by Jade Kerrion
Danyael raked his left hand through his hair. He ground his teeth to hold back the instinctive refusal. He didn’t need the responsibility; he didn’t want someone else’s life dependent on his judgment, on him not screwing up. He did not need any more of Galahad’s hate.
Xin’s cool gaze shuttled between Galahad and Danyael. She nodded, a ghost of a smile flickering on her lips. “Very well.”
Danyael’s gaze flashed to Xin. His heart sank. In her knowing smile, he glimpsed a premonition of his hard-won normal life once again crashing down around him.
~*~
From behind the one-way viewing window, Danyael assessed Galahad’s condition as the man slowly sat up on the operating table, a hand pressed against the thick bandage over the left side of his chest. His dark eyes were downcast, but they glistened with hurt, with betrayal. An electrode now nestled against Galahad’s heart, the timer counting down the minutes of his life. It’s worse than cancer. Why do people do this to each other?
Alex’s voice spoke from behind Danyael. “Come, Danyael. Let’s get your biometric data programmed to reset the bio-tracker.”
Danyael shook his head. “This is wrong.”
“As you’ve said before. Your point is noted.”
“You don’t get it.” Danyael spun around to stare Alex in the eye. “Galahad hated me before, but right now, there aren’t any words to describe what he feels for me. You took a bad situation and made it worse, far worse.”
“You can change what he feels for you, can’t you?”
“Only by absorbing it.” Danyael managed a bitter chuckle. “And I’m not that crazy anymore. That kind of hate would screw me up too badly to think straight.”
“Why does he hate you?”
Danyael shrugged. “Zara. Miriya. Take your pick.”
“He hates you because they cared for you?”
“He hates me because they chose me over him—imperfection over perfection. He doesn’t understand.” Danyael’s sigh was scarcely more than a release of his breath. “I don’t either.”
“Danyael.” Alex laid a heavy hand on Danyael’s shoulder.
Danyael flinched.
Alex shook his head. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t want any part of this, but you are the only one I trust to make the right decisions.”
“The right decisions?” Danyael shifted his weight on his crutch. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You’re an alpha empath. You see things more clearly than anyone else. Thoughts can deceive. The emotions can’t.”
“What kind of decision do you expect me to make?”
“It doesn’t matter whether Galahad is innocent.” Alex took a step back from Danyael. He folded his arms across his chest and stared at Galahad through the one-way window. “The real question is whether Galahad is fit to live.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fit to live.
What was that supposed to mean?
Alex’s matter-of-fact demand pounded through Danyael’s mind, a pulsating undertone that punctuated the steady flare of hate and fury emanating from Galahad. Ordinarily, Danyael would have blocked off Galahad’s emotions—it was one thing to know that he was hated, and another thing entirely to have to endure its endless assault—but under the circumstances, Danyael did not dare reduce his watchfulness.
At Danyael’s insistence, he, Zara, and Galahad made a short detour before heading to the airport. While Zara and Galahad waited in the car, Danyael placed a single white rosebud in front of a memorial plaque at the Rock Creek Cemetery. He traced the gold-embossed lettering on the granite plaque, his touch reverent. When he spoke, his voice was pitched in the lowered tones one uses to speak to the dead. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it last Sunday. Life…life got crazy. Turns out, I might see you sooner than I expected. The doctors have given me six to eight weeks to live.” He dragged his hands through his pale blond hair, and a wry smile curved his lips. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? I survived abominations and super soldiers, assassins and terrorists, and it’s cancer that takes me out.” A muscle twitched in his smooth jaw. “Your sacrifice bought me fifteen months. And now, I’m headed to Singapore with Zara and Galahad. I hope to come back and say goodbye, but if I don’t…” He breathed a kiss onto his fingertips and touched her engraved name. “Goodbye, Miriya.”
Danyael turned his back on the grave of the alpha telepath who had died to save his life. He limped to the car, bracing himself to face the onslaught of Galahad’s renewed hate.
The flight to Singapore though bought him several hours of peace away from Galahad. The soft hum of the plane engines blended with the low murmur of passengers into a relaxing white noise, and the walls and the closed door of his airplane suite muffled even that noise. However cruel of a manipulator Xin could be, she was lax on the pouch strings and had secured a private suite for Danyael on a Singapore Airlines flight out of Washington, D.C.
Danyael cast a glance at the standalone bed in the suite. Its crisp navy-blue trimmed sheets and fluffed-up feather pillows beckoned to him. He might have curled up in the bed and fallen asleep right away if he were not ravenous and in desperate need of a meal.
Instead, he sank into the wide leather armchair and studied the menu that a smiling air attendant had delivered minutes earlier.
Someone tapped on the door. “It’s Zara.”
“Come in.”
Zara slid the door open, slipped in, and shut it behind her. She shook her dark hair away from her face and sat on the chaise lounge across from the armchair and dining table. “You look tired.”
Danyael stifled the wry chuckle. Why couldn’t she ever just start with hello? “I’ll sleep after dinner,” he promised.
“You didn’t rest much during the day, did you?”
“No. My brother came by, unhappy that I’d not been forthcoming about my condition.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “He had a right to know.”
“And it was my place to tell him, not yours.”
“I wasn’t certain you would talk to your father—”
“So you tell Jason with the hope that he’d pressure me into it? Really, Zara, I need you to back off and give me a chance to solve my own problems.”
She snorted. “Are you solving your own problems?”
“If I fail, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.”
“So, did you talk to your father?”
He nodded.
“How did it go?”
Danyael shook his head.
The hope in her eyes faded.
Oddly, her reaction warmed her. He reached out and touched her cheek, his empathic powers flowing through their physical contact. She turned her face into his hand, a soft smile on her lips. The moment lingered, precious yet bittersweet.
I could have made her happy, but—and there was the painful truth—not without my empathic powers. Still, the moment was too rare, too perfect to discard carelessly. He smiled at her through the dull ache in his heart. “Stay for dinner.”
The four-course meal was served on china plates—a delicately seasoned shrimp and scallop appetizer served on top of a mixed green salad, followed by lobster bisque. The main course, sea bass so tender that it flaked off with the faintest pressure from a fork, was exceptional.
His nausea under control, thanks to the pills supplied by Abd-al Rahman, Danyael was able to enjoy the meal and his conversation with Zara, which flitted over safe topics, primarily Laura’s charming antics. Only after the dishes were cleared away and dessert served did the conversation turn back to the topic weighing heavily on their minds.
Danyael pushed aside the chocolate mousse cake though he did eat the selection of berries that accompanied dessert. “Who else did you tell?”
“Just Jason.”
“No one else can know, especially not Galahad.”
Her violet eyes met his, and for a moment, there was a mutinous tilt to her frown, but finally, she nodded. “How do you intend to keep it from him?”
; “That’s what prescription medication is for.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Danyael laughed. Zara could make the most benign statement sound like a threat. “I hope so too.”
“Why don’t you get some rest?” Zara suggested.
“I will.” Implied but unvoiced was that he would get some rest after she left.
“I’m not leaving.”
His eyes widened.
Zara nodded at his armchair. “I’m going to sit there, between you and the door, while you rest.” She leaned forward; her smile was wicked, but her eyes were sad. “Get used to me watching you sleep.”
“I don’t need supervision.”
“No, but you’d be a great deal better off if you had someone watching over you.”
“What did I do to deserve an assassin for a guardian angel?”
Zara grinned, tossing her hair back over a shoulder. “Really, who could do a better job?” She reached across the table, placing her hand over his. Her long tapered fingers and perfect manicure juxtaposed against his subtly misshapen left hand—incongruously the hand of an assassin and the hand of a doctor. She laughed, apparently on the same brain wave. “We are screwed up, aren’t we?”
“Most people are, one way or another. The better question is, are we screwed up in a way that the people who love us and the people we love can live with?”
Her eyes met his. “Am I?”
He tugged his hand out from under hers, and without losing contact, interlaced their fingers. The motion felt natural; their hands had always fit well together. He brought her hand up to his lips and pressed a kiss against her fingertips. “Yes, you are.”
“Are you?”
His smile turned taut. “I’m never really sure.” He lowered their joint hands and looked away.
She traced a finger down the length of the almost-invisible scar that cut across the right side of his face. “Get some rest. I’ll be right here.”
Was his sleep more restful with the certainty that an assassin watched over him? Danyael only knew that he fell asleep within moments of stretching out on the bed in the suite. The leg cramps that frequently jostled him awake through the night were subdued, muted by pain medication, and the one time that he did wake briefly, his mind still fogged with exhaustion, he found Zara’s gaze on him, her expression indecipherable.
When he did finally wake, the low hum of the engines was subtly different; the plane was preparing to land. Zara pulled her hand away from his shoulder. “Sleep well?”
Danyael dragged his hand over his face and slowly sat upright in the bed. “What time is it?”
“We’re a half hour from landing. I have to get back to my suite.”
“Did I sleep the entire time?”
Zara’s generous mouth tugged into an amused smile. “Seventeen hours, through breakfast and lunch. Your body is trying to tell you something, Danyael. You’re desperately sleep-deprived.” She pushed to her feet, stretching with the grace of a tiger rising from a mid-afternoon nap, and met his eyes, her gaze intent, the humor absent. “I suggest you learn to pace yourself. It would be a shame to kill yourself before your enemies can do it for you.”
Yeah, I would hate to ruin their fun.
Danyael peered out of the window as the plane glided low, its massive body and wings casting a shadow over the approaching runway. Singapore was both an island and a megacity, a gleaming heaven of fiberglass and steel. He had last visited Singapore nine years prior, in the summer before starting medical school. With Lucien, he had spent two months exploring Asia. Half of the time, they roughed it in youth hostels, and when Lucien got tired of the real world, they checked into luxury hotel suites. The frequency of hotel stays had markedly increased toward the end of their trip, which culminated in Singapore.
On their last evening in Singapore, they found their way into the premium nightclub, Pangaea, where they toasted their shared memories of the trip—of dusky-skinned beauties, awe-inspiring ancient monuments, and fascinating local customs and celebrations.
“I don’t travel, I vacation.” Lucien raised a glass of cognac to Danyael and grinned over the rim.
“I noticed.” Danyael sipped from a glass of soda. “I know you’re looking forward to going home.”
“There is a great deal to get back to, and for you, a whole new phase in life. I still can’t believe you decided on medical school instead of something more lucrative and less ulcer-inducing, like law.”
“Law?” Danyael concealed his laugh behind a cough.
“Or business.”
“I’ll leave law and business to you.”
Lucien shook his head. “But why Hopkins? Why not stay on at Harvard?”
“I need a change of scenery.”
“Does it have anything to do with the fact that Chloe is staying on at Harvard for her Master in Public Policy?”
Danyael averted his gaze.
Lucien shook his head as he swirled the cognac in his glass. “She’s pretty, smart, and connected. Why isn’t it working out?”
“Because ‘pretty, smart, and connected’ is optional. What’s mandatory is a strong psychic shield, and that she doesn’t have. I can’t relax around her, can’t lower my guard—”
Lucien snorted. “When have you ever lowered your guard around anyone?”
“Never, but still it’d be nice to know that if I screwed up and my psychic shields collapsed, I wouldn’t kill her.”
“That is a depressing thought,” Lucien agreed. “How did she take it?”
“Before or after I used my empathic powers?”
Lucien winced. “She really loved you, huh?”
Danyael inhaled deeply and released his breath in a quiet sigh. “Yes, she did.”
“There will be others, you know.”
“I know, but she was the first—”
“Ah, puppy love.” Lucien smirked. He mimicked a wolf howl.
“It wasn’t like that. Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“You didn’t have sex?”
“Yes…I mean, no—why the hell are we gossiping like girls?”
Lucien leaned forward, a wicked grin on his face. “Yes or no?”
Danyael chuckled. “I was never any good with negative questions.”
“You’re getting hung up on grammar? You’re stalling, man. Was she hot in bed?”
He brushed Lucien off with a laugh and refused to answer. If only it had been as simple to dismiss Chloe from his heart and mind. Instead, it had taken him years to get over his first love, and since Chloe, there had not been anyone else, until Zara—and of course, Zara was an entirely different kind of woman.
No, not so different, he mused as he unbuckled the seat belt. They were both strong and independent; Zara, however, took it to extremes. He stifled the chuckle, but the smile crept through nevertheless. Couldn’t just fall in love with a normal woman, could you? You had to fall in love with an assassin, and not just any assassin—an assassin with an absolute talent for finding trouble and dragging everyone around her into it.
The plane scarcely jolted when the wheels made contact with the tarmac. Powerful Rolls Royce engines screamed into reverse, and the massive plane taxied to a halt in front of the terminal. A pleasant female voice welcomed passengers to Singapore. Danyael reached for his backpack, shrugged it onto his shoulders, and disembarked from the plane.
Zara and Galahad were both waiting for him at the end of the jet bridge.
Galahad’s face was expressionless, but his narrowed eyes were bleak and simmered with anger. Danyael’s fingers curled into fists, and he breathed deeply through the surges of Galahad’s hate. Damn it, he had his work cut out for him. He would have to find a way to cope with the constant onslaught of Galahad’s emotions without becoming inured to its subtle changes.
Together, they cleared immigration and customs without difficulty, Danyael’s empathic powers soothing the natural curiosity and trained suspicions of government officials. Accompanied
by Zara and Galahad, Danyael turned to the exit but stopped short when someone called his name.
Disbelieving, he glanced over his shoulder. “Chloe?”
Her smile was sheepish, but she exuded friendly affection as she approached, leaning into him to press her cheek against his, and then against Zara’s. She then extended her hand to Galahad. “I’m Chloe Sullivan.”
“Gabriel.”
“It’s a pleasure, Gabriel—” Her eyes widened, and her smile drained from her face. “Galahad?”
So much for Galahad’s facial prosthetic. Danyael placed his hand on Chloe’s, muting her shock and dampening her anger.
Her gaze jerked to him, accusing. “You tricked me. You lied to me!”
“What are you doing here?” Danyael demanded.
“Trusting my instincts. I knew something was wrong.”
“You were following me?”
“Trouble follows you, Danyael,” Chloe retorted.
Danyael’s gaze flicked to Zara, the gesture inadvertent, and unfortunately, also impolite.
Instead of being offended, the assassin threw her head back and laughed, flashing white, straight teeth. “True, very true.” She stepped forward and linked her arm through Chloe’s, guiding her a short distance away; Danyael and Galahad followed. Zara’s tone was conversational, even friendly. “You have no idea what you’re getting into. You’ve pissed off a powerful woman with a long arm—”
“Do you think I’m afraid of you or of mutants?”
Zara heaved a mock sigh. “That’s the problem. Xin’s not a mutant, which means that she uses her brains instead. That makes her three times more dangerous than the average mutant. Go home, Chloe. Go back to your life. There is no place for you here.”
Chloe yanked her arm free. Her gaze darted around the pristine airport, focusing on the security guards standing by the exit. She kept her voice low. “One scream from me will land you all in custody. I—”
Galahad caught Chloe by the chin and tipped her face up so that their eyes met. “Threats will avail you nothing. Your stake in this matter is far lower than any of ours. Danyael’s life and mine are on the line. And Zara—well, Zara’s stake may seem no higher than yours, but she’s perfectly capable of turning any situation into a natural disaster.”
