Page 66 of Never Run from an Immortal

“You made it a tag?” Aidan asked.

“One for Ru, one for Quinn.” She passed Aidan the joint before stroking her fingers through the rutok’s soft fur. He’d be fully grown soon, but that still put him smaller than Quinn’s entire head. “Jealous of the pets, Vale?”

Aidan said nothing, a frown drawing his eyebrows together as he glared at Ru and the little silver tag she’d made.

The silver and the tests—they had to be connected, somehow, Rae felt certain of it. “Do you still think they got hold of some Thaumas blood?”

The Vampire Lord nodded.

“But what would they want with the silver?” She was asking herself as much as him. “I can’t help but think we’re missing a vital piece here.”

He was silent beside her, leaning back against the kitchen counter, taking a slow drag of the joint. “Fae have no use for silver outside of trinkets.”

“So, Aera has been the driving force behind this. Humans. Bax. That bastard knew the lengths I’d been going to to buy more silver for the studio. Why is he doing this?”

“Knowledge is power, but brute force, riches, those are the oldest forms of currency. He’s amassing all three.”

Another reminder of how monumentally Rae had fucked all of this up.For Seylan. You’re doing this for Seylan.Part of her knew she should reconsider, knew that everything Cillian had taught her had been wrong, but she couldn’t quit now. Not when her brother needed her. Even if it meant losing everything she’d built in Demesia. Aidan’s eyes met hers and Rae swallowed. Everything she could have had, but she couldn’t entertain those kinds of thoughts.

She set Ru on the counter and watched him scurry away, presumably back to Quinn. A beat of silence passed, too many thoughts to keep track of spiralling into a headache at the base of her skull despite the weed. “Do you ever feel like everything is just slipping through your fingers?”

“All the time, Farren, all the time.”

Of course he would understand. And that was the trouble. He understood far too much. Saw far too much, even when she tried to hide it all from him. This isn’t real, she told herself again, as if it might snuff out the feelings she wasn’t willing to face. Rae reached into her pocket for the final piece of silver she’d work on in a while, took Aidan’s hand, and placed it in his palm.

“This is yours,” he said, turning the ring in his fingers. Of course he knew. Even though she’d modified it.

“I made it bigger. It should fit your thumb.” She watched as he slid it over the tip of his digit, then the knuckle, spinning it once with his finger the way she used to. Rae hadn’t just made it bigger, it was wider, flatter, the inside engraved with a dozen spells. “It’s a—”

“A gift,” he said, his voice rough and his eyes softening. “And a fine one. Thank you.” The warmth in those words. She couldn’t bear it from him. Not after all that she’d done. All that she’d taken. All that she was about to do. “Stay,” he said firmly, the word somewhere between a command and a plea. Withoutreaching for her, she felt him press against her mind, like phantom hands caressing her thoughts.

“Stay out of my head,” Rae told him, a half command, half plea to match the one he’d given her. She wasn’t afraid of him, but she was afraid of this. This connection between them, coward that she was.

His hand flattened above her heart like a brand, the gesture somehow both possessive and tender at the same time. He sucked in a breath, and Rae braced herself for whatever he was going to say, whatever he was going to ask, steeling herself against the weight of it. But the smallest frown pinched at his brow, and he said, “I don’t need to hear your thoughts. I can hear your heart beating. I can feel your frantic pulse. Right. Here.”

And Goddess curse her, but she leaned right into that touch. Curled one hand into the wet ends of his hair and studied his face. “I’m supposed to hate you,” she murmured.

His eyes held hers, searching. Waiting, as if she might flee like a startled doe at any moment. Rae had never feared him—had always felt an overwhelming sense of safety in his presence. “I know.” Only he didn’t know the truth of it, or he would never have let her into his home. Would never have agreed to any of this.

Rae didn’t let herself lean into him any further. Couldn’t. Though she wanted nothing more than to kiss him, to feel his body pressed against hers, his strength. “Don’t ask me again,” she whispered, before slipping free of his embrace and returning to her room.

Chapter thirty-three

Coarse rope dug into Aidan’s wrists as the transport jostled over a bump in the road.It has to look real, he’d reminded Baelin earlier as his Ascendant had fastened his bindings and slung a sack over his head.

His left knee pressed against Rae’s, and Orion sat opposite them. Both of them were bound and blinded just as he was. There had been arguments over who would go in and how, mostly between Baelin and Rae. The Witch had made her case that Baelin could either take Aidan and Orion out with tranquilisers or she could conceal their power with spells and they could simply feign being unconscious. Despite everything, he trusted Rae. Baelin hadn’t liked being left behind, but he knew when he took on the role of Ascendant what he was signing up for.

Aidan had turned through Cormac’s thoughts over and over, looking for any suggestion of a loophole in his plan with Weyland, any hint of betrayal. Weyland had provided a list, andthough Rae wasn’t on it, it would be easy enough to convince him she’d been captured alongside her husband and his security detail. That the Vampire Lord would have to watch as his Odalik became a test subject. The thought made Aidan want to rip apart his bindings and tear through whoever they found at the facility, but there were going to be more test subjects there, more hybrids like Daire, and they needed to be strategic.

Rae murmured beside him as she worked on her spell. The three of them in exchange for Cormac’s mate, Scarlett. Hardly a fair trade, but they needed to be taken in as prisoners for the rest of their plan to work. The raid relied heavily on having Vampires on the inside, and Aidan had never had any doubts that he’d be one of them.

His reservations rested with his council, the Vampires on the outside, waiting for his command to move in. If they chose tonight to usurp him, they were all fucked, but he could feel them all a few blocks away, vehicles spread out around them like a web. Up front, one of Cormac’s males drove, the turned Vampire beside him. The remaining units had spread out but remained close, and Aidan let his Provident abilities cycle over all of them, watching, checking, and searching for any gaps in their plan.

No hint of rebellion, of dispute, but he knew all too well how quickly plans could change.

“Pity you don’t have a spell to conceal our weapons,” Orion murmured, the comment aimed at Rae. Aidan hated that he agreed. That was precisely why they had to go in first. Why the others were bringing the weapons with them. They all knew what they were walking into and understood the risk.

By now, Aidan had learnt to recognise the feel of the two hybrids who had been tracking Rae, their strange aura like a signature that felt familiar to him after days of observing them closely with his Provident abilities. He’d felt their presence whenCormac’s men had guided him into the back of the transport a block or so away, monitoring. Most likely reporting back to their superiors. To Torrin. To Baxter.

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