Chapter 23

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

That left Sarah and I with eight hours to spare. But instead of fucking madly, we just sat by one another and talked. She was in jeans and a fitted T-shirt, and she couldn’t get enough of petting my fur—and I wanted to learn all about her, now that I had clearly made the cut.

The time passed like a quiet current between us, gentle and unhurried. Sarah rested her hand on my arm, her fingers stroking my fur absently, and for once, I didn’t feel like I had to be larger than life. She asked me questions about my childhood, about the first time I realized I was different, and instead of brushing them off, I found myself answering honestly. In return, she told me about the tiny rebellions of her youth—things like sneaking out of her family’s estate and then making the bodyguard who picked her up tell her how he caught her, so she could do a better job of it the next time. It was the most human I’d ever seen her, stripped of all the layers she wore to protect herself from the world, and I realized anew how much I wanted to be the one she didn’t have to hide from.

“Then I got these eyes when I was ten—and I had to re-learn everything,” she said, pointing to her blindfold. “I was upset at first, because I was a kid, you know, and I really wanted them to shoot lasers—then my mom said, “what would you even do with that if they could?” I couldn’t very well tell her ‘go and shoot all of my enemies’, so I said, “I don’t know. Carve statues?” and the very next day she hired a famous sculptor to tutor me. The rest is history.”

“I like a monofocused woman,” I teased, letting my voice carry the warmth of how much I enjoyed simply being with her. She flushed and shook her head, retreating, so I caught her wrists and pulled her back. “Don’t hide. I want to know everything.”

“Well that’s good, because I’ve never told anyone else this much.”

I brought her hands up to my lips and kissed them. “That’s because we’re meant to be, Sarah. I promise.”

Then she bowed her head further. “Ace—I’ve had all sorts of other men make me promises before.”

I wasn’t worried, I just kept smiling at her. “There’s your problem then,” I told her. “None of them were satyrs.”

Her head stayed bowed a moment longer, then she laughed.

Somehow I got her to sleep on my shoulder for a few hours, before the plane landed and we taxied out to the hangar where it lived in between missions.

“Tell your men to keep the door closed, okay?” I told her, pulling out my phone to send Sylas a text.

He appeared in the jet right after it was sent, in a cloud of smoke and malice.

“You rang?” he intoned, forming into something more solid quickly, although there was still a piece of smoke on his chest that I couldn’t quite make out.

Sarah jumped at the sound of his voice—and I realized he didn’t register on any of her equipment.

“Sarah, this is Sylas—he was with us at the MSA before we left.”

“I remember his voice—but how did he get on board?” she asked me, panicking.

“I can portal. But civilians aren’t supposed to know I can do that, so don’t spread it around.”

And just then…a baby cried, from the vicinity of Sylas’s ribcage.

It was my turn to panic. “What the fuck was that?”

“I told you—Mina’s went to Ellum’s Christmas party, and I stayed at home to watch Lucian,” Sylas said, settling a proprietary hand on what I was now realizing was a smoke-hidden baby-sling. “Don’t worry,” he said, this time to his child. “I’ll feed you soon,” he went on, before looking at me. “Right?”

“Uh…yeah—right—let’s get back to headquarters?”

“I’ll take you there immediately,” Sylas said, opening up some sort of hole through which the lobby of MSA headquarters could be seen.

I put Sarah’s hand on my arm. “Trust me?” I asked her.

“Of course,” she said with a nod.

“Then let’s go.”

Half-a-second later we were stepping onto the Monster Security Agency lobby’s tile.

“You couldn’t deposit us up in the server room?” I complained.

“No—because then people wouldn’t see you, and where would the fun be in that?” Sylas said.

“See us?” Sarah asked.

“I did some of my own recon after Ace called. Your shadowy group seems to have been keeping tabs on us since you two left, possibly waiting for news, or Ace’s return.”

Which meant that they knew I had, seeing as the lobby windows in front of us were open to the outside world.

“And this was your helpful plan?” I confronted him.

“I have a baby to feed,” Sylas stated. And the infant that was obscured by his baby-sling started crying.

The Nightmare had gone and put my mate in danger—and for what? “Sylas!” I growled.

“Shhh—you’re upsetting him,” he said, bobbing his child up and down—as Sarah’s hand squeezed my arm. I shook my head and wrapped an arm around her instead, propelling us both toward the elevator.

We were quiet on the eleven floor ride up to the server room. “This is going to work,” I promised her. “I swear it.”

“I know,” she said, giving me a deep nod.

“Okay,” I said, as the doors opened. “Twenty steps down the hall, then there’s a door to the right,” I told her, before letting her go to run ahead and get it open. “Nex!” I shouted once I had, turning on the lights and banging a fist on a metal wall.

“Hello Aceon,” said a clinical sounding disembodied voice from somewhere above me.

“Hey, Nex—I need your help.” Nex was the AI that coordinated our branch of the MSA’s affairs. He was wildly overpowered and annoyingly good at Call of Duty.

“It will be my joy to serve you.”

“Cut that shit out,” I told him, rolling my eyes.

“Sup, dawg, time to get fragged?” Nex tried next, in his prim and proper voice.

“We really need to work on your personality.”

“That would require working around more normal people.”

I started setting a workstation up for Sarah. “Over here!” I shouted, when she came in the room. “Four steps forward, ten to the left!”

I’d managed it by the time she got there, so she had a chair in front of a monitor, and one of the plates we put potentially dangerous gear and magical objects onto, until we could safely disarm them.

“Just tell Nex what you want, and he’ll do it, or tell you how. Nex—without her tech, Sarah’s blind, and you’d better treat her right, or I will never let you win at CoD again.”

“Wait—you’re leaving?” Sarah said, just as an alarm started going off from somewhere in the building below.

“Yeah.” Bombs and babies didn’t mix. “I can’t let that idiot fight without me.”

“Ace—” she called out, before I could leave. “Be careful?”

“Of course,” I swore, before running off.

How could I not be?

I had important things to live for.