Her first instinct was to shove all her emotions into a box, but she didn’t want to pretend last night had never happened, didn’t want to lose the untamed power of the memory. And she’d promised Aden she’d try to be the partner he needed. So, instead of the box, she spent her time creating a solid layer of intensive shielding. Silence might have fallen, but Zaira didn’t intend for her emotions to leak out into the PsyNet.
No one had a right to those emotions except the people she chose.
Feeling in control afterward, she went through the trapdoor and heard Jojo’s voice chattering to Finn in the infirmary. The child sounded happy and healthy. Zaira should’ve continued on to find Aden. Instead, she made a detour.
Seeing her, Jojo broke out into a huge smile, as if they hadn’t already spoken less than ninety minutes earlier. “Zai!”
Zaira caught the girl in her arms, such soft skin and fragile bones.
“Play?”
“Not today, Jojo.” It no longer felt so awkward to do this, talk to a child, hold a child. “I’m going to be leaving soon.”
“Go bye-bye?”
“Yes.”
Jojo’s lower lip quivered and she threw her arms around Zaira’s neck. “No!” It was an order.
Walking over, Finn stroked the little girl’s back. “Zaira has to go back to her own pack, sweetheart. They must miss her.”
Jojo eased her embrace so she could look into Zaira’s face. “Go home?”
“Yes.”
Hugging her again, Jojo said, “Come back, okay, Zai? Play with Jojo. Cat climb.”
“I will.” She’d make the time for this child who didn’t know what it was to be ignored and hurt; Zaira wouldn’t be the one to teach her.
Leaving Jojo not long afterward, she made her way to the large ground-floor cabin that functioned as an indoor training space. Aden’s session was over by the time she arrived but he wasn’t alone. A tall RainFire female with rich brown hair woven into a loose braid and bright blue eyes was standing only inches from him. She had one hand on a hip she seemed to have cocked out, her body clad not in the clothes of a fighter, but in lighter gear, her top too airy and gauzy for the weather.
As Zaira watched, she reached out and put her hand on Aden’s forearm.
And the rage, it roared to the surface.
• • •
ADEN was in the midst of breaking the unexpected physical contact made by the RainFire female who’d come by with fruit juice for the trainees, then stayed behind to talk to him about self-defense—though he’d belatedly realized she had little interest in defensive maneuvers—when his instincts screamed an alert.
“Run,” he said to the changeling woman, who was no fighter and who’d die in seconds if Zaira got to her. “Run.”
To the woman’s credit, she took one look at the threat about to bear down on her and ran straight for the door on the other end, going at full changeling speed. Aden, meanwhile, got in Zaira’s path, her body slamming into his with bruising force. He didn’t try to fight her, just clamped his arms tight around her and tangled her legs so they went to the floor.
She could get free, of that he was fully aware. However, to do that, she’d have to severely hurt him. He didn’t think Zaira would do that. Even as a child, she’d never struck out at him. “Zaira, look at me.”
Her eyes remained locked on the doorway through which the RainFire female had disappeared. “You’re mine.” It came out a low, tight rage of sound. “She touched you.”
Aden pressed his weight fully on her, her smaller body twisting in an effort to break his hold. “A mistake she won’t make again.”
Dark eyes burning with fire met his. “Did you touch her?”
“Would you snap my neck if I did?”
Lines formed between her eyebrows before she gave a decisive nod. “Yes.”
“Liar,” he said, hearing reason in her tone again. But when he went to brush his lips over hers, she turned her face away, and the tension in her muscles, it was different.
Rolling off her, he sat up as she did the same, her arms on her raised knees.
“I would’ve killed her,” she said into the silence, her respiration yet uneven. “Not only would I have killed her, I wouldn’t have stopped beating her until someone dragged me off.” When she turned to look at him there was so much pain in her that he reached for her instinctively.
Except she wasn’t there anymore, having stood in a fluid motion and moved out of reach. “That’s who I become when I step outside the box.” A pitiless whisper.
Aden’s fingers curled into his palms. “You can fight it.”
“No.” A rasped inhale. “My possessiveness toward you is obsessive. If I give myself permission to feel it, I can’t control it.” She placed a fisted hand against her abdomen, exhaled. “I will be the best soldier you ever have.” It was a vow. “I will protect you to my dying breath.”
An indelible line in the sand.
“Zaira.” He lifted his hand toward her, but he had no words with which to convince her to fight for this, for them. Because she was right—she had demons and those demons were unforgiving. She would’ve hurt the RainFire woman had he not stopped her . . . and he couldn’t always be there if something set her off.
It was a truth he didn’t want to face.
It was a truth he had to face.
Because he wasn’t just Aden, the man who had always wanted to be permitted next to the fire of her, allowed to see the wild, tempestuous heart of her. He was Aden Kai, leader of the Arrow Squad, and she was a senior commander the squad couldn’t afford to have compromised. “What do you need?”