Page 152 of Scarlet Wars
The words came out casual, but I saw it all over her. The tension in her jaw. The way she couldn’t quite meet my eyes for more than a second.
She wasn’t just wondering. She was terrified.
Terrified everything she’d done in the past had already set something irreversible in motion.
Terrified the future we saw was written in ink.
Terrified her choices didn’t matter.
Or worse, that theydid.
She exhaled hard, shoulders rising and falling. Then, in a voice tight with suspicion, she said, “Also…doesn’t this all strike you as really strange? I mean, who the hell bubbles an entire country—and why—then abducts two magi and stashes them in New York, like bait? Just to luremethere?”
“You think it’s connected? The Chief’s threat and the abduction?”
She shrugged, staring at the dark horizon. “No idea. But if it is, it’ll all tie back to Alek somehow.”
“Have you heard from Stephen yet?” she asked suddenly, her tone urgent. “Anything at all?”
I shook my head once, frustrated. Which made her exhale, before she turned her attention back on the trees. My mind was already running through all the possible scenarios, until Emma tugged on my sleeve, hard enough to pull me out of my head.
When I turned, her eyes were bright and burning with that stubborn fire I’d come to know so well. “I don’t know what the United Chiefs think they know,” she said, each word clipped, “but there isnowayJames is Alek’s father. Whatever choice led to that future, it’s not one I stand behind anymore. Nor will I ever again.”
The words were spoken with such fierceness, such conviction, they lodged somewhere deep beneath my ribs.
I reached out before I could stop myself, slid a hand to the back of her neck and leaned in until our foreheads touched. “I know,” I said quietly. “And I’m not worried.”
“Me neither,” she whispered, then brushed a quick, burning kiss against my lips.
I groaned, before I caught her wrists and pushed her back, not hard, but enough. “You need to keep your distance, baby,” I said, the warning thick in my words, “or this mission’s about to derail real fast.”
She laughed, soft and unbothered, taking one slow step away. “Is this where the famous Colt control starts to crack?”
She was joking, but she had no idea how close to the truth she’d come. I didn’t even try to smile. “From the first day we met,” I said, every word thick with the kind of truth that keeps a man awake at night, “you’ve obliterated everything I thought I knew about control. Trust me, you are without question the greatest test it has ever endured.”
Her smile deepened at that, untouched by the restraint I was barely holding on to. She reached out and patted my arm. “Good,” she said. “Someone needed to remind that ego of yours you’re still remotely human.”
I huffed out a laugh as we fell back into step side by side.
Silence settled between us again, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Emma was thinking, piecing things together the way she always did when the world stopped making sense. And I knew better than to interrupt when her mind was at work.
We walked for a long time, the forest thick with shadows and cold breath. By the time we were close to our destination, the first light of morning had started to break through the trees in pale shafts, catching the frost on fallen leaves and the quiet fog of her exhale.
Then…
“Caden.”
I turned to her, my pulse already picking up.
She looked up at me, eyes hard.
“Whatever we walk into… Whoever’s behind this… If the person who created the bubble turns out to be the same one who gave the kill order for my parents…”
Her jaw flexed once. “They’re mine to deal with.”
I smiled, not because it was funny, but because I remembered what it felt like to be consumed by vengeance, how it could burn through every thought, every decision, until nothing else remained.
“I swore it to you before, and I’ll swear it again,” I said softly, eyes locked on hers. “You’ll have your retribution, Emma. And I’ll stand beside you. Never against you.”
