Chapter 16 The Real Danger #2
The car suddenly screeched to a stop. I jerked in surprise and froze when Lucien’s hand suddenly pried mine from my phone and held it in his.
I whipped my head toward him and saw he was staring at me, searching my face. “You’re shaking,” he said softly when he saw my confused frown.
He was right. I was trembling all over, and I hadn’t even noticed. “It’s n-nothing,” I murmured, cursing inwardly at my stutter.
“Obviously, it’s not nothing,” Lucien said a little dryly, but the worry in his eyes was apparent. “You’ve been looking at your phone like you just saw a ghost.”
Seeing those texts from Thayer was certainly the equivalent of that.
I opened my mouth and almost blurted the truth before I caught myself and clamped it shut, averting my gaze.
Thayer wrote about some sort of danger, and my brother wasn’t one to exaggerate, so telling Lucien about it was probably the smart thing, the right thing, considering a danger to me meant a danger to him . . .
Sliding my hand out of his hold, I folded my arms and stared ahead, refusing to return his gaze.
“You said that being your Eteria meant my soul was bound to yours,” I said quietly.
“But other than that, and the fact that hurting me means hurting you, you didn’t explain how this whole thing came to be, and what else it means for me, other than the fact that this title puts me in danger. ”
He was silent for so long that I reluctantly returned my gaze to him. He was staring straight ahead, jaw ticking, his elbow leaning against the window and his other hand clutching the wheel tight enough to turn his knuckles white.
My heartbeat quickened now that he was practically screaming without opening his mouth that he did not tell me everything. “Since you plan to leave me behind,” I said, bitterness entering my tone, “I deserve to at least know the whole truth, don’t you think?”
He snapped his head toward me, eyes filled with sudden anger, before he inhaled slowly and pushed his hair back, staring at the wheel as if it held all the answers to the universe. “It’s not about leaving you behind,” he said quietly. “It’s about protecting you.”
“Don’t avoid the real question here,” I said, growing angry myself. “What is it that you aren’t telling me?”
Lucien’s face grew dark before he looked at me again and said, “You understood one thing wrong. Your soul isn’t bound to mine, but rather to me.”
And he lost me. “Isn’t that the same thing?”
“No, Drew, it’s not,” he said, sucking in a breath, and his shoulders slumped. “I didn’t plan on telling you, since I didn’t plan to remain in your life for it to be an issue.”
His words were like a knife to my heart, and I winced, hugging myself. “Well, you have to now,” I hissed, looking away. “Since you might have to stay in my life for a little longer, even if you hate it.”
“I don’t—” Lucien began, his tone snappy with anger, before he paused and asked, “What do you mean by that?”
I swiped my phone open and looked at the still-open messages from Thayer.
“My older brother is flying in from Seattle today to visit me at my apartment,” I said, angry at how perplexed he sounded.
“We haven’t spoken in a year since we had a huge fight.
No texts. No calls. And yet he tried to reach out to me earlier today and insists he needs to talk to me in person about some letters he received.
His messages allude to the fact he thinks I’m in danger. ”
I turned to glare at Lucien, who in return seemed to become as still as a statue. “He can’t possibly know about you or the agents,” I said with a scowl, “so this must mean there is something else.”
Lucien sat back, a horrified kind of realization settling on his face. “Yes, there is something else,” he murmured, and before I could ask what the hell he meant by that, he put the car into gear and raced down the road. “We need to meet your brother. Together.”
My eyes widened. “What?”
“I thought there might still be time,” Lucien said, and there was fury in his voice now. “Time for me to make it seem like you’re not involved in anything. But it looks like my calculations were wrong. They must be onto you.”
“Who are you talking about?” I asked persistently, before I paused and realized it myself.
With Chase and Avenor chasing us down, and our ambush on Mack, Alby, and Dianna, the most pressing matter had completely escaped my mind.
The matter of who physically tried to kill Lucien.
Lucien himself said yesterday that his attacker might be after me, too, by mere association. That whoever they were might’ve also seen Lucien and me when we fled from my apartment and Chase.
Slowly, I turned to look at him. “You were resolute yesterday,” I said, trying to wrap my head around this whole thing, “about the fact I might be in danger from your attacker. And yet you said I was no longer in danger and asked me to go back home and be ‘safe and sound.’”
He must’ve heard the sarcasm in my last three words because he visibly flinched.
My suspicion grew. “It has something to do with me being your Eteria.”
He didn’t even bother hiding it, judging by the way his lips curled down. “I intended to station guards near you, just out of sight, so they would protect you.”
That infuriated me, but I forced myself to focus. “Lucien,” I hissed, hands curling into fists, “what the fuck aren’t you telling me?”
He drove faster, so much faster that I had to hold on to the upper handle for support. He didn’t seem to notice his foot was pressing the gas pedal for long periods. In fact, there was an odd look on his face that made him seem cornered.
And then he let out an unnatural, animalistic growl that made me stiffen and the short hairs on my body stand on end. “I’m the real danger, Drew,” he said in a guttural voice. “I’m trying to protect you from me.”