Defiance (Heart Lines Series Book 5)

by Heather Hildenbrand

  I didn’t miss the bitterness in his words. My brows knitted. “You don’t like that about yourself? How angry you are?”

  “I …” He looked around and his shoulders sagged. “This place is a reminder of what I used to be. What my mother was. And what I became instead.”

  “And what is that?” I asked, holding my breath that he would even answer. Usually, when a conversation turned this personal, Alex walked away. Or tried to make out with me.

  “Violent,” he said quietly. I waited, sensing more. “My mother was peaceful. A gentle soul who wanted only to heal and love others.” His gaze flicked to me and he smiled softly at me. “Like you. And I might have been like her once, but after she got sick …”

  After she died, my father changed. And he was like an eclipse to everything else that had come before. His anger, his rage… I thought I’d escaped it but then when the time came, I followed right in his footsteps. Became everything I swore to avoid. To protect against. RJ is proof. Someone wrongs me and the first reaction I have is to kill them.”

  “Alex, you’re not a bad person for that,” I said, but he snorted, rolling his eyes as he turned away from me. “I mean it.” I grabbed his hand but when he turned to look at me, I hesitated, not sure how he’d react to my words. Finally, I said, “You’re both of them.”

  He blinked back at me, more curious than disbelieving. “What do you mean?”

  “Your father, for better or worse,” I began.

  “Let’s go with worse,” he muttered.

  “All right.” I nodded. “Your father was not good to you before he died, but the traits you took from him are not bad. You don’t see yourself clearly.” I paused, waiting.

  Alex crossed his arms. “Fine. I’ll bite. Tell me what you see when you look at me.”

  “What you call violent I call a protector. You fight for those who can’t protect themselves and you do it with such singular focus that you don’t even think of your own safety half the time. You’re the smartest, strongest, most dedicated warrior I’ve ever known. But you’re not evil. Your heart is good, and inside, you feel everything so much more than you want to admit. So, you use the hardness to hide the softness. You’re both of them.”

  He took a deep breath, and I watched as he blinked away moisture from his eyes. It stunned me; I’d never seen Alex get choked up before. It was heartbreaking and warming all at once. The urge to throw my arms around him and comfort him was so strong, I clamped my hands together to keep from ruining whatever he was about to say.

  Finally, his expression cleared and his lips curved in a crooked smile I knew well. “So, what you’re saying is that you like it best when I’m hard.”

  Chapter Six

  Alex

  The room glowed a soft yellow thanks to the oil lamp still burning somewhere behind my head. It probably should have been strange that, in this day and age, Jin still used oil lamps. But it wasn’t. After meeting a guy like Jin, a lot of things were no longer quite so strange. I shifted against the pile of quilts, breathing deeply the scent of sage and sandalwood that still hung in the air from the cleansing Jin had done before he’d gone to bed.

  “You have so much pain and anger in your aura,” he’d said.

  “If by ‘aura’ you mean shoulder, then you’re not wrong,” I had shot back.

  He had chuckled and then waved around a smudge stuck while I tried to eat the noodles he’d cooked over the camp stove along the wall. I’d slept after that, as everyone else was currently still doing. Sam had bunked with Safar in the back bedroom and Jin had closed himself inside his own wing of the warehouse—accessible through that side door I hadn’t even noticed the first time I’d come. I suspected that had been on purpose, and it made me wonder just what all the man was capable of when it came to magic. And what else he was hiding with it.

  I was usually good at spotting glamours and wards.

  Now, it was the middle of the night and I was wide awake. The wound on my shoulder was a minor ache now—as long as I didn’t move—thanks to the foul-smelling paste Jin had rubbed over the stitches there. I should have been exhausted from the last twenty-four hours. And I was. But whatever paste Jin had slathered over my wound—the effects had worn off a couple of hours ago. Everything ached.

  Sleep eluded me.

  My brain would rather worry over the six million things still unresolved since we’d fled RJ’s house eighteen hours ago. Like RJ and the power he would find at Mount Shasta for starters. Not to mention Breck, Britt, and Koby, and our status as fugitives with CHAS. And Sam. I couldn’t stop worrying about Sam.

  Even as I thought her name, a dark figure with long, wildly wavy hair padded silently into my view from the back of the room. My breath caught, but there was no fear or panic in the reaction. I would know that girl anywhere even without the benefit of sight or smell or touch. It was like my insides just knew her. Like my soul and her soul were made from the same stuff. But I wasn’t about to lead with anything as mushy as all that. So I kept quiet and just watched her approach in the darkness.

  She stopped at the edge of the blankets and knelt. I rolled over so that she would see I was awake and looked up into her worried eyes.

  “Can’t sleep?”

  She shook her head and I lifted the blanket off me, an invitation. She slid in beside me, and I scooted as close as I could without pissing off my shoulder before draping the blanket back over us both. She lay beside me without a word but I sensed a difference in her now from earlier.

  Like maybe she wasn’t so heavy inside.

  “Bad dreams?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Safar snores.”

  I chuckled. “Maybe I do too,” I warned.

  “Only when you’re drunk,” she said and I pulled back, trying to gauge whether she was serious.

  She smirked. “Either that or there was a freight train running through the neighborhood last time you drank whiskey. I assumed,” she said, stealing my smartass comment from earlier. I chuckled and we both lapsed into silence. I traced a line along her jaw from ear to chin.

  “How’s your shoulder?” she whispered against the darkness.

  I tried to shrug, but immediately regretted it. Pain lanced through my shoulder, and I let it fall still again. “I’ll live.”

  “That makes two of us,” she said wryly and I grinned. If Sam was able to joke, she was okay. At least I was hoping so.

  “You seem better,” I said cautiously.

  “I had some time to accept … what is,” she said finally.

  “Anything you want to share?”

  “Not yet,” she said and there was something about the way she said it that made my insides tighten. She was hiding something. That much I knew. But I forced it aside. Being at Jin’s … we were safe here. If only for the moment. I wasn’t going to invite the danger in between us. Not here. Not like this. I decided to seize the opportunity while I had it and go in a different direction.

  My mouth found hers, tentatively at first, but when she didn’t resist, I slid my arm around her waist and pressed us closer. Sam kissed me back, her hands shoving at me gently until I was on my back and she was on top of me. Her lips moved hot and fast over mine, her fingers running over my neck and through my hair. I winced when she pressed too hard near my stitches.

  “Your shoulder—” she began.

  “It’s fine,” I said, my voice a little gruffer than I’d intended thanks to the erection I was trying to figure out what to do with. I mean, our hosts were both sleeping in nearby rooms. We were a little too exposed here for this, even with the total darkness.

  Sam eased back, and I kept my arm around her as she rolled to her side. I rolled to mine, still facing her, and smoothed her hair back. My body tingled with the effects of the kiss, but I ignored it. I needed to quit while I still could.

  “Do you want to talk about what happened?” I asked.

  “Do you?” she shot back. Yes, Sam was definitely herself again.

  “Wha
t do you mean?”

  “Indra,” she said and I stiffened before I could catch myself.

  “What about her?” I asked, wishing I’d just swallowed the pain and continued making out with her. Seeing Sam back to her old self was great. Talking about the woman who’d damaged both of us in the first place was not.

  “She wanted to come with us and— Alex, I know what she did really hurt you. I just want you to know that I don’t expect you to be okay just because it’s behind us now. Anytime you need to talk, I’m here.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said, trying to be as honest as I could. Mostly—okay, only—because I’d sworn to be honest with her if she ever forgave me for everything I’d done. “And when this is all over and we don’t have a goddess fighting a world war from inside your body, maybe I’ll take you up on that. But for now, I just want to make us safe again. Can you accept that?”

  She held up her pinky finger. “If you promise to talk to me about her when it’s all over,” she said.

  I hooked my own pinky around hers, feeling silly as hell—and yet completely willing to make a fool of myself if it made this girl happy. “I swear it.”

  She smiled and instead of letting go, curled her fingers around mine so that we were holding hands. Our intertwined fingers rested between us and when she spoke again, her warm breath washed over my knuckles. “I’m glad Jin was able to get the bullet out.”

  If someone had told me the feel of a girl’s breath on my knuckles would someday turn me on, I would have laughed in his face. But here we were. I blinked, trying to stay focused on the moment.

  “It wasn’t a walk in the park,” I said, thinking back to that sketchy pair of tweezers with a grimace. “But it did the job.”

  Sam’s face fell. “I’m sorry I couldn’t heal you. I—”

  “Don’t apologize,” I said, cutting her off and holding my free hand to her lips. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Not one thing. You got us out of there and got me here. And I’m fine. And you’re fine. You did great.”

  “I could try again. Now. If you want.”

  “Can you promise using your magic won’t turn you into a moon goddess-zombie again?” Sam bit her lip, and I shook my head. “Then no. Let’s just do this the old-fashioned way.”

  She nodded and I dropped my hand, playing with the ends of her hair instead. I could tell she wasn’t going to stop beating herself up, but I ignored it. For now. Because I knew better than most how that felt.

  “What do you think happened to Koby?” she asked in a small voice.

  “I think Edie found him,” I said as certainly as I could.

  She looked at me, her eyes shining with hope she barely seemed able to hang on to. “Really?”

  “Hell yeah,” I said with way more conviction than I felt. “Have you met the woman?” Sam attempted a smile. “With Indra gone, I’m sure he’s safe.”

  “How can you be so sure?” she asked.

  “I don’t think they ever meant Koby any harm. I think … RJ wanted him out of the picture so that we didn’t have any place to run.”

  “He wanted us to use his house,” she said.

  I didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.

  She was silent for a moment, and I knew she was thinking about all the others we’d left behind when we’d run. Hell, so was I. Namely, one asshole that I wished to the goddess I’d killed before we’d run. But there would be time for that later—hopefully.

  “I know they’re leaving us alone here for now,” she began slowly, and my muscles tensed because I already knew where this was going. I’d hoped to put it off another couple of days, though. “But that won’t last. Eventually, they will find us,” she said. “I mean, you’re still wanted. An escaped criminal.”

  “Uh-huh.” I tapped her on the nose, doing my best to keep it light. “What do you think that makes you?”

  “Someone who likes bad boys,” she said. I laughed but it didn’t last nearly long enough before we both sobered.

  “I figure we’ve got another day or two and then we’ll need to move,” I said.

  “That’s it? Alex, your shoulder—”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  Sam was quiet.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked, the words barely above a whisper. I could hear the fear in her voice, and I hated it. I knew exactly what she meant: what were we going to do to control Hina and keep Sam from losing herself when she took on Ea? We couldn’t use one of the chakra points without announcing ourselves to RJ with a flashing neon sign. But we needed to perform the merge—and for that, we needed power. A lot of it.

  I sucked in a breath, thinking over everything we’d learned since coming here. More than anything, I wished I could take away everything that threatened this beautiful, wild woman next to me.

  “We need to help you complete this merge. You have to get control of Hina before we can face RJ again,” I said slowly, because I hated to say his name and ruin this moment. But it had to be said—and Sam could handle it.

  “That sounds good. I don’t know if I can face him just yet…” Sam trailed off and shuddered. My hand tightened in hers.

  “What if … What if you kept Hina out of it?” I asked, already knowing the answer. But I had to ask. If there was any way to shut her out of Sam …

  But she shook her head. “It’s not possible to do this without her. I don’t … My magic isn’t strong enough alone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Completely. Healing Indra took more than just me,” she admitted. “A lot more.”

  “Hina,” I said grimly because we both already knew. “That’s what drew her out after … when we were in the woods.”

  She nodded. “Every time I use her to help me with the magic, she gets harder to contain. If I let her out to fight RJ, I don’t know if I can put her back—”

  She broke off, and I watched her eyes fill with worry.

  I bit back curses for the goddess who was supposed to be the good guy in all this. “We’re going to complete this merge,” I said, stroking her hair. “And you’ll use Hina, but she won’t use you.”

  Sam didn’t sound convinced. “You heard Kiwi. We need witches for that. To ground me. And CHAS is not going to let that happen. What if we can’t do it in time?” she asked.

  I caught the single tear that escaped as she said it and brushed it away with my thumb. “We’ll figure something out,” I said. “That’s how magic works.”

  I wondered if she believed me. Or if I believed myself. But she didn’t argue. Her lids were heavy, and I knew she’d reached her limit for tonight. “We’ll talk about it all tomorrow. Jin will help,” I added as another reassurance. Sam bit her lip and nodded uncertainly.

  Instead of arguing or trying to convince her everything would be okay—a line I couldn’t quite bring myself to use—I held her. We fell asleep with our hands intertwined, and I dreamed of war.

  Chapter Seven

  Sam

  I came awake with a jolt, trying to understand what exactly had woken me. The last of my dream flitted off, evaporating before I could quite catch hold of it—something about the full moon expiring right along with my own ability to breathe. I blinked and looked around. Safar’s room was silent. I checked the time and saw that it was after breakfast already. The space beside me was empty; Safar was already up and gone.

  Slowly, last night came back to me. Slipping out to crawl in with Alex. I’d dozed off there and woken at dawn before crawling back in bed beside Safar. I doubted she or Jin would have cared if I’d slept out there—it’s not like Alex was in any kind of condition to do anything truly inappropriate—but I didn’t want to take a chance of accidentally bumping Alex’s shoulder and causing him any more pain.

  My hands tightened into fists as I came awake more fully. No, none of those things were the real reason why I’d slipped away from Alex. If I was being honest with myself, it was more than that. Hina had wanted me to stay. And that scared me more than anything e
lse.

  My jealousy—even against a force currently using my own body—was apparently infinite. And after what Safar had told me—about Alex’s magic—I still wasn’t sure what Hina would do with that information if I let her get close. The fact that I didn’t feel in control of her was terrifying. I’d said nothing last night, afraid of what it would mean to talk about it. At first, I had been hurt that Alex had kept it from me but as time went on, as Jin told me more, I came to realize he really didn’t know.

  Not about his own magic and not about his mother. I was fairly certain now that she’d never merged properly. Or if she had, maybe it had been too late for her. And I had no idea how to tell him about either one. Especially since I still needed to merge too if I was going to be any match for RJ when the time came to face him again.

  I knew what I needed to do—just not whether or not I could pull it off. Opening up to Hina at all felt like a huge risk. But letting her become a permanent part of me? That was terrifying. Kiwi had said having others there with strong magic would help me root to myself, but without CHAS allowing for such a mass gathering of magic, I had no idea how to convince them all to come. Or how to get them there at all. In fact, I had no idea where “there” was. We had nowhere to go that would keep us hidden from RJ anymore. Not of he was merging with Ea.

  Honestly, the more I learned about the world of magic, the more convinced I became that living in the shadows wasn’t something witches did lightly. The thought of living my entire life that way sounded awful. But if I merged—if I beat RJ and sent Ea back to the depths of the oceans—maybe they’d have to accept me. Maybe I’d be left alone. Maybe all witches would be welcomed to the supernatural table.

  But even more complicated than the merge itself was the timing. If I was going to merge, I had to do it soon. We only had three weeks until the equinox.

  A small noise from the other room, like shoes scuffing the floor, alerted me, and I threw back the covers, rising quickly. By the time I’d thrown open the bedroom door, Alex was almost upright on his pile of blankets in the main room. I watched as he shoved the rest of the way to his feet and straightened with gritted teeth. Beside him, Jin was frowning and clearly trying to get him to sit down again.