Willing (The Un #1)

26. Asher

Twenty-Six

Asher

“Close?” I ask, mystified at the possibility. “Do you mean on this continent?”

“No,” Raphael answers calmly. “I mean this city.”

“That’d be… that’s impossible,” Andrei mutters.

I clench my teeth as the others murmur in agreement.

“As impossible as having two soulmarked in the same city?” I ask. “As impossible as Nikolaos trying to turn another’s fated for himself?”

“I’d love nothing more than to agree with them, Asher.” Raphael grunts and rolls his shoulders, trying to right himself back to normal. “But you’re right, impossibilities flew out the window the moment we set foot in this fucking city.”

“Nothing’s been right,” Matthias says in agreement. “Covens trying to steal a fated, hunters drinking the blood of the soulmarked. Whole damn city is practically owned by the Order, and fucking witches could be coming back.”

“We need to check with Dav.” I look to Raphael. “Dammit, I wish we had more time with him. I doubt he’s missed much of what’s been going on in this city.”

A loud roar of rage splits through the house just as we start settling down from the excitement caused by Raphael.

I feel rage and hunger pulsing from the room upstairs.

The hits are going to keep on coming.

“Sleeping beauty is awake.” Caden nods to Maddox. “Let us go welcome our newest… Shit. Do we really have to call him a brother?”

After an elbow from Maddox, Caden shrugs. “Maybe.”

“What?” I growl. “And is he fucking secure enough for you two to be fucking about right now?”

“We just wanted to know if we could tie him up, throw him in a shipping container, and drop him off in the ocean somewhere,” Caden says.

Chloe eyes them darkly. “Surely you’re joking.”

Moving to Chloe, I stop her from trying to leave the room, and motion for Caden to get going.

“He’s not ready for visitors yet, kitten,” I murmur to Chloe. “He is in his frenzied phase and nothing good will come from you seeing him this way.”

“But… he was my friend,” she says, and tries to move around me. “I should be there to—”

My voice comes out in a harsh growl, “No. You do not remember your frenzy. Trust me, he is not ready, and neither are you.”

Pushing down hard on our bond, I snap my fingers at Maddox. “Take extra bodies from the cupboard up with you. Push as much blood through his system as possible. Let’s see if we can accelerate the process. I need answers now .”

Nodding his head, Maddox walks into the kitchen, heading for the large cupboard we’ve set up. Opening the cupboard door, he silently pulls three glamoured humans out from the dark storage. They already have three upstairs, but this will hopefully help with the frenzy.

I can only hope he doesn’t take an extraordinarily long time like Chloe did.

Chloe watches as the small group follows Maddox upstairs.

Wincing only slightly, she turns to me. “Is this truly the only way?”

“To feed, my love?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says quietly.

“To feed here and now. But blood banks can be a good source of food for us from time to time,” I say and pull her to the oversized chair that’s facing the window.

Tugging her down to sit beside me, I wrap my arms around her.

Trying to soothe her through the bond, I can feel her distaste at the very thought of feeding from a live human. It’s an odd feeling to me. In my days, we had no choice in the matter. Nor did we have this… regard for human life. I’m not a modern man, nor are most of my coven. We were born in harder times, when survival was paramount. Even as humans, most of us struggled to survive.

Those instincts don’t die easily, if ever.

“Then why aren’t you using blood banks? Surely it would be safer that way,” she asks.

“I can answer that question,” Andrei says as he plops himself down on a couch beside us. “There are a few good reasons, but I think for most of us it’s all about the thrill. What fun is it for a lion in a zoo to have his food brought to him daily? To live as a king in a tiny cage?”

“But he has his food.” Chloe leans forward, her voice becoming animated. “He has safety and security. He never has to wonder when his next meal is.”

“Sure, and it’s all dependent on his benevolent overlords.” I chuckle. “It’s more complicated than that though. There’s a significant lack of blood banks in this city. Even if we wanted to utilize them, which we do not, there are only a few available. And none that could sustain us for the long term. If we were running New Elysium that wouldn’t be the case.”

“It can take years to cultivate a city into a well-running machine,” Raphael says from where he stands in the dining room. “In our city, we’ve always made sure the Order had no foothold, and that the blood banks and willing humans were in good supply. We don’t overfeed, and we don’t stick our heads up to get noticed.”

“Nikolaos is probably intentionally keeping the city this way,” I say, and nod out the window. “New Elysium is such a central location in the nation that it would be a boon to all if it was running well.

“He’s behind this shit,” Raphael snaps out of nowhere, his voice full of rage. “She’s fucking here . I can feel her in my very bones. Each and every fiber of my sinew is screaming she’s here .”

“Father,” Andrei says quietly as we watch Raphael storm out of the room. “It has to be the girl from the club. Two is improbable… but three?”

“How?” I ask. “Raphael would have felt her at the club when we were there.”

“He never came inside,” Andrei says.

Those four fucking words start a cascade of dominos falling into place. My brain seeing dots I wasn’t able to connect before.

The Order found a way to mask a soulmarked better than we thought…

The one in the club, she was Raphael’s.

Perhaps the reason Nikolaos isn’t as drawn to the girl he has now is because she’s masked in some special way Chloe wasn’t…

A way that also prevented Raphael from sensing her.

“Andrei, have you ever heard in any of your research of a soulmark happening at birth?” I ask, looking directly at Chloe.

“It’s beyond rare. The mark usually doesn’t appear until after puberty, when the woman is grown and ready. I’ve read tomes, scripts, books… writings on cave walls, for fuck’s sake.” He throws his hands in the air. “Never heard of it.”

“What would it take to mask a soulmarked, Chloe?”

“You can’t…” she says with a quiet sigh. “God knows I tried. I used cinnamon oil, I wore someone else’s dirty laundry, I moved around every few months. I ate fish… So much fish…”

“Fish?” I look to the guys around us. “What the fuck would fish do?”

“I was taught vampires are repelled by the vitamin oils in fish,” Chloe says with a shocked expression.

The room filling with laughter seems to wound Chloe in some way.

“Mother,” Ambrose dances around, his feet barely touching the floor as he sings to her, “I still enjoy a bluefin tuna once a year.”

Eyes burning with anger, Chloe looks furious as she rants. “All those years of fish and more fish. I’m going to murder them all. Just the thought of it now makes my stomach sick. I didn’t eat a piece of meat until I was fourteen! It was always fish . Do you know how long it was until I had my first piece of pepperoni pizza? Do you know how guilty I felt after eating it? The guilt of being weak and giving into temptation plagued my thoughts for weeks!”

Slamming herself back into my side, I can feel the rage simmering inside her. Her emotions are still maturing and her hormones are adjusting to becoming a vampire. She’ll go through these things, but she has a point.

“Everything you’ve just listed is a nonissue for us,” I say simply. “We’ve been onto those tricks for decades, if not centuries. Or, at least, my coven has.”

“Do they know that?” Andrei asks with half a smile. He’s connecting the dots as well. “Chloe, I need to ask you something… and I can’t be delicate with it.”

“Go ahead,” she grouses, “but if it’s about fish, I’ll have your father eat you.”

Chuckling, Andrei shakes his big head and leans toward us. “When we found you, you were running, weren’t you? You were running away from us, but you couldn’t go to them. The hunter was coming because you called, not because he was sent for your protection.”

Chloe freezes up in my arms, her rigid posture giving us all the answer we need. “He’d still be alive if it wasn’t for me. He’s only here because I called him.”

“Maybe so,” I say, “but they were preparing him for your call anyways.”

“You were bait,” Andrei says. “They were testing out their new toy—Isaac.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, but we can all see it in her eyes, the realization of the truth.

“You were an experiment,” I say. “They wanted to see if they could make soldiers with a soulmarked’s blood.”

“And they did,” Andrei says.

Chloe whispers, “Oh God.”

“They’re developing new methods to combat us. Trying to see which one works the best. They fed a hunter blood because they wanted to see his capabilities. Which were…” I trail off.

“Not good,” Matthias says. “But this is trial and error for them right now. He could have also been too bent on saving Chloe. Not following protocol. We’ll have to question Isaac when he gets through the frenzy. He’s going to be a wealth of information.”

“If he plays nice,” Andrei pipes in. “But I have no doubt dear old Dad here will make sure that he does.”

I shake my head with a chuckle. We all know damn well that I will.

“Are you positive the girl is Raphael’s?” Matthias asks.

From upstairs in the room Raphael has chosen as his own, we all hear him roar in frustration, “She’s mine, you dumb fuck!”

“Chloe,” Andrei says to get her attention. “Did you see the girl when you were in the den?”

Shaking her head, she says, “No, I never had the chance. Between trying to figure out how to escape… and take Charity with me… I never saw her.”

“Damn,” Andrei says. “Would you recognize her if you had?”

“No. We were always kept away from each other. I was raised in a convent for most of my childhood. Isaac was the only person I ever really got to know.”

“Hmm, that answers that question,” I say. “We’ve always suspected they kept the soulmarked separated. I highly doubt you were any different in that regard.”

That honestly gives me more questions than answers, though. The main question now is how many soulmarked they’ve successfully kept hidden from us, and how they’re doing it.

A witch is my only guess. Every single one of us that remembers the Witch Wars knows witches are not to be fucked with. If the Order is stupid enough to be working with a witch, may the gods help us all.

Isaac, though, is still an unknown. He’ll be on our side, willingly or not. But his turning wasn’t a reward or a mercy. Nor was it done out of some selfish need to propagate.

It’s a punishment.

And I’ve never done this before.

I’ve never turned someone into my own child out of punishment. Someone I will be forced to endure through centuries, and quite possibly millennia.

Fuck, that was a mistake.

A huge fucking mistake. All to absolve Chloe’s sense of guilt. She didn’t mean to kill him, but she did, and now I have to fucking deal with the mess.

“Do we still have that property in Peru?” I ask Kian.

“Yep. We have an elderly but very wealthy couple who rent it from us,” Kian says.

“Are they affiliated with us in any way?” I ask, silently cursing myself for not knowing these things.

I let too many things slip past me the last twenty or so years.

“No,” Kian says. “Even the servants there don’t know who owns the property.”

“Remove them as soon as possible,” I order. “Pay whatever’s needed. Get the property up to our standards. I want Isaac sent down there once the dust settles here.”

“But…” Chloe starts to protest.

“No,” I firmly growl, and stop her from searching through our bond. “He’ll be questioned, taught enough to protect himself, then he’ll be sent down there. I’ll send a brother with him to keep an eye on things and to teach him our ways.”

“Send Christos,” Andrei says with a smirk. “He’ll love it.”

My eyebrows raise nearly to my hairline. “The last time he was in Peru, they tried to burn him at the stake.”

Andrei shrugs. “It’s good for his moral fiber then.”

“Would you like to stay with him?” I ask.

“Nope. I’m necessary here.” Andrei scoots away from us, digging his phone out of his pocket. “See, I’m calling Christos right now. I’ll have him reroute to there.”

Leaning back, I pull Chloe into my chest.

Burrowing my nose into her hair, I take a deep breath. She smells so good to me. Her natural scent is like a calming balm.

Pushing gently into the bond, I allow my feelings of contentment and happiness to flow freely.

A warm purring sensation emanates back.

And for this split-second in time, all is right in the world.

* * *

Rage slams up against my wards, startling me awake.

Isaac has come out of his frenzy.

The sun is still setting, the day slowly giving way to night.

Caden and Maddox are in the room with Isaac, trying to calm and soothe his volatile emotions, but it’s not working.

“He’s awake?” Chloe sits up, pulling the sheet over her breasts.

Growling, I push the sheet aside and stare at the most wondrous of creations. In all my years, I’ve never seen a more perfect pair of tits.

Licking my lips slowly, I can almost taste them. I want to feed again just looking at those nipples. My cock starts to stiffen as I look down at her trim stomach, imagining what lies beneath the sheet pooled around her waist.

“My eyes are up here.” Chloe giggles with feigned annoyance.

Sighing loudly, I let my gaze slowly trail back up to her beautiful eyes. “You should still be sleeping.”

“I was awake an hour ago when your cock kept pushing against my butt,” Chloe says, and glances down at my growing erection. “Is it always hard?”

Laughing, I shake my head. “Only when I’m with you, my love.”

“We’re immortal.” She gives me a deep sigh. “Are you saying when I’m nine hundred years old, you’ll still be chasing my saggy breasts around with a hard-on?”

I smirk. “Dear kitten, in nine hundred years you will look exactly the same as you do now. And even if that wasn’t so… yes, I will still be chasing you around like a horny goat.”

Her cheeks flush with color as she looks away, muttering, “We need to get dressed.”

Shaking my head, I say, “No, you will stay here.”

“What? Why? That’s ludicrous, we were friends. Even with all that happened, I couldn’t just…” she trails off when she looks into my eyes.

“No,” I say as gently as possible. “Trust me.”

Chloe may think she wants to be there now that Isaac is out of his frenzy, but I know for certain it’s for her benefit that she isn’t. Not with the emotions I feel racing through him. As empathic as she is, I can only imagine what she would find entering that room before he’s able to control his thoughts and build a wall of protection for himself.

Ambrose greets me outside the room as I open the door, bowing his head slightly. “Father, I wanted to check in on Mother. Do you think she would like to dance with me today?”

Looking back into the room, I see Chloe’s eyes widen. She shakes her head in the negative.

“I believe she would, Ambrose. Give her a few minutes to get dressed for the night, and I’m sure she’d be more than happy,” I say with a wide smile.

“Oh excellent,” Ambrose practically gushes as he sweeps away from the room and into the hall. “I’m so very happy I slept today. This feels like waking up on Christmas morning!”

I direct my smile at a glowering Chloe. “I love you.”

The middle finger she gives me just makes me even hornier.

I do love it when she gets feisty.

* * *

Punishment or not, when I walk into the room I feel sympathy for the broken child of mine kneeling on the floor, whispering pleas to a god who no longer finds him in the book of life.

Hands resting at his side, Isaac’s wrists are covered in deep, bloody gashes.

Dirty glass lies on the floor, beneath his slowly healing fingers.

“We tried explaining the futility of slicing himself up like that…” Caden says quietly to me.

Maddox lifts a shoulder then points to the giant Benedictine symbol tattooed across Isaac’s chest.

“We also said that really isn’t going to bring the chicks in,” Caden says. “That could be why he’s all slicey, dicey on himself. Poor dude died a virgin.”

“Get the rest of your brothers up here,” I say. “Except for Ambrose, he’s with Chloe today.”

Maddox moves silently out the door, but Caden just has to get the last word in. “Why does the baby always get out of chores? You never spoiled us!”

Covering my eyes, I say, “Fucking morons.”

“Why?” Isaac’s trembling voice asks me as he slowly stands. “Why did you have to take her and do this to me? I’ll never enter His light because of you.”

He’s a weak newborn. When he lashes out, I allow his punch to connect with my face then wait for the follow up to my stomach. He’s got a good form when he throws his punches, but he’s all raw emotion right now. It’d be a simple thing to block them, but instead I let them land.

Every single one of them.

Stepping around the room with him, I take the punches, the kicks, and move to the side when he tries to knee my balls. No sense in letting those get touched. Not when I have plans to fuck the shit out of Chloe as soon as all this tiresome bullshit is done.

I just need to make sure I remind him of that before I leave the room.

“Ah, fuck!” Raphael grumbles as he walks in. “Really Asher? Grow up.”

A solid left hook connects with my jaw, and I look to Raphael. “Fine.”

Turning back to Isaac, I watch slow realization hit him as I growl deep within my chest. Pushing hard against the connection we share, I let him feel the full weight of my fucking annoyance and every ounce of my frustration.

“Why did I take her?” I snarl at him.

“Yes,” he spits at me with enough venom to kill a small village.

“Because she’s the other half of my soul,” I say calmly then slam my will so hard through the connection we share Isaac collapses to his knees.

“You took her from Heaven’s grace,” he snarls.

“No,” I say, squatting down to look in his eyes. “I gave her the life she was meant to have.”

To give him credit, Isaac tries to stand. He really does go for it, veins popping out in his forehead as he turns beet red.

“Stop it.” I chuckle then force him to collapse back to the floor. “Understand something now. You’re living on my good will and graces from here until Ragnarok.”

“I’d rather die. You’ve turned me into a damned monster.”

Grinning at him, I say, “No chance of that.”

Closing my eyes, I fully enter our connection. He’s as weak as a butterfly when he tries to fight against my will. Someday he’ll have enough strength to put up a challenge, but it will never truly be enough against me.

I’m his creator now.

Ripping through his emotions, I feel his hatred, his confusion, the ache and love for Chloe.

The ache and love for my fucking soulmate. The one who was created to complete me .

Eyes snapping open, I look at Isaac. He knows what I’ve seen, and everything that flows through our connection only lays bare the very core of him.

He tried to save her because he loved her.

How sweet and noble.

Such a fucking pathetic waste of time.

“She could never love you, Isaac,” I say, squatting down and pulling his head from the ground. “She could never be yours.”

“I… I know,” he whispers, his eyes leaking tears as he shudders. “But I had to try.”

“The church taught you that we are monsters. That we’re the darkness that wants to encompass the light. But who’s the real monster? We only want to be reunited with our soulmarked. The very gods give us the ability to find true happiness, and the Benedictine Order tries to keep us apart. Is that love? Is that the compassion and kindness your Order preaches?”

I let go of his hair and watch his head thump back to the ground.

Ouch.

Releasing him from my will, I stand up.

Isaac slowly rolls to his side before wobbling to his knees. He’s a fighter, and eventually the sight of him won’t fucking repulse me as much as it does. Someday he’ll be one of my fiercest warriors. My most devout champion. It’s in his soul, I feel it there.

He’s but a wayward child, one who must be brought into the fold and shown the path.

“All around you are men, your new family, your brothers,” I say, my feet carrying me over to the singular chair in the room. “And each of them waits for the day their souls will be reunited with their other half. With the one they were split from so long ago.”

A few of them nod.

Raphael fidgets.

A quick feel through the connection I share with Raphael shows his anxiety ratcheting up at my words. He feels his soulmarked somewhere, and he’s aching with a pain so fierce it would kill a mortal.

“Yet we’re the monsters. We want nothing but to find completion, but the Order, who you’ve so proudly marked on your chest, denies us that. Denies us something that was given to us by the very gods themselves. You feel it now too. You feel that gaping hole in the center of your being.”

Isaac shakes his head at that.

He doesn’t want to believe.

He doesn’t want to be wrong or for all the lies he’s been taught to come crashing down around him.

“It’s not hunger for more blood, Isaac,” I say. “It’s not a hole you’ll ever be able to fill with blood. Though I promise you, in the years and decades to come, you’ll try your hardest to fill it.”

Looking away from me, he shakes his head again. “This is all lies.”

“I could have Chloe come and speak to you about it,” I say with a smile and perhaps a bit of cruelty.

“No!” he shouts, his head whipping back and forth. “No.”

Pushing back into the connection, I can feel revulsion slowly creeping into his body. The desires of the flesh turning into wretched loathing.

“You can feel the wrongness of her now,” I point out. “Your repulsed by your own thoughts.”

“She… I...”

Pushing into the connection further, I take a single image of her in my mind and shove it through his. It’s the only image I will ever share with him.

Riding on top of me, Chloe’s blonde hair is flowing around her face, her head arching back as my cock slams up, into her.

The image shows no nudity, it’s simply her face contorted in bliss, but he knows what’s happening.

After staggering back, he flees to the side of the room. Retching hard but not bringing anything up. His body is still new, almost instantly processing any blood he consumes.

Truthfully, I shouldn’t have shown him that image, but I want there to be no doubt in his mind.

When he regains his composure, I continue. “You feel the revulsion of lusting after her. She’s your mother now.”

“I do,” he agrees quietly. “I should hate you for making me see that…”

“I hate myself for showing you that,” I say honestly, “but you’re a special case. You’re not a run-of-the-mill kind of guy, Isaac.”

“And we are?” Matthias grouches quietly from near the door.

“Compared to this one?” I ask with a laugh. “He was one of the chosen. He was selected from birth to be their champion against the dark. He’s a fallen paladin now, boys.”

“Meaning we get to help break him of all those fucking rules and commandments?” Caden asks with a devilish laugh.

An elbow from Maddox has Caden looking at his twin. “No, I don’t mean fucking sheep, you sick fuck!”

At that, every single eye turns to Maddox and just stares.

Fuck.

Isaac looks utterly distraught now.

Maddox glares at Caden so forcefully I can feel the war between them in their own private connection.

Finally Maddox shoots Caden the middle finger and walks over to stand by Kian.

“I should have left you both at the bottom of the river,” I grumble.

“That was a joke.” Caden laughs at Isaac’s reaction.

Raphael snarls at the room and moves menacingly toward Isaac. “Time for questions and answers.”

“Easy, Raphael,” Andrei says, slipping between the two of them.

Pushing firmly through my connection to my coven, I make sure each and every one of my children heeds my words.

“No more violence,” I say, pointedly looking at Isaac. “We have little time, and even less patience. We’re in uncharted territory right now with you in our camp, and you’ll be helping us fill in a great many of the blanks we have.”

Isaac looks to me and leans back against a wall. His upper lip twitches with the hint of a sneer as he asks, “You want me to betray the Order?”

“Yes, just like you betrayed the friendship Chloe entrusted you with,” I say.

Isaac continues to stare hard into my eyes. He’s warring within himself. He knows I’m right, but he’s got years of indoctrination to free himself from.

“You wanted to protect her then,” I say not too unkindly. “If you still honor that friendship, assist us in protecting her now.”

“I failed!” he screams. “Look at the mess I’ve already made of things. She’s… She’s one of you now!”

Chuckles fill the room, my children amused by his outburst.

Save for Raphael.

“Just like you are,” Raphael growls. “We’ve all vowed to protect her from anything that would hurt her. Have you?”

“You won’t be free to return to the Order, if that’s what you’re hoping,” I say. “They’d never accept you back. You’d be killed on the spot. Unless… Unless they’re accepting vampires now like they have been accepting witches.”

His face reveals nothing, but I can feel his fear rippling into the room like a wave of black tar. He knows of witches at least, that much is sure. Did he directly work with one? I doubt it.

“I know nothing of witches,” Isaac growls, but it lacks the bite. “I’ve been told of your association with them enough to know that’s a lie.”

“Us?” A cold, dark laugh comes from Raphael. “Consorting with witches? Do you even know of the Witch Wars, boy? The ones we vampires fought to save this fucking world? Your Order wouldn’t even step in against them. No, they left it up to us monsters to fight true evil, and we lost countless lives. Humans and vampires, men and women died. Two of my own coven brothers died!”

Justin and Jeremiah, good men, good children of mine. We lost Jeremiah at the beginning of the wars, and Justin at the end. I think out of all of us, Raphael took it the hardest. He was closest to them. Raphael damn near died himself. It took almost three years for his body to heal from the wounds he received in those wars.

That’s the thing about witches, they don’t just murder vamps, humans, and whatever else that goes against them. No, they like to corrupt, to twist and infest. Vampires can glamour and use our wiles to get what we want.

A witch shatters minds.

They turn you against your own kind and force you to do awful things to your family and friends. So many things have been said about witches it’s hard to separate fact from fiction, but the one thing that’s true is all need to die .

Kian’s phone rings as we contemplate what’s been said. None of us are happy that the Order is accusing us of working with a witch.

Not when we’ve sacrificed and died to eradicate them.

Glancing down at his phone, Kian twists his head slightly and says, “Be right back.”

I turn my full focus back to Isaac. “How long were you drinking Chloe’s blood?”

“Since her first…” he starts but hesitates.

I’d probe his mind deeper, but whatever it is… even I feel repugnance.

“Her first what?” I ask.

“Her first period.” He shudders. “She was considered impure the moment she could bear a child.”

Fucking hell. Chloe is nearly twenty-one years old now. They’d been bloodletting her and feeding it to this fucking hunter for how long? I know our research says that most soulmarked are late bloomers, but I believe, from her memories, Chloe was sixteen when she came to maturity.

“Foul fucking beast,” Matthias yells angrily at Isaac. “A vile fucking beast you are!”

Nodding his head slowly, Isaac says quietly, “I wasn’t the only one who drank.”

Roars fill the room and all the men race to Isaac. Each and every one of them consumed with bloodlust.

“Stop!” I bellow into the madness as they reach Isaac and almost rip him limb from limb.

With my will, I force my men to freeze in place.

Barely.

Bloodlust and rage wash over me through the connection with my family. Each of my sons burning to destroy the perversion standing before us.

Raphael is the most extreme, taxing my hold. His berserker rage begging to be unleashed. It howls against the chain I have tightly wrapped around its neck, begging for mayhem and carnage.

“All of you return to your seats,” I command softly.

I feel the anger, the hatred. I feel every single emotion in this room whipping through my very essence. But I resist, as I always must resist.

There’s too much at stake.

The men slowly return to their seats, each fighting me and themselves to gain control.

Kian walks back into the room, his face serious.

“Asher,” Kian says quietly to me, “we have a hit.”