Page 62 of Never Run from an Immortal

His Ascendant nodded. “She’s been good for you.” He laughed dryly. “The council would lose their mind if they knew your Odalik was a Witch. It’s too perfect. A human wife, they’d never look twice. But a Witch? You’re halfway to achieving your goal.”

Rae was meant to be a means to an end, but notthatend. Aidan rubbed at his chest again, wondering when and how he’d fucked this up so much. “I can’t get this damn feeling to shift.”

“I think they call it l—”

“I meant the bullet wound.”

“I know exactly what you meant.” Baelin’s amber eyes softened as they met his, and Aidan felt the small trickle of grief that fell from him, the emotion he was always so careful to keep locked tight.

Laramie had died during childbirth, the baby along with her, not long before he and Baelin had met. And though Baelin had only spoken about her a handful of times over the years, during days when they should have been sleeping, fuelled by visk and weed, he had never spoken of love, though it had poured from him with every word about his long dead Odalik. He looked at Aidan now with a look that gave no room for abnegation.

“You know as well as I do, my uncle beat all but the anger from me.” Aidan tried not to recall the worst of it and failed. Heshifted his thoughts back to Rae, to the way she had his entire household wrapped around her finger. They adored her—it was impossible not to, Shaw had said when Aidan had found him preparing a plate of potatoes for the Witch. “Rae barely tolerates me anyway; her hatred is so palpable I’m sure even you can feel it.”

“Hate is a lot like l—”

“Baelin.”

His Ascendant had the gall to grin at him. Aidan sighed. He and Rae had both spun so many lies. She was in her old studio, a sense of melancholy and nostalgia clinging to her, to everything she touched. Though Aidan knew she’d been lying to him, that she more than likely didn’t have a damn clue where his magic was, all he cared about was making sure she got back to the manor safely. With a certainty that had his scar burning, he knew Baelin was right.

“Quinn’s found something,” Baelin said, straightening. “You need to see this—”

Aidan didn’t hesitate. He stepped inside his Ascendant’s mind and oriented himself to see what Quinn saw, what the daemon was showing Baelin.

“A hybrid,” Aidan murmured. He couldn’t feel him, had been completely blind to his presence without Quinn’s eyes, but what he did feel was fear, sharp and strong. “Rae.” He pulled back from Baelin and Quinn, his focus solely on Rae. Someone was in her studio. Someone he couldn’t get a read on. Another test subject.

Rae?he called out to her, praying she wouldn’t shut him out.

I’m fine.She wasn’t. She wasn’t breathing. Aidan was on his feet, cursing the fucking daylight and every Vampire along with it.

“Just over an hour until nightfall,” Baelin said, tapping away at his computer.

I’m sending a car to the studio,Aidan told Rae, her relief palpable. He was on his feet, already out of the room on his way to the garage.

“You’re going out there?” Baelin asked behind him.

“Don’t try and tell me you wouldn’t,” Aidan said without turning back. “I need your eyes, Baelin.” He didn’t wait for his Ascendant’s response as he broke into a run.

Chapter thirty-one

Rae walked the city for hours. She checked in with a handful of her higher-ranking officers, the ones that recognised her as nothing more than a cadet. Everything was in place for Omnia to continue in her absence, including three newly appointed sergeants who would take the reins together. Their priority was no longer the Vampires but the hybrids. Whatever Torrin and Aera had created, Omnia’s attention had shifted to that.

What happened after the hybrids were dealt with was out of Rae’s hands now. Soon she’d be going home, and she hated to admit it, but she was going to miss the city. Somewhere along the way, Demesia had begun to feel like home.

A Fae family passed her, a mother with silver gossamer wings and her two children, a boy and a girl. The boy had horns, the girl, wings like her mother’s and horns like her brother’s, both sharing their mother’s golden-brown skin. It was unusual to see Wings in the city, but many were simply stuck there, just trying to make a life for themselves as much as the humans were.

The little boy stumbled, lost his footing, and fell, quiet sobs erupting from him as he pushed himself back up to his feet, but it was his sister who looped her arm under his, not their mother. It was his sister who checked his knee, who released a flurry of fluorescent butterflies conjured from the palm of her hand to distract him from the pain.

Rae’s heart twisted at the sight as she turned a corner in the opposite direction. She’d spent so long on the path Cillian had set her down that she’d lost sight of everything.What about the Witches’ magic?she’d asked him.Someone has to hold the key,he’d told her.Better it be you than one of them.And as the little boy’s sobs followed her, Cillian’s words felt too much like her mother’s. His actions too painfully similar.

We’re all the same, aren’t we?Aidan had quipped when they’d been locked up together after the attack on Rush, and she was ashamed to admit she’d believed it. Being raised that way wasn’t a justification; even Cillian’s teachings had long since stopped being an excuse to hide behind. Rae had lived in the city long enough to have opened her eyes. Frequenting places the worst of the Vampires enjoyed in order to rob them, but they were precisely that, the worst. Every member of Aidan’s household was nothing like the Vampires she’d spent countless nights stealing from.

Of the Providents… Aidan was the exception. What she’d seen of the other council members, none seemed to regard the lives of others as he did. Perhaps it was because of what he was,whohe was, and Rae tried to snuff out the emotions that accompanied that, the way she understood all too well what his life might have looked like.

She thought of the Fae children and wondered if he had any half-siblings somewhere, if he knew them. If everything he did was for them just as everything she did was for her brother.

And what about Baelin? Orion? The rest of the units? Even Shaw. They were good, kind Vampires. Rae had spent enough time in the manor to know it. Even Reed, who she’d been so afraid would win Nim’s heart and Rae would lose the only friend she had to a Fae.So fucking selfish.

With one hand pressed to the lock of her studio, she mumbled a spell to let herself in, the familiar smell hitting her, nostalgia already creeping into her heart. She was so fucking proud of this place. The metalsmithing could at least always be something she could call a success.

---