Page 37 of Forbidden Bonds
Rhett is on me instantly, yanking me up from the ground. I wrap my arms and legs around him, clinging.
“Jesus, baby, what are you doing down here?” he mutters, holding me tight. Before he’d left in a rush, he put my thumbprint on the elevator control. Then he told me I could follow what was happening on the monitor, and he turned on the sound on the feed before he went. I wasn’t supposed to come here, just stay there or go to my nest if I got stressed. Truthfully,I never intended to leave. But I’d listened to enough of the conversation to anticipate where this was going.
Cohen is on Chimera. Too close, too much of a threat, one I want erased from my life forever.
Rhett could try to hide me and keep me safe. Yet, as Ethan just said, this is too big for either of us. The government would eventually storm this building. Tear through everything and everyone remotely connected with Ethan to find me.
And so would Cohen.
“I have to pick a side,” I say quietly, arms around his neck. “And whatever anyone may presume to think about me, it will never be the Uncorrupted.”
I feel the tremor in his hands as he holds me tighter. He couldn’t leave this building without suffocating. How could he protect me from governments and armies? My instincts, sharpened by ten years of trawling through people’s minds, tell me there is no running from this.
Yet the subtext is apparent. If this were to go south, the government would kill me before they allowed the Uncorrupted to take me. And if I were honest, I’d rather that happen than the alternative, where I became their prisoner again. I wouldn’t survive that.
“We can’t escape this, Rhett. We can’t run.” I carefully disengage my arms, but he still holds me close. “Put me down, please. I want to talk.”
His chest rumbles with a rattly purr, his instincts conflicting with my command. But he does as I ask, carefully lowering me, although he keeps one arm locked around my waist in a possessive shackle. Eyes blazing, his palm cups my face.
I lean into his touch shamelessly, wanting the reassurance of connection. And I trust him in the way I’ve never trusted before.
When I turn to Ethan, I find a familiar haunted look in his eyes, his posture rigid.
Lucian’s gaze is stern but not hostile. Perhaps a note of resignation, too, as though he’s already calculated the outcome and found this one inevitable. The men in black are deltas, I belatedly realize. They, too, wait.
“I haven’t read anyone’s mind yet. I’ve done too much of that in my life, and every time I do it costs me. As long as you keep your thoughts calm, I won’t. But if they become volatile, then they can push through whether I want them to or not.”
Rhett rumbles his disapproval.
Ethan’s jaw tightens. “The government wants Cohen alive. They want him broken open, and Larissa” —his gaze cuts to me— “inside his head.”
Rhett shoves me behind him, a wall of fury. “The fuck she’s going anywhere near him.”
“It’s okay,” I whisper.
Rhett turns slowly to face me, his green eyes burning.
“I know omegas are supposed to be pure and forgiving. But I’m not, not anymore.” My voice cracks. “He broke me. Now I want to break him. I want him to suffer. To rot in captivity for years. I want bleakness to leech every moment of joy from his life. Misery. Endless misery. And I don’t feel bad about it. He hurt so many people through me. He has to be stopped.” My eyes search his, trying to get him to see. “We barely know each other, Rhett. But you’re already everything that matters. Even so, this fight is mine.”
Silence.
Ethan’s expression shutters. Lucian offers a faint, humorless smile.
Rhett’s eyes glisten, and I can see he’s torn apart.
But the decision is already made.
“Ours,” he corrects.
Yes, I like the sound of that.
Chapter Fifteen
Rhett
“Who is running this?” I ask, turning to Ethan.
“Not me, well above my pay grade,” he replies. “Governor Brach is aware, but Woodrow Brock has operational control.”
