25. Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Xavier

I was going to kill him. As soon as I saved him, I was going to kill him.

I might have felt better about my little declaration if I wasn't panicking. I could feel it welling up in my chest, terror unlike anything I'd felt in my entire life, threatening to completely tear away my senses and leave me helpless.

Which was the last thing Axel needed. Maybe he hadn't explicitly asked me, but I had to assume that he knocked me out and gave himself to the enemy because he knew that out of the two of us, I was more capable of storming some fucked up facility on a rescue mission. It was definitely easy enough to tell myself that, to tell myself that he did it because he wanted me to immediately come after him.

It wasn't some bravado to assuage any guilt he still had hanging over his head about me dying the first time.

It wasn't because he probably had just as much trauma, if not more than me, about that fucking room that I'd run off to—he'd found me there, dead and cold on the ground.

He'd found me there, and he didn't want it to happen again.

Logically, I understood why he'd done what he did.

I was still going to kill him.

As much as I would have liked to immediately chase after the men who took him away, I had no idea what he'd said to them, no idea where he was going to lead them.

My best hope of finding him was probably going to the people who had been chasing these assholes from the beginning.

Fuck… I really did not want to ask Kade Neil for a favor that I would never be able to repay. I was willing to do it, though, if it meant I got Axel back in one piece.

And if it got him back, I knew I would owe Kade for the rest of my life.

That was fine.

I burst through the front door to the sight of a gun pointed at my chest. I didn't bother telling him to put it down—I didn't even bother taking the time to be offended. I was being a little brash and I knew it, so it wasn't like I had any room to complain.

"Fuck, do you want to get shot?"

"They took Axel." I didn't care about explaining myself. I didn't care about anything but finding Axel. "They took him, and we need to get him back now . You want to go after every person in that facility? Fine. I'll help you skin them all alive as long as we get him back."

I didn't recognize the desperate tone in my voice, the way the words cracked apart at the end in emotion I'd never felt before. If this was the echoes of feeling that Seth was talking about, I didn't want it.

It was going to make me do something irrational—like sell my soul to a serial killer turned assassin.

Hm.

"We're not just storming some building without a plan. We don't even know where it is yet." Kade's voice sounded hard, the decision already made. I knew it wasn't because he was concerned about his safety. If he was anything like the person I remembered, I'd heard stories about him taking on impossible tasks just to prove that he could, claiming dangerous jobs that no one else would touch and walking away from it unscathed.

I really couldn't believe that he'd died, but him standing here now was all the proof I needed. It was because someone had gotten to him. If we lived through this, if I got Axel back, maybe I'd try to coax the story out of Seth. Knowing Kade's secrets wasn't currently at the top of my list.

"Well, we need to figure it out. We have to figure it out. I don't know how long they'll keep him alive when they realize he doesn't have the flash drive or any other information they need. I don't know what they'll do to him when they understand that he's probably leading them on a wild goose chase as we speak."

"He's probably okay," Seth offered, but I could hear the lie in his voice, chased with pity and a piss poor attempt to placate me.

Kade was more realistic, as always. "He knows where you are, where you put the drive, doesn't he? That's the information they want, so I'd say he's still pretty useful."

Fuck, no matter how I looked at this, it was my fault. I shook my head and frowned. "He's not going to talk."

Kade scoffed. "Everyone breaks eventually."

"Not Axel."

And it was that thought that made something in my stomach twist, something in my chest feel like it was going to fracture wide open so everything inside me spilled to the floor and left me a hollow mess. Axel didn't break, and I knew he would rather die than tell them anything about me. He'd given himself up to keep me safe.

I was worried that they'd get bored questioning him before his body finally gave out—I was worried that he'd find a way to end it himself before they ended it for him.

I was worried about what they were doing to him while I was standing around begging Kade for help.

"Listen, I'll do whatever you want, okay? I'll help you with any job you have problems with, I'll babysit Seth anytime you need someone to watch him while you work."

"Hey—" I cut off Seth's protest.

"I don't care what I have to promise you, Kade. Just tell me you'll help me. Please?" The word came so easily from my lips, even though I was pretty sure I'd never willingly begged before. "Help me find him."

"You know…" Kade still sounded almost casual, but he was watching me with curiosity. "I should have realized if something happened you'd be like this."

He sounded so sure of himself. It drew me up short, distracted me for just a second from the desperation burning through me.

"What do you mean?"

"I was there the night you died."

"I know," I started. "We were working the same job."

"No, Xavier. I was there while you were dying." He'd turned his head to look past me, and it took me a second to realize he was watching my reflection in the window, like it would somehow show back the man he saw then. My eyes drifted, and for just a moment I could see him—the man I'd been, tall and broad and so self-assured. It's who I still was, even though I didn't look the same… but I didn't feel like that man right now. I felt broken with the knowledge that Axel was gone because of me . But then Kade's eyes caught my attention, all copper reflection in the windowpane. His expression demanded I ask the question caught in my throat.

"You were there?" Those last moments of my life, the ones that I wasn't even sure I wanted back… he held them behind his curious stare.

"I was too late to do anything about it even if I'd wanted to, but I was there. You gave me a necklace and begged me to give it to him. After that, you were muttering nonsense."

I waited for the pain, for it to hurt as he spoke the memories… but they were blossoming behind my eyes in perfect tandem with his words.

"I gave you a message for Axel."

"Yeah. You said his name, then you started spouting nonsense. Here. Everything and nothing. The sky, the stars. Look. Wait. " Kade finally turned toward me, his head slightly cocked to the side. "Then you pressed my fingers closed, and you died."

The tattoo… Axel's tattoo. It struck me as familiar when I'd seen it, but it made no sense because Kade hadn't understood what I was trying to say. Everything and nothing, a whole galaxy on his back. Every star. Every star.

"I'll still be here. In everything around you, even when you feel nothing at all. I'll be every star in the sky, watching over you. I'll never be so far away that you can't see me if you look. Just… wait for me." The words fell softly from my lips, and my hand came back to my throat. To Axel's necklace.To my necklace.

Everything was different. Because in all the time I'd been alive, in every memory I had now… I never remembered the sharp sting of hot tears, the pain that rocked through me.

I never remembered crying.

It made the vision of Kade and Seth standing side by side blurry. "Please?" I said again, my fingers tightening on the necklace. "Please, help me get him back."

"It's not safe—"

"Either help me find him or kill me, Kade. Because I can't do this without him. I can't be here without him." I took three quick steps in his direction, and sure enough, there was a gun pressed to the center of my chest. It didn't stop me from looking up at him, from letting him see the raw, naked emotion on my face. "Tell me you don't feel the same way about Seth. Tell me you don't understand."

"I—"

"We'll help you." Seth's voice was soft but determined, and Kade turned a hard expression to him. "Kade, if something happened to you, I'd want to know that there was someone out there who would help me get you back."

"Nothing is going to happen to me." The answer came automatically, but Seth's hand in his seemed to quell the more volatile part of his response.

"This is what we wanted, what you promised. This is our chance to finish this. You won't let anything happen to me."

Seth sounded so sure, like he could easily place every bit of faith he ever had in Kade without question, without worry, without thinking for even a second if he should do anything else.

And more than that, Kade turned to look at him like he was the most precious thing he'd ever seen… and like he really would do whatever it took to keep him safe.

"You do what I tell you to, when I tell you to. And if I tell you that it's too dangerous and you need to stay behind, you stay behind." His voice came out hard and uncompromising, and I wondered if he realized that giving in to Seth was a compromise.

I wasn't going to argue, especially when he swung around to stare at me.

"And if there's any point in our little rescue mission where it comes down to you or Seth, I pick Seth. You pick Seth. Everyone picks Seth. Do you understand?"

I swallowed hard and nodded. "As long as you understand that you still do everything you can to get Axel out of there." I stepped closer to Kade, close enough that, for a second, I felt lost in the ring of copper that burned so intensely in his eyes. I wondered if mine were burning the same, a halo of green foxfire. "We aren't doing this to save killers, Kade. We're doing this to keep them safe… because he isn't, is he? As long as that place is still up and running, you'll be worried about him."

He didn't say anything, but the slight narrowing of his eyes was all the answer I needed.

"I'll help you hunt every last one of them down. I promise. I'll keep him safe if anything happens."

It was a powerful promise, and we both knew it. Kade was capable, but his paranoia about something happening to Seth made it obvious that he wasn't infallible. And I think it was a revelation for both of us that having someone there who could watch over Seth or Axel if something happened was…

A small comfort. We both knew what it was like to die, and I think we were both learning what it was like to really want to live.

"Fine."

Even though it was exactly what I'd been working toward, I was shocked when he reluctantly gave in.

Seth just smiled.