“Carter?” Declan yells my name, demanding an answer.
With each step closer to her, she takes one in reverse until her shoulders hit the wall.
I holster my gun before ripping hers out of her hands, although she doesn’t put up a fight. “Carter,” Declan calls out again, not caring at all that the woman I loved set me up. She knew they were coming to kill me, to kill all of us, and she did nothing. “Are we letting them go or not?” Declan asks.
With one hand braced on the wall above Aria’s head and the other pinning her hip to it, I look her dead in the eyes, ignoring everything about her gaze that draws me in. She can’t have that anymore. I’m taking that power away.
Feeling the dominance of hatred flow through me and wanting to hurt her as she’s hurt me, I answer Declan in a deep voice that’s barely audible. “Kill them all.”
Jase
I’m quick to follow Declan out of the room, even though I know it’s a mistake to leave Carter alone with Aria.
I’ll be fast. I have to do something to stop this.
“Declan.” Raising my voice, I call out to my brother and the sound of his footsteps echoing in the hallway stops instantly. He turns to me, anger and tension still rolling off of his shoulders.
He can barely look me in the eyes.
“Yeah?” His voice is tight as I make my way to him, closing the distance as quickly as I can.
I keep my voice as low as possible and ignore the banging of my heart against my ribcage as I look over my shoulder to make sure no one followed, to make sure no one can hear me defy my brother’s orders.
“Don’t tell them to shoot to kill.” I start to talk before I’ve even fully faced him. My words are mixed with my tense breath from the adrenaline flowing through my blood. “If they shoot, tell them to make sure they miss.”
Declan hears me; I know he does by the shock on his face. The roar of anger coming from the foyer behind me reminds me of how unhinged Carter has become. He’s going to do something stupid. Something he’ll never be able to take back.
“I’m going back to them,” I tell Declan and turn away only to have him grip my arm and pull me back to him. He doesn’t say anything at first, but I can see the question in his eyes, the feel of betrayal from him.
And it shreds me.
“You know he loves her,” I tell him, feeling the ache of sadness rising inside me. It hurt Carter, but it’s more than that. She betrayed us all.
“Not after that,” Declan nearly whispers. Shaking his head slightly with a defeated expression on his face, he continues, “Not after she–”
“It’s not her fault she had to choose,” I push the words through my clenched teeth, knowing in my gut that she’s fighting with what’s right versus where her loyalties should lie. “She never should have known.”
The tension in Declan’s gaze wavers, and he looks behind me before reaching my eyes again.
“She made a choice to stay. Let Talvery know that. She chose to stay. It’ll fucking kill Nikolai and make the crack in their factions that much deeper. Nikolai has to live.”
I know Carter will be pissed at me, but he’ll get over it. He’ll thank me when it’s all said and done. It has to go down like this. I can’t let him ruin everything.
With a tight nod, Declan runs his thumb over his chin but doesn’t say a word.
“Tell the guards to let them go back to Talvery. But make sure they all know she chose to stay. She chose Carter.”
Chapter 2
Aria
I’ve always known Carter to be a beast of a man. Barely contained and waiting for an outlet to release his rage. As his chest rises and falls with each heavy intake of breath and his muscles coil, his shoulders get more and more tense. With each ragged second of anxiousness passing between us, I know there’s nothing holding him back.
“You chose them.” His words are calculated, spoken with control although he looks anything but in control. The tension winds tighter and my body grows hotter with every hard thud in my chest.
“No,” I try to tell him although my throat constricts to the point where I think I can’t breathe. I start to shake my head, but he lets out a snarl, flipping the front table over in one swift movement. The carved wood antique crashes into the wall with a loud bang that forces my body to tremble as he screams, “Get out!”
The rough cadence of his voice carries through the room and I back away from him, my shoulders hunching as fear consumes me.
Tears prick my eyes and I try to speak, to tell him I didn’t have a choice. I just did what I thought I needed to. “I’d never have–”