Page 45 of Twisted Desire

He sucks his lower lip into his mouth and chews it for a moment. “I don’t really know. I haven’t allowed myself to consider what Aaron being alive means for any of us.”

Neither of us misses the way my heart surges.

“It’s not something you need to figure out today,” I tell him.

“No? It’s not like we have anything else to be concerned about,” he teases, knocking my knee with his, but I can tell he’s still a bit rattled.

“Right,” I say with a half-hearted eye roll. After downing the rest of my drink, I sigh heavily. “All right. Let’s call this meeting and move this battle into action, shall we?”

Allison spends the rest of the day with the woman from The Experiment. We hit the jackpot when it came to her, considering she had a list of every running facility and another list of the members of the organization.

With that information, Nikolai and I are able to cross-reference the list we got from Jackson and eliminate several facilities in our region that our teams successfully shut down, and the ones on Jax’s list that were dead ends.

We send groups of fae out to deal with the others across the globe. Though we’ve seen a lot of success, we’ve also experienced more loss than any of us could have prepared for. Closing the facilities has been incredibly difficult, and not everyone’s made it out alive—faeandhuman—despite the efforts we made to keep people safe.

Those not sent on specific assignments are directed to meet us in Vancouver in two days’ time to go over the final phase of the shutdown. The general consensus is that everyone is really fucking glad this shitshow is almost over. Most of us enjoy some excitement every now and again—I mean, hell, eternity can have its dull moments—but no one enjoys having their life in danger all the damn time.

Ahead of the meeting, during our flight to Vancouver, Nikolai asks if I want to run the show, but I decline. I gladly hand the reins over to him, confident in his ability to address the crowd. Nik has been a people person as long as I’ve known him. It’s that damn charm of his, I swear. As much as it drives me absolutely fucking bonkers, it has its uses. Case in point: this meeting. The final meeting about this fae-human war, thank god.

When the time comes, our group stands in front of a room full of fae. Allison was able to find and rent a big enough rec hall as close to the location of The Experiment’s headquarters as we can get without tipping anyone off to our arrival. It’s a plain room with old hardwood floors and stacks of chairs lining one wall. Nothing fancy by any means, but enough space to accommodate our group.

Kelsey and Seth rejoined us late last night with the other members of the group they were traveling with.

Fae have come from all over the world and congregated here in Vancouver to go over the final steps. Fae who have gone from light and dark to working together to protect the existence of our kind. I’m not about the mushy shit, but it’s pretty epic.

We—meaning Nik and I—made the decision that Aaron should sit out of this meeting. He promised he’s going to help us even though my compulsion wore off. Nikolai believes him, but his being here has the potential to raise questions and tension, which is the last thing we need right now.

Nikolai goes over the plan. We’re going to have thirty teams. Those in other locations, working with us to shut down the remaining facilities in sync with our attack on the main location. We can’t give the humans a chance to catch on to our plan, so we’re attacking all remaining locations in tandem. We’ll send the local teams into the building in waves, overwhelm the humans with the first handful of groups, and then shut them down with the rest. With as much planning as we’ve put into these attacks, we still have to hope that after our first wave of shutdowns, they haven’t started moving their equipment and material out of the facilities.

Once we’ve infiltrated The Experiment headquarters and incapacitated the people inside, we’ll work on adjusting their memories and preparing them for a new, fae-free life.

Nikolai’s voice brings me back into the moment. “Spend the rest of today with your families,” he encourages. “Once we go into this with full force, there’s no telling what will happen. We need to prepare ourselves for the worst.”

“But let’s hope for the best,” Allison comments. “We were able to peacefully put an end to the fae war. Who’s to say we can’t do the same with these humans? Can’t we show them we aren’t a danger to them?”

“Speak for yourself,” someone sneers from the crowd.

I scan the audience with sharp eyes. “That right there is precisely why The Experiment is hell-bent on destroying our species.”

The fae—myself included on a number of occasions—have proven to believe they have some sort of superiority over the humans. I don’t recall when it started to happen. Maybe it was right from the moment we started migrating to earth after the war destroyed our home. Perhaps I played into it too much—Aurora would surely agree based solely on the time we spent together when she did her placement at the Westbrook Hotel. It’s safe to say things have changed since then and they will continue to change. In taking Tristan’s place as leader, I’ve had to alter my attitude toward many things—humans being one of them—even if The Experiment has made doing that difficult.

“It’s almost over,” I say from my spot beside Nikolai. “You’re tired and scared and angry. I get it. I’m with you—we all are. But we need to refocus our energy on this mission if we want to pull it off. Take Nik’s advice and hang out with your loved ones. Hit up a feeding unit, and make sure you’re at your strongest. We’ll meet back here tomorrow and shut this thing down for good.”

Clapping echoes through the room, resounding with agreement among the crowd.

After that, Derek and Marni start organizing the room into the groups they’ll be in when we hit the headquarters, so I steal Nikolai away from everyone and lead him to a storage room down the hall, locking us inside.

Never doubt the allure of wartime sex. The looming threat of failure and death? It’s hot as hell.

12

The Experiment headquarters is well-hidden in what seems like the middle of nowhere, deep in the Vancouver countryside, surrounded mostly by mountains. These humans... predictable to the very end, it seems.

Everyone meets at the hall we held the meeting at yesterday, ready to shift to the location at the drop of a hat. The weight of that call is on my shoulders, and I’m feeling it with the tension between my shoulder blades and a sharp pain behind my eyes.

Son of a bitch. Today isnotthe day to get a migraine.

We call everyone to attention and start handing out weapons out of the back of several rental trucks. Luckily, this rec hall isn’t located near any major streets, because damn, this would look pretty shady to anyone driving by. Once everyone is suited up, we start the trip to the field away from the building the humans are occupying. We’ll shift far enough away that they won’t be able to detect us but close enough we can go the rest of the way on foot in our groups.

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