by Jade Kerrion
The actual events of the past, she had reasoned with brutal clarity of hindsight, were not important. Only the outcomes mattered. She had survived, become strong, and then worked tirelessly night and day to ensure that what she had could never be taken from her again.
If in the process, she had lost a bit of herself, she considered it well worth the price. The bright-eyed, sunny-faced child who had once danced with artless innocence in the courtyard of a Lebanese home and counted everyone a friend would never have made it in a world brimming with brutal realities, anyway.
Life didn’t work like that.
With very little effort, she put aside the flashing memories of her past and focused on the conversation at hand. “All that’s relevant is that it took a long time and a great deal of hard work to get to this point. Miriya talks about having natural advantages as if it actually counts for something. The fact is nothing counts for anything until you put your back into it to make something of it. The world is shaped only by people who dare.”
“People like you,” he said. “Thank you.”
She met his gaze. He had expressive eyes—like Danyael. She frowned at that stray thought, and with effort, refocused on Galahad. “Thank you? What for?”
“For taking me with you. You freed me, Zara.” His melodic tenor rang with gratitude. “You’ve always been free, and it’s hard to express how what you did—even if on a whim—means to someone who has never been free.”
After several silent moments, she said, “I couldn’t leave you behind. Not after I saw what they were doing to you.” The memory of the compassion she felt tickled uncomfortably against her spine. Compassion got people into trouble. The absolute certainty of that single fact caused her to stiffen. She tried to push past him, but stopped when he reached out to catch her hand in his. His hand was dry and warm, his skin soft. She looked down at her hand clasped loosely in his. They fit well together.
She gazed up at his face, which was a huge mistake. If she had taken a step back, she would have seen his staggering beauty, so flawlessly perfect as to be intimidating, but standing so close to him that she could feel his breath against her skin, she could see only the strength in his dark eyes and the gentleness in his smile.
She leaned in and breathed a faint kiss against his lips. For a moment, he did not react. She drew back and found him looking at her with an expression that swirled tenderness and vulnerability into an intoxicating mixture. Zara realized then that she was the first person who had ever kissed him. “Just relax,” she murmured as she rested her cheek against his. “Trust yourself.”
He hesitated.
She waited for a long silent moment until he finally whispered his quiet assent, the words of ultimate surrender wrenching his soul.
With a faint smile of triumph, she raised her lips to his. His kiss was tentative at first, scarcely a flutter of breath, but she pressed hard against him, demanding more, as her slim hands glided down his back in a teasing caress. She closed her eyes, sighed as she allowed him to capture her mouth in a lingering kiss, savoring the sweet taste of him and reveling in the strength of the arms that held her up and carried her to the bed.
They shed their clothes. The first contact of skin against skin had him closing his eyes in delight. She could sense his wonder, his amazement at the trusting surrender of her body. He was inexperienced, but eager to learn and responsive to her lead as she guided his hands over her body.
He was a blank slate. He was hers to shape and mold.
A smile, gleaming with anticipation, curved her lips as she twisted out from under him. She leaned into him, easing him back onto the sheets. “Relax,” she whispered again as she smoothed her fingertips across his chest. “Let me show you…”
Lucien glanced at his watch. How much longer would the interview take?
“What I still don’t understand is why it killed itself,” the detective said.
“We’ve been through all this several times, officer.” The patience in Lucien’s voice was wearing thin. “For the past two hours, no less. Who knows how mutants do what they do? I don’t know what Danyael did either.”
“I need to speak to him.”
“And I’ve told you before, that’s not an option. He’s resting, and unless you want to end up like that creature there, we’d do well to leave him entirely and thoroughly alone until he’s recovered.” Lucien ground his teeth, but managed to keep his voice even. Miriya?
What is it, Lucien?
We could use some of your opinion-altering capabilities out here.
The detective refused to give ground. “He’s a mutant. All mutants are dangerous. We’re taking him in.”
“That’s far outside your realm of authority, officer.” Lucien had refined stubbornness to an art form. It was the only way he had been able to win the trust and loyalty of an abused child years earlier. “You know the mutants fall under the jurisdiction of the Mutant Affairs Council.”
“Well, there’s no one here now from the council, is there?” The detective sneered at Lucien. “We’re bringing him in. Tell us where he is, or do we need to obtain a warrant to search your house?”
Lucien made a mental note of the officer’s name and badge number. Once this crisis was over, the officer was going to find himself out of a job.
Miriya walked through the open patio doors and headed straight for Lucien and the detective. “Actually, I’m a representative of the Mutant Affairs Council. Danyael Sabre is under my watch.”
“You?” The detective snorted. “You’re just a little girl.”
“Are you calling me short?” Miriya asked, a testy tone in her voice. The gleam in her eyes flashed and the detective dropped to the ground, screaming, his hands clutching the sides of his head in agony.
The other policemen stared in shock and horror. Some of them rushed toward Miriya, drawing their weapons, but were felled by a single precise telepathic blast straight into their minds. As they lay groaning on the ground in pain, Miriya pulled out the badge that identified her as an enforcer in the Mutant Affairs Council. The black badge, slashed through with streaks of silver, was rarely seen, only because there were so few enforcers. They were the most capable, most trusted mutants and were granted extensive authority, to the point that they could commandeer local police and federal resources if necessary.
“The next time,” Miriya said to the humiliated detective, “just ask for my identification. You’re relieved of duty, officer.” She turned to the other policemen who were staring at her with reluctant awe and no small degree of sullenness. “Who’s the most senior officer here?”
A baby-faced officer stepped forward. “I’m Sergeant Brooks, ma’am.”
Miriya smiled warmly at him. “You’re in charge now. Please coordinate with Lucien’s chief of security to deploy your men to protect the house. If there are any issues, I’d like to hear about them right away.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he responded with a great deal more enthusiasm than he had previously displayed.
“Nicely done,” Lucien said as they watched the young officer give orders to his men. The detective was skulking back toward his car. He appeared shrunken, his shoulders hunched. “I take it ‘How to make friends and influence people’ wasn’t part of your enforcer training.”
“I was absent from class that day,” Miriya said with a flippant smile.
“I thought that those telepathic abilities would have allowed you to be a bit more subtle.”
“Oh, you mean like the Jedi mind trick? I could have, of course, but then what would have been the fun of it? Ordinarily, I don’t go out of my way to hit people over the head with my power or authority, but he had it coming. He’s slime. I wouldn’t hire him to babysit kids any time soon.”
“Are you serious?” Lucien glanced over his shoulder at the detective. “Should we report him?”
“Just for thinking nasty thoughts about what he’d like to do to children? We can’t, Lucien. He hasn’t actually done anything illegal. Yet.”
“Zara would say that the point of having power is to prevent those things from happening in the first place.”
“It’s a good philosophy, but she’s not accounting for willpower. I’ve learned not to underestimate it. That officer is a jerk and his mind is a sewer, but willpower has kept him on the straight and narrow so far. Willpower is what got Danyael through that fight—well, that and an incredible tolerance for pain. More to the point…” She looked directly at Lucien. “Is what you would say.”
“Why is what I believe important?”
“Because you’ve appointed yourself Danyael’s protector. Many—likely including Zara—would conclude that the best and safest option is to lock Danyael up, because he is a huge threat, even though he has not done anything wrong. Ten mutant containment facilities have been built in the United States in the past three years, and they’re all overcrowded. The population grows daily. The council is doing everything it can to minimize the appearance of mutants as a threat, but paranoia is making the rounds here. Mutants—and most certainly Galahad—are first in the line of fire. Clones and in vitros won’t be far behind.”
“I won’t let anything like that happen to Danyael,” Lucien said.
“That’s good to hear. I hope you’re up to the task of protecting him, because he will likely need it. There’s just no way sharing a face with Galahad could be anything but profoundly bad news.”
“Lucien!”
He looked up at Xin’s voice and saw her waving at him from the balcony of his study. “She’s found something.” He returned to the house, Miriya beside him. He stepped into the study and closed the doors. “Anything interesting?”
“We may want to accelerate our plans to ‘take care’ of Jason Rakehell.” Xin waved a slim hand at the computer monitoring the news frequencies used by pro-humanist groups, including Purest Humanity. “He’s just issued a call to arms, and has apparently figured out that you’re harboring Zara and Galahad. He doesn’t mention Galahad per se, but the coordinates he’s delivered to his members are right here in McLean, just a mile down the road. Either he picked the wrong house, which is unlikely, since he’s not actually that stupid, or he’s using that place as a meeting point prior to converging on this house.”
“I’ll let the cops know,” Lucien said after scanning the Purest Humanity news feed. “Xin, find out where Jason is right now. It’ll take his mobs a while to gather, and in the meantime, we’re going to take the fight to him. Where’s Zara and Galahad?”
“In her bedroom,” Miriya responded, her voice sweet. She did not elaborate. She did not have to.
Lucien hesitated. Miriya chuckled at the image that went through his mind. Dark against light, the contrast startling, beautiful. Zara, slim and lovely, her skin the color of golden dusk, coiled around Danyael—no, Galahad—Lucien corrected mentally. The image did not change though. Damn, I’ll have trouble getting that picture out of my head now. “I’ll get them after I debrief the cops. Miriya, you’ve probably got the strongest shields. Can you wake Danyael?”
Miriya picked the location of Danyael’s bedroom out of Lucien’s head and made her way up the stairs. She knocked on the door, not really expecting a response. With her strongest psychic shields locked around her mind, she opened the door, slipped in, and shut it behind her.
Her telepathic powers uncoiled, and she gently slipped a hook into Danyael’s unprotected mind. The act violated every tenet of privacy, but it was likely the only chance she would ever have to understand the alpha empath.
He was too powerful, too deadly. She could not afford to be wrong about him. The world could not afford to be wrong about him.
Miriya closed her eyes and inhaled as she rooted deep into his psyche and searched his memories.
Waves of unrestrained, uncensored emotions pushed against her shields, but they were not what she had expected from Danyael. She had anticipated a great deal of anger and bitterness, the kind of emotions powerful enough to drive others to suicide, but he had locked the pain and terror of his childhood away so deeply that conscious effort was required to access those emotions.
Instead, she sensed his loneliness, and to her surprise, emotions that were akin to pleasure, gratitude, and hope. He enjoyed his work and found contentment within the limited boundaries of his life. He did not have many friends, but cherished the ones he had. He had no plans for the future, no expectations for a marriage or a family, but he was grateful for the semblance of normality that he did have. He focused on getting through one day at a time, always with the hope that someday he would look up, look back, and be awed by how far he had managed to come.
In his sleep, Danyael stirred as if he were aware, on some level, of Miriya’s psychic violation. He had no defense against her. Everything about him—from his strength of will to his hard-won emotional equilibrium, from his fractured heart to his unyielding compassion—she knew far more deeply, far more intimately than anyone ever could.
The emotions do not lie.
A smile came to her lips. She blinked tears from her eyes.
He amazed her. He was everything she respected, everything she wanted to be.
Something in her warmed and melted.
It was inevitable. Loving him was inevitable.
A smile that wavered on her lips reflected the wobbling of her heart. “Danyael.” She shook him gently. Three hours of sleep would not have made any dent in his exhaustion, but it was all he could afford just then.
It took several minutes to coax his conscious mind to awareness, but she sensed when he was awake enough to draw the emotional and mental barriers around him. The pressure against her psychic shields vanished as if all the emotions that had hung so heavily in the room moments before had been sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. His dark eyes—the pain locked deep within—flickered open and focused on her.
“I know we haven’t been officially introduced,” she said gently. “First, I’d like to apologize for attacking you earlier today. I was impatient and acted in ignorance. I’d like a chance to start over. I’m Miriya, and I’m with the Mutant Affairs Council.”
He averted his gaze. She did not need access to his thoughts to know what he was thinking. He did not trust her. No, it was more than her. He did not trust the council. Well, no surprises there. Some days she did not particularly trust the council either.
Danyael. It was easier for him to think than speak just then. Good…to meet you.
“We have a bit of a crisis, and we need you to join us. How soon do you feel up to getting out of bed?”
Miriya eavesdropped on his internal debate as uncensored answers flew like nervous, fluttering sparrows through his mind. She winced at the exhaustion evident in his thoughts. Next week…five days at least…maybe three. Don’t have that kind of time. One day, perhaps just overnight or a few more hours. I can do this…Just take it an hour at a time.
He finally mustered the strength to respond out loud to her question. “I’ll be down in ten minutes.”
He did not just amaze her. He humbled her.
Miriya nodded and stepped back, leaving the room to give him physical privacy. Mental privacy, however, was no longer an option for him, not with her psychic hook in his mind. Danyael would likely not discover their connection for a while, but he would, eventually. No doubt he would be furious at the psychic intrusion, but God knew, regardless of what he said, Danyael needed friends far more than he craved privacy.
Danyael needed her even if he did not know it.
Her thoughts and emotions churned. What would it take to be his friend?
Miriya drew in a deep breath and lingered outside his bedroom door, prepared to wait.
Nine and a half minutes later, Danyael stepped out of his bedroom. Miriya, slouched against the opposite wall, looked up, studying him. Their eyes met across the breadth of the corridor. His shoulders slumped with exhaustion but he seemed steady on his feet. His expression, however, was guarded, and his body language screamed, “Hands off.”<
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Fortunately, she was not easily deterred. She grinned up at him. “You okay?”
“I’ll be all right.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Yeah, well, it’s good to know you’ll be all right some time in the indefinite future, but how about right now?”
The soft sound of his laughter caught her off guard. Compelling and infectious, it warmed her and drew a matching chuckle from her. The muddy swirl of stress and tension gnawing at her eased. Who knew that making an empath laugh could have such positive aftereffects?
“You sure you don’t need any help?” Miriya asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Have it your way.” Her gaze flicked to a closed bedroom door on the other side of the hallway. In spite of her best efforts, she twitched.
Danyael glanced at her and raised his eyebrows.
“Zara and Galahad,” she said.
“Ah.” Danyael nodded. He and Miriya walked down the corridor toward the curved staircase. “Good for them. They’re perfect for each other.”
Danyael’s emotions flickered. Despite her intimate psychic connection with him, Miriya could not put a name to that feeling—a startling burst of color and light that made her senses reel before fading into the depths of his flawless equilibrium. She paused for a moment before responding. “I can’t believe you managed to say that without irony or malice. Zara’s a man-eater—”
“She respects strength. She needs a partner who isn’t intimidated by who and what she is. Galahad’s the perfect human being—no one could be more suited to her.”
His voice was steady, his tone even, but the soft exhalation of his breath almost sounded like a sigh. Miriya stopped walking and tilted her head to look at Danyael. “You’re not intimidated by her either.”
“No, but she hates me.”
“You’re an alpha empath. You can change her feelings, can’t you?”
“Yes, but what’s the point? I can’t change the reasons her feelings exist. She’ll come to her senses once logic catches up with her emotions, and she’ll hate me again.”