Page 64 of Griffin Undone
“Now that just wasn’t nice.” I lifted a brow. “How’s your ribs?”
“We can’t, Cale,” Sun said, ignoring my jibe. He sent me a searing look. “He has something we want.”
I glared right back. “Kat.”
Sun considered for a moment, then nodded. “I think we could work out a deal. What we have for what you have. Kat for the info.”
I laughed. “I don’t think so.”
Sun eyed my grip on my knife. “There are four of us, with reinforcements on the way. Wanna try those odds?”
True. I knew I was fucked, at least for tonight. If Maddox would risk going after anyone, it was probably Baer, but if they were in the Archai lair? Forget it.
I tucked my blade away and shrugged. “Keep your info. Kat is off the table.” I stepped toward the alley’s dead end. Time to go.
Sun blocked my way. “Kat is not a bone you can bury and just hope we forget,” he snapped. “She’s an Archai female, with rights, and one of those rights is freedom. She deserves more. She deserves help and compassion. You used to know what that was, Arik.”
“Between you and Maddox, compassion was beaten out of me a long time ago.”
“And yet you didn’t kill anyone tonight,” Sun pointed out. “Why is that?”
I kept my shrug and my glance around casual. “Just lucky, I guess.”
Sun stared, those rainbow irises seeming to dig deep into my soul. “Did she even make it, Arik? Can we trust your word if you say she did?” Sun blinked those knowing eyes. “Is she healthy, happy…safe?”
A hot flash of anger licked across my body. “From me? Is that your polite way of asking if I raped her?”
“Did you? I can smell her on you, you know.”
I let my animal loose, let my body expand as I jumped at Sun—and froze when a blade appeared directly in front of my nose. “Give me a reason, griffin,” James growled. In his eyes I saw a white flash of ancient power as his animal stared back, meeting me strength for strength.
I locked eyes with Sun once more, and saw then just how much I’d revealed. A captor didn’t care about his victim—they’d seen that tonight with Maddox. A captor didn’t get pissy when someone implied you’d hurt your victim. Possessive, yeah, but not like this, not like the possessive shit I was struggling with. Any emotion toward Kat except ownership, control was a weakness I couldn’t afford, and I’d just revealed that emotion to the enemy.
I kept my head up, kept staring, refusing to acknowledge my mistake. Moments later the sound of a van pulling up to the mouth of the alley rumbled toward us. Pounding footsteps poured out of the vehicle and into the alley. I clamped down on my frustration and eased to the side, away from James, away from the approaching warriors.
“You can’t hide her forever,” Sun said, watching me circle around him toward the dead end.
“I don’t need her forever, just for a little while. You can have whatever’s left.”
Sun stood rigid, his face closed. “You can’t use Kat to get your revenge. She’s a female, not a weapon.”
“She’s an Archai, and she’ll do what I tell her to. She has no other choice.”
“Because you give her none,” Sun snarled. “We might not have stood with you when you needed us, but we will stand with you now, for Kat if for nothing else. We need her, Arik. We need the females like her. She’s the future of our race, and you’re risking her on some goddamn grudge.”
I stared the prince down. “Then come get her—if you can.” I turned swiftly, my wings unfurling as I prepared for flight.
“Arik! Arik!” Sun called after me. “Damn it—”
Without turning back, without answering, I launched straight up into the dark night sky. The last thing I saw, just as I topped the building, was the gleam of electric-green eyes on the roof, watching us all.
ChapterTwenty-Seven
Sun
“We need interrogation rooms,” Basile said when I stepped into the hall.
I couldn’t muster more than a sigh. We’d never had use for them here in our Nashville lair, but my second was right, we needed a way to question our prisoners with others observing, a way to leave them alone without leaving them unsupervised. We needed a lot of things, and right now the weight of all of them was a two-ton boulder on my shoulders.
