaspian’s eyes glint, as if he’s already several steps ahead of us all.

“We use Maverick’s involvement with the Heart as a bargaining chip,” he explains. “We tell the Sovereigns we know more than they do, but we want something in return.”

Axe scoffs in his corner, but doesn’t deny that Kaspian has a point.

“Then we might as well tell them that Heart is broken. We can give them Elara’s necklace, our one piece of leverage, so they can promptly kill us for destroying their sacred artifact,” I counter.

Kaspian smirks and pours himself another drink into his empty glass on the side table. He’d never sully himself by drinking directly out of the decanter.

“They need us,” he says matter-of-factly.

“They need us until they don’t,” I say as Wilder plucks the decanter from him and tips it to his mouth. “They seek every opportunity to punish us.”

“We’ve gotten further into the hunt for the Heart than any other members. Ever,” Kaspian adds.

Reluctantly, I motion for him to continue. I’m conscious of the Sovereigns waiting for us.

“We’ve outsmarted even the Vultures,” Kaspian says. “We have a piece of the Heart. If the Sovereigns kill us, we can go no further, and that wouldn’t bring them any closer to this ruby, now would it? Telling them about Maverick and the Heart, since clearly they weren’t aware of his possession when they had him killed—as well as some of what I’ve found, perhaps the encrypted files in Maverick’s flash drive that the Sovereigns can’t access immediately, could buy us more time to present the Heart to them once it’s whole.”

“They could still torture it out of us.”

Axe’s voice, lower than hell itself, draws all of our attention.

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