Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
CADEN
It was well after midnight when we moved out to Gananoque.
I was geared up in full human kit: the machine gun hung across my chest, the strap biting into my shoulder every time the truck hit a bump. Cold metal, steady presence. A reminder of exactly what kind of night we were heading into.
Everyone else was armed to the teeth, standard for a bunch of magicians heading into a country without magic. Handguns, 9mm sidearms, steel-balanced knives strapped to thighs and forearms. Enough firepower to take down a small squad if things went sideways.
Everyone except Emma.
She’d refused a gun all together, muttering she wasn’t adding “shot myself in the foot” to tonight’s list of mistakes.
But knives?
She’d fastened more blades to herself than I’d ever seen on anyone.
Hell, than I’d seen on an entire unit. Three at her belt, one up her sleeve, another strapped to her boot, and a curved one tucked behind her back like she planned to carve her way through the entire eastern shore if needed.
Looked like a walking armory. A reckless, terrifyingly competent armory.
The town was dead quiet.
A thin fog rolled off the St. Lawrence, wrapping the docks and rocky shoreline in pale ribbons that caught the moonlight.
Somewhere in the distance, a buoy clanged, the only sound cutting through the stillness.
After Rachel dropped the wonderful news about me being Emma’s second, the latter and I pulled together a retrieval team of six Offensives, bringing us to a total of eight. How we managed it without speaking to each other would remain one of the great unsolved miracles of our time.
Not that I was particularly dying to fix that silence.
After jumping out of the magically silenced trucks, we huddled near the shoreline, the cold wind biting through layers of gear. I spread the map across the flat surface of a slick, sea-stained rock, the paper rippling under the breeze.
Emma crouched beside me, so close her scent godsdamn assaulted me.
Fresh cut pear and lilies.
It used to be a trigger, the kind that made my chest tighten for all the wrong reasons. Now? After her coming all over my fingers, after holding her while she unraveled, it was torture.
Clean, devastating torture.
Moonlight caught her profile, silvering the curve of her cheek. She frowned at the map, lashes low, all focus and sharp edges. And I stared at her like a godsdamn fool. At her beauty. At the steel in her jaw. At the simple fact she was here, when she shouldn’t have been.
I was so fucking in love with her, it was madness in my blood.
Almost enough to make me forget we were walking into this to save her ex-boyfriend. The man I’d have happily left to rot if not for the small detail he happened to be taken along with my brother’s husband.
The thought cut through the fog in my head. Whatever shock I’d felt at their abduction didn’t come close to the gut punch of realizing my best friend had gotten married.
All he’d told me before we left was it wasn’t what I thought it was. Whatever the hell that meant.
“To be honest, I am not the best at reading maps,” Emma mumbled, low enough she might’ve hoped I wouldn’t hear.
I didn’t even look up. “Coming from our human expert, that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”
“Yes, well,” she shot back, “I come from a long line of people who had actual smartphones instead of maps.”
I let my tone go flat. “Do those navigate on water?”
Finally, her gaze lifted to mine. “With the right boating app, sure.”
This was the first thing she’d said to me since our fight about Coastal, since she’d thrown the truth back in my face as if I’d chosen the lie solely to hurt her. As if I hadn’t earned even a sliver of trust after everything we’d been through.
I held her stare long enough to make it uncomfortable before I turned back to the map. “Fascinating,” I said, voice all frost.
The rest of the team stared at her like she’d declared pineapple the only true pizza topping.
She huffed, then flicked her wrist once to translate a human phone into existence.
“Even with the Nexus out,” she continued, holding it up like proof, “we don’t have to resort to caveman technologies. Humans did have some form of evolution.”
“Right,” I retorted, “because a dead piece of metal is clearly the height of progress.”
She rolled her eyes, muttering something about my prehistoric mindset.
I ignored it, throwing an annoyed glance at the glowing screen like it offended me. “Just remember, paper doesn’t glitch.”
Her mouth opened, probably for another retort, but I was already looking away, tracing my map again like she wasn’t even there.
She tucked the device away in a small plastic bag, and the rest of the team bent low, hauling packs and weapons into silence.
One by one, we slipped from the cover of the rocks, our boots crunching over grit before sinking into the damp give of the dock.
The dinghies waited in shadow, tethered and bobbing faintly with the current. No one spoke. Every movement was careful. Oars stowed, ropes loosed, bodies folding into boats without so much as a splash. We became shadows ourselves, sliding off the shoreline and into the river’s grasp.
The water lay like black glass under the moon, broken only by faint ripples and the silver shimmer of reflected light. The air smelled of gasoline, wet wood, and the damp chill that sank into your clothes and stayed there.
The team clustered near the makeshift dock, eyes flicking between the boats. Too many at once would look like a parade; subtlety mattered.
“Four to a boat,” I said, keeping my voice low but steady enough to carry over the scrape of gear. “Thompson and I spearhead the first run. The rest follows staggered. If one gets stopped, the others have a chance.”
Emma stood at my shoulder, arms crossed, weight tipped onto one hip like she was daring anyone to argue. Of course she looked unbothered, but I knew better. I could feel the nerves vibrating off her like static as she glanced at the group. “Johnson, Campbell. You’re with us.”
Both gave curt nods, already moving to load gear.
She dropped her pack into the bottom of the boat and crouched, tightening a strap, hair falling forward, all practical focus while I stood there for a second, drowning in the memory of her body writhing against mine, the sound of her moans in my ear, the way she’d shattered apart in my hands like she was made for me alone.
And now she wouldn’t even look at me.
I forced myself back to the present when the men behind us began pairing off. The dinghy knocked hollowly against the dock, the river rushed past, and Emma breathed beside me, quietly
We pushed off from the dock, paddles dipping in careful rhythm, each stroke meant to cut sound, not make it. The river stretched ahead like an endless sheet of obsidian, swallowing light, swallowing noise, until even the night itself felt like it was holding its breath.
“You should stay down as much as possible.”
My tone came out dry, but Emma ducked anyway, the motion quick and obedient in the dark.
Keeping her hidden from humans was imperative, and with every push of the oar, my conviction to bring her along slipped another inch. The night felt too wide, too exposed, like the water itself was waiting for us to make a mistake.
Emma sat low in the dinghy ahead of me, shoulders tight and rigid, tension radiating through the narrow space between us.
The farther we drifted, the quieter it got. Even the water seemed to lose its sound.
Somewhere ahead of us lay the invisible line. The one that separated Canada from the US.
And, more importantly, the edge of the bubble.
We slowed without speaking. The paddles dipped softer, shallower, until their sound faded to a whisper. Even breathing felt intrusive, too loud for the stillness pressing in around us.
Crossing this line meant losing our powers, with no way of knowing when—or if—we’d get them back.
Emma turned her head, eyes catching what little light remained. “On your mark,” she said.
“Almost there,” I murmured back, though my voice came out rougher than I intended.
Her shoulders had gone rigid, her head tilted slightly, as if she were listening to something I couldn’t hear.
Then she stiffened. “Did you hear that?” she whispered, the words so soft they barely disturbed the air between us.
I leaned in, close enough to catch the faint scent of her skin, making sure the two others in the boat couldn’t hear. “Hear what?”
A distant thrum rose under the river’s hush, mechanical and insistent.
Then a pair of bright, hunting beams split the black ahead of us and a voice cracked over a loudspeaker: “Unidentified vessel. This is the US Coast Guard. You are about to cross the national border. Stop your craft and display lights. Repeat, stop.”
The word stop hit like a stone. Everyone stilled.
I felt the current tugging us forward, and for one furious beat I considered translating us out of there, vanishing into the dark and abandoning the mission entirely.
But that would mean breaking the promise I’d made to bring my brother’s husband home.
Nope.
“Low and slow,” I said, the command more for myself than anyone.
“Keep down. Don’t move unless I tell you.
” I kept my hands on the oars but didn’t stroke, letting the boat drift with the eddy.
Emma flattened herself, chin to chest, breath so quiet I could barely hear it.
The others obeyed, faces pale in the starlight.
A spotlight swept over us like a tongue.
The beam found the boat and held, searing white, turning everything into stark, exposed shapes.
I raised both palms slowly, nonthreatening, visible.
“US Coast Guard,” a man barked from the lights, the accent tight, practiced.
“Identify yourselves. State nationality and purpose for being on the river at this hour.”
Before I could answer, the beam shifted, sweeping past me and landing square on Emma’s face.