by Amelia Jade
Kase was breathing heavily now, his lip pulling back to reveal his teeth. “This is your fault.”
“No.” Jerrik shook his head, stepping forward and lifting a finger pointed at him. “This is your fault. It’s time you owned up to your actions and stopped putting your problems onto other people.”
Kase just stared, his entire world rocked by the past few minutes.
“So, what’s it going to be, Kase?”
Chapter Sixteen
Michelle
She made it around a corner and partway down the block before the tears started to fall. Through the haze, she saw a park across the street, and made a beeline for it and an empty bench.
Kase had lied to her. The revelation felt like a knife to the gut. Cold, brutal, stabbing pain. No, not pain. Agony. She hurt from being lied to, but on top of that, she felt like the fool. This was twice now she’d trusted Kase, and twice now he’d treated her wrong.
“Fool me once,” she whispered, angry at herself for being humiliated like this.
How could he have let her continue to think that the shuttering of the lab was her fault? That she’d somehow not done a good enough job of making him happy, or whatever his reasoning was for closing it. All her problems had started the day he’d walked back into her life under the lie of wanting to survey the lab. How could she have been so blind?
Now she was stuck in the city without a car, and would have to cab it back home. After that, she’d have to call her parents and make arrangements to move home. Finding a new job in her field would be a time-consuming endeavor, and she wasn’t entirely sure she was ready to go back to work right away either. The pain of knowing she’d been so close to success would haunt her for a long time.
“Everything okay, miss?”
She jumped at the voice, looking up. A tall man stood in front of her. Very tall. With lots of muscles. What the hell was it with her and guys with more muscle than brains? Seriously. Were they all into short fat girls and she just didn’t know it?
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, perhaps a bit more gruffly than she might normally. Right now she didn’t want to be bothered.
“I see. Do you mind if I sit?”
Michelle frowned, looking pointedly at the three other benches within thirty feet, all empty. “There’s plenty of other seats.”
The big man ignored her insinuation. “Thanks, but I want this seat,” he said, settling in next to her.
“Can I help you?” she asked cautiously, moving to the far end of the bench.
“Actually, yes, you can, Michelle.”
Alarms screamed in her head. How did this person know her name? She didn’t recognize him at all. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“I have a proposal for you.”
“Ew. I’m not a prostitute, mister. I don’t know how you know my name, but I don’t know you. Please leave me alone before I call the police.”
The big man sighed. “It’s a business proposal. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Oh.” Now she felt somewhat embarrassed. Must be the emotion of the day. “You still haven’t told me how you know me. I’m not interested anyway.”
“Are you sure? With your lab closed, you might want to hear what I have to offer.”
“Who are you?”
“Someone who wants to help you so you can continue your research.”
“You’re going to fund my lab?”
The mystery man hesitated. “I want to ensure you can continue the work you’ve been doing so far.”
Michelle frowned at the evasive answer. “Are you offering me a job?”
“I have the funding. Well, my company does. You could continue what you’ve been doing.” He crossed one leg over the other and sat back, his hands firmly clasped together in his lap. “If that sort of thing interests you.”
“It might, if you would be willing to provide more details.”
She was suspicious of just where he might be from. It’s not like places where her skillset could be of advantage were numerous. Most of them were big pharmaceutical companies, places that charged huge markup on the drugs they produced to rake in as much money as possible. They were less prevalent in Europe, but they still existed, and many of them operated in the United States as well.
Michelle had purposefully gone to work for Kase’s lab because it was private. Whatever she came up with there belonged to the lab, and would be given to the public at a cheap price, so that everyone could afford it, not just the wealthy privileged elite. She refused to be a part of that, and it was why she’d turned down every offer that had come her way to jump ship and take her research somewhere else.
The worst of the lot was EPP, the company that had been harassing her almost since day one to defect and come work for them.
Of course, with her lab being shut down, there was no work happening there. If she went to work for EuroPharma Prix or any of the others, at least she could keep working toward a cure. An expensive drug that worked was better than no job at all, that much was for sure. Especially if it helped her father.
All the thoughts left her conflicted. What should she do? Was there any harm in hearing more of this man’s offer, if he would give some specifics? There didn’t seem to be any drawback to listening.
“I can’t be specific right now,” the mystery man told her, the bench groaning as he leaned even further back into it. “This is all informal, and has contingencies.”
“Like what?”
“Do you want to know more then?”
“I don’t know who you work for, but I can guess what sort of company it is. You know who I am, which means you’re also well aware of how I feel about companies like yours and their exploitive practices.”
All she received was a dip of the head in acknowledgment. Not happy with his lack of loquaciousness, she decided it was her turn to be silent and wait for him to speak. After all, he was here to convince her of something, not the other way around.
“Very well,” he said with a sigh. “You’re correct. We can, however, offer substantial funding, both for your work and for you, along with state-of-the-art equipment, whatever you need. We’re also prepared to bring in half your team.”
That was almost unheard of. Why were they so desperate to get her to come work for them? Did they know how close she and her team had come to formulating a cure? They must have, or else they wouldn’t be wasting such a lucrative offer on her. How was that possible, though?
“I don’t think so,” she said, making up her mind. “I need to get going.”
She would find another lab. Besides, without her data, it would take her years to come up with anything. Who knew what would happen in that time. Whatever it was, the price wouldn’t be worth it to the millions of sufferers across the world. It would be better for her to go somewhere else private, and do it the right way.
The public as a whole deserved that from her, didn’t they? Conflicted, she turned to go. Whatever the choice, it wasn’t right to sign on with this man, or any of the big pharma reps. For all she knew, they would take her cure and lock it away, charging instead for the drugs they currently had. Drugs that only helped manage the symptoms, but didn’t actually cure it, which was what she’d been trying to do. In fact, that seemed much more likely. All of which reinforced her initial rejection of his offer, and that she should go home and start to heal now.
Fingers like steel closed around her wrist. “I think you should reconsider,” Big Pharma snarled, getting to his feet and looming over her.
“Let go of me!” she said, pitching her voice high so that anyone nearby could hear.
For a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to stop, that she might truly be in danger. But his gaze darted around, likely noticing that it was a fairly crowded park, even if there was nobody in the immediate vicinity of them.
His hand dropped.
“Leave me alone. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you can go fuck yourself,” she snapped, backing away from him. Looki
ng over her shoulder, she saw a nearby soccer field filled with youth and made sure her backward steps took her in that direction.
Eventually the Pharma rep, which she knew without a doubt he was, turned and left. There might have been a smirk on his face, there might not, she couldn’t tell—and frankly, she just didn’t care. Michelle was over it. She was over it. Over her old job. Over Kase. Just over all the god damned bullshit.
Now if only I could just stop thinking about him.
Chapter Seventeen
Kase
He paced the length of his cell.
It wasn’t big, but it was wide enough for him to take five or six strides without smacking his nose into the far wall.
“Would you stop that?”
He ignored the guard outside, continuing to drag one quicksilver finger along the wall, across the door and then on to the wall on the far side. Kase wasn’t trying to escape. That would be pointless. There was nowhere for him to go.
With Michelle all but lost to him, Kase hadn’t been able to summon the energy to fight Jerrik any longer. Instead he’d surrendered peacefully and accepted a transfer to a cell in the Enclave. Now he sat and waited, trying to be patient. For a dragon, that should have been easy. Curl up, go to sleep, and wait until judgment was passed on him. Time had a very different meaning to them than it did humans.
The difference was, every minute he spent locked up was a minute he could’ve spent trying to patch things up with Michelle. A minute spent holding her in his arms. Telling her how much he loved her, something he should’ve already done.
It was like everything had snapped into clarity only when he’d lost her. Until then, Kase had operated under the false assumption that Michelle would always be there for him, waiting until he’d sorted his own shit out. The idea that she was her own person who might chose to move on, to live a life without him—that hadn’t really sunk in. Of course he’d known it was a possibility, but he’d never believed in the feasibility of it. She was his mate; they were meant to be together, when the time was right. It had just never been right.
That, he now knew, was also a lie. The time was right when they made it right, by choosing to be together. There would never be a perfect time to come together; it was up to them to make it perfect because they wanted it to be. Fate could never supply that, because it relied on freedom of choice, of the pair making a choice of one another, and doing everything they could to make their communal life perfect.
I’m sorry, Michelle.
He was. Finally, at long last, Kase was starting to see that he’d been wrong. That by pushing her away he’d done more harm not just to himself, but to Michelle. Dragons were slow to come around sometimes, but they got there eventually. Kase was just now getting there. Just now, he was starting to see why everyone had told him that she would be good for him. They were wrong, though. She wasn’t good for him.
She was perfect for him. Exactly what he needed, a calming presence that wasn’t going to take any of his shit.
Except he’d gone and done the one thing he’d sworn never to do to her. He’d lied to her. To her face, nonetheless, which was even worse.
“How is she ever going to trust me again?” he wondered, his finger scraping over the door, leaving another little line behind him.
“What did you say?” the guard asked, stepping up to the small hole in the solid metal door.
“I’m talking to myself. Leave me alone; I need to have this epiphany,” he snapped, interrupting his pacing to spin and slam a fist into the door next to the hole—and the guard’s head.
The guard yelped in surprise and backed away, muttering to himself that now he understood why Kase was there.
Ignoring him, Kase resumed his measured pacing. The slow movement helped him to focus his tumultuous thoughts into something a little more coherent.
He needed to fix this mess he’d created. To patch things up with Michelle. That would, first and foremost, involve telling her the truth. She deserved to know everything, no holds barred. It might drive her away, if he came on that strong, but it was the only way he could be certain she would at least understand that he wasn’t lying to her.
Secondly, he needed to figure out if there really was a person stalking him, or if that was in his head. Ideally, with Michelle on board, the bond between them would help him stay in the present. It had for generations of Quicks before; there seemed to be no reason it wouldn’t work for him.
Of course, all that hinged on Michelle being willing to not only forgive him, but to accept his explanation and be with him. That was a rather large if after what he’d done to wrong her.
If he could fix it, though, then he could head back overseas to the United States. It stunned him to realize just how strong his urge to assist the fight against the Outsiders was. Never before had he felt a calling like this. Doing work for the Magistrates alongside his best friend Stoen had been okay, but it was more for the fun of it than anything. This, though—this was a higher calling, and it felt like he was truly putting the awesome powers he’d been blessed with to good use.
There were so many things that could be done if he figured out how to solve the problem. The lab could be repaired, and Michelle and her team could get back to work. With raises for everyone, and whatever additional equipment she wanted.
First, Michelle. Which meant getting out of this cell.
Outside his door, he heard the shuffling of feet. The guard. The youngest dragons were always put on guard duty. It was a bit of a farce. The prison was in the deepest recesses of the Enclave. It was quite literally miles to the nearest exit to the surface, with dozens of dragons—including some of the oldest and most powerful beings to walk the surface of the earth—between him and freedom. Guards weren’t exactly needed.
Breaking out wasn’t an option; the alarm would be raised and he’d be toast—possibly quite literally—before he knew it. Which meant a peaceful exit. Waiting around for Coltaine to make up his mind wouldn’t work. Even now, Michelle had to be wondering why he wasn’t attempting to fix things. Each minute that passed would have her resenting him even more than she already did. Kase needed to start reversing that process.
“Guard,” he said, approaching the hole in the door. “Are you there?” He tried to sound conversational with a hint of apologetic.
In return, all he got was a grunt. Well, at least the dragon was listening. If Kase could just appeal to his sense of heroism, the idea that he was on a grand mission to claim his mate and right all his wrongs, maybe he could get the guard to help out, or at least look the other way.
“Sorry for earlier.”
Grunt.
Kase decided to strike right to the heart of it. “I need your help.”
Silence.
“My mate is out there. I did something bad, and I see now that I shouldn’t have. I understand where I went wrong, and what I have to do to fix things with her, and…” He hesitated. “And with myself.”
This was getting personal, but he had no choice. He had to get to her before it was too late. His only hope was with the guard taking his side.
“You ever do something, and then look back on it and ask yourself what the hell you were thinking? After you make a choice, sometimes it becomes immediately clear to you that you made the wrong one. That’s me, right now. I made the wrong choice. A lot of wrong choices, to be honest, and I can see that now. I pushed her away when I should’ve held her close. I denied when something was wrong, and in doing so only made it worse.”
The guard still didn’t say a word.
“I’m just wasting my breath,” Kase snarled, angry at himself more than anyone else. “It’s all my fault, and I suppose now I must pay my penance for it. Get Coltaine down here; let’s get this over with. I can’t stand the pain of knowing I hurt her any longer.”
Turning away from the door, he stomped to the back of the cell. Quicksilver rapidly covered both his fists, hardening just before his first punch hit the rock. He hit the wall again, a
nd again, chunks of rock falling to the ground and debris clouding the air in front of him, but he didn’t stop. He just hit it harder.
“Not even dragons live long enough to punch their way to the surface. Not from this depth at least.”
Kase spun. “Coltaine.”
The head Magistrate was standing at the door, his face visible through the tiny hole. “In the flesh and blood.”
“That was quick. Did you give the guard your private number or something?”
The elder dragon snorted. Kase could have sworn smoke blew from his nose when he did. “What guard?”
Kase frowned. “The one that was standing out there. I was just talking to him.”
Coltaine stared back, didn’t say anything.
“That was you.” He shook his head. “I heard someone else speak, though.”
“I switched with him,” Coltaine admitted. “Nothing magical there, sorry.”
“I see. Why?”
“Was coming to talk to you. You started talking out loud, so I decided to listen.”
Kase looked away. “You heard everything then.”
“I did.”
“Then you know you need to let me go.”
Coltaine looked to the side, then up. “Why do you think you deserve another chance? You screwed up royally overseas. Then again here.”
Kase snarled silently. “Because that’s only two strikes, not three.”
The head Magistrate rolled his eyes. “Baseball is an American sport. Two yellow cards gets you tossed, and the stunt you pulled at Fort Banner? Automatic red card.” He glared at Kase. “Do better.”
“I need to find her,” he snapped, walking up to the door.
“Not good enough,” Coltaine replied immediately.
Kase’s blood pressure was starting to spike. “You told me to spend time with her!”
“And you shut down her workplace in an attempt to drive her further away from you. You’re not convincing me that you should be outside of this cell. You’re a danger to her, to yourself, and to the public at large.” Coltaine spoke calmly, in a measured tone, but his words slammed home with precision.