Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
CADEN
The shrill ring cut through the air like a blade.
Emma froze mid-reach, groaning under her breath. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Ignore it,” I commanded, my hands gripping her hips tighter, refusing to let this slip. My cock throbbed beneath her as she ground down on me, slick and warm like she’d been made to ride me. Like her body knew exactly how to ruin mine.
But Emma gave me a pointed look, and I swore a trillion curses under my breath. If I’d been on a mission for anything besides saving my best friend’s husband, I would’ve crushed her phone into a thousand fucking pieces.
Instead I yanked it off the floor beside us and answered. “What.”
Sean’s voice came through, strained and breathless, barely holding steady over the crackle of interference.
“Jackson just checked in. They’ve got food and water, but they’re still chained to the wall.
No movement. No way out. They’re both alive, but…
” He hesitated, the pause stretched and heavy.
“Caden, it was brought to them by translation.”
Emma pushed upright and sat back down beside me as all the warmth drained from her face.
I could see it, the guilt slamming into her like a physical blow, snapping her out of whatever moment we’d had.
“What do you mean, by translation? Did they move to somewhere else?”
“No. They’re still in New York as far as they know. Their food just appeared,” Sean replied. “Materialized in the cell without a sound. No human interference.”
I rubbed my mouth once. “That proves whoever abducted them is the same one behind the bubble. If they’re still here, beneath it, only its creator has magic.”
Sean exhaled hard, the sound cracking through the line. “Please, brother. Get him out of there. Get them both out.”
“We’re on our way.” I hung up before I could say anything else, staring at the dark screen for a second before turning to Emma.
She was already halfway dressed, movements quick and frantic. “We should’ve left sooner,” she whispered, eyes fixed somewhere beyond me.
I reached for my own stuff. “No. We shouldn’t have.” My voice came out harder than I meant it to. “But we go now.”
She didn’t argue, pulled on her boots, looking all efficient though her fingers trembled slightly when she tied her hair back. The fire had burned low, the last embers hissing softly in the chill air, as if the room itself knew what we were walking into.
When I turned back, she was already by the doorway, her silhouette framed by the flicker of dying light.
I crossed the space between us, one hand finding her jaw, tilting her face up to mine. “We’ll talk about this after,” I said firmly, my thumb brushing the edge of her cheekbone.
Her eyes were locked on mine. Then she nodded, a small, steady smile breaking through the tension. “Can’t wait.”
I snorted, then kissed her, soft, sure, a promise more than a question. Before I could pull away, she caught my collar, pulled me closer, and kissed me back, deeper, fiercer, sealing something I hadn’t dared to hope she would.
Then she was gone, slipping through the door and into the cold.
And I followed.
Leaving the boathouse at dawn, we moved through the shadows like two recently escaped fugitives.
The world was still asleep. Staying unseen wasn’t hard; no one with a functioning brain was awake at this hour, and the few who were, probably belonged on a watchlist.
With Emma’s phone in hand and Sean’s coordinates guiding us, we pushed through the woods as fast as we could. It was freezing. We were exhausted. But the image of her riding me—head thrown back, skin flushed—kept my adrenaline spiked enough to outrun the fatigue.
We’d finally kissed. And it had blown every fantasy I’d ever had about it straight to hell. Now, all I wanted was to do it again. And more. Until she was carved into my fucking DNA.
Obsession. Love. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was past containment.
She would have to choose: a future with me…or without me.
And the latter was no longer an option.
Emma was trudging through the forest ahead of me, her pace steady but silent, shoulders hunched slightly against the cold.
Moonlight filtered through the trees in fractured silver beams, casting shifting shadows across the frost-covered ground.
The woods were dead quiet—too quiet—but she didn’t seem to notice.
She was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere far away.
“You okay there?” I asked, breaking the silence.
She didn’t look back. “Just thinking.”
“Dangerous pastime,” I muttered. Then, louder because provoking her was too much fun not to: “Just so you know, it’s never a good sign when a woman starts thinking.”
She stopped—mid-step—then turned, eyes going hard. With a quick motion she pulled a small knife from her jacket and held it up between two fingers like a warning.
I arched a brow.
“Kissing you—and riding you like a bull rider on crack—doesn’t mean I won’t stab you with this,” she said, flat as a ledger. “Just so you know.”
I grinned. “You always were oddly fixated on my untimely demise.”
She shrugged, already turning back toward the path. But I caught it, the small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, the one she thought I wouldn’t notice.
“A girl’s gotta have a hobby,” she said over her shoulder.
The branches above us creaked in the wind, leaves rustling like dry whispers. And despite the cold, despite the threat waiting wherever we were going, something warm settled low in my chest.
She was still here.
And she was still fighting me with that mouth of hers.
Thank fuck.
“So,” I said, falling into step beside her, “what were you thinking about?”
She didn’t miss a beat. “You sure you wanna know? Wouldn’t want to overload that tiny little brain of yours.”
“Nothing about me is tiny,” I shot back, smirking. “Which, by now, you should kind of know.”
Emma’s gaze flicked downward, with purpose. Then she looked up and raised a brow, deadpan.
“You think that’s where your brain is?” she said, arching a brow, then paused, frowning like she was genuinely considering it. “Maybe in your case, that’s actually true.”
I chuckled, my chest still warm from the way her eyes lingered, a little too long to be innocent.
“I’m serious, though,” I said, falling in step beside her again. “What were you thinking about?”
She drew in a slow breath as we made our way deeper into the woods, frost crunching beneath our boots, the trees arching above us like silent witnesses.
“Alek,” she said.
The name hit like a gut punch.
“The Chiefs made a point of coming all the way to threaten us,” she went on, thoughtful. “To make sure I’d choose James to create the Krait. I’m just wondering what made them so sure he’s the father.”
I’d been asking myself the same question for weeks.
“Especially since…” she hesitated, brows drawn. “I don’t know…”
“Since what?”
She looked up at me, something unreadable flickering behind her eyes. “You ever heard of the ripple effect?”
I nodded slowly, already catching on where her mind had gone. “You’re wondering which of your choices led to what we saw in the future.”
She gave a small nod. “If any of them did. I mean… How certain is that future of Alek, really? How much of it is already locked in?”
The words came out casual, but I saw it all over her. The tension in her jaw. The way she couldn’t quite meet my eyes for more than a second.
She wasn’t just wondering. She was terrified.
Terrified everything she’d done in the past had already set something irreversible in motion.
Terrified the future we saw was written in ink.
Terrified her choices didn’t matter.
Or worse, that they did.
She exhaled hard, shoulders rising and falling. Then, in a voice tight with suspicion, she said, “Also…doesn’t this all strike you as really strange? I mean, who the hell bubbles an entire country—and why—then abducts two magi and stashes them in New York, like bait? Just to lure me there?”
“You think it’s connected? The Chief’s threat and the abduction?”
She shrugged, staring at the dark horizon. “No idea. But if it is, it’ll all tie back to Alek somehow.”
“Have you heard from Stephen yet?” she asked suddenly, her tone urgent. “Anything at all?”
I shook my head once, frustrated. Which made her exhale, before she turned her attention back on the trees. My mind was already running through all the possible scenarios, until Emma tugged on my sleeve, hard enough to pull me out of my head.
When I turned, her eyes were bright and burning with that stubborn fire I’d come to know so well.
“I don’t know what the United Chiefs think they know,” she said, each word clipped, “but there is no way James is Alek’s father.
Whatever choice led to that future, it’s not one I stand behind anymore. Nor will I ever again.”
The words were spoken with such fierceness, such conviction, they lodged somewhere deep beneath my ribs.
I reached out before I could stop myself, slid a hand to the back of her neck and leaned in until our foreheads touched. “I know,” I said quietly. “And I’m not worried.”
“Me neither,” she whispered, then brushed a quick, burning kiss against my lips.
I groaned, before I caught her wrists and pushed her back, not hard, but enough. “You need to keep your distance, baby,” I said, the warning thick in my words, “or this mission’s about to derail real fast.”
She laughed, soft and unbothered, taking one slow step away. “Is this where the famous Colt control starts to crack?”
She was joking, but she had no idea how close to the truth she’d come.
I didn’t even try to smile. “From the first day we met,” I said, every word thick with the kind of truth that keeps a man awake at night, “you’ve obliterated everything I thought I knew about control.
Trust me, you are without question the greatest test it has ever endured. ”
Her smile deepened at that, untouched by the restraint I was barely holding on to. She reached out and patted my arm. “Good,” she said. “Someone needed to remind that ego of yours you’re still remotely human.”
I huffed out a laugh as we fell back into step side by side.
Silence settled between us again, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Emma was thinking, piecing things together the way she always did when the world stopped making sense. And I knew better than to interrupt when her mind was at work.
We walked for a long time, the forest thick with shadows and cold breath. By the time we were close to our destination, the first light of morning had started to break through the trees in pale shafts, catching the frost on fallen leaves and the quiet fog of her exhale.
Then…
“Caden.”
I turned to her, my pulse already picking up.
She looked up at me, eyes hard.
“Whatever we walk into… Whoever’s behind this… If the person who created the bubble turns out to be the same one who gave the kill order for my parents…”
Her jaw flexed once. “They’re mine to deal with.”
I smiled, not because it was funny, but because I remembered what it felt like to be consumed by vengeance, how it could burn through every thought, every decision, until nothing else remained.
“I swore it to you before, and I’ll swear it again,” I said softly, eyes locked on hers. “You’ll have your retribution, Emma. And I’ll stand beside you. Never against you.”
She didn’t say anything right away. Just gave me a nod—curt, controlled—but I saw it in her eyes. The acknowledgment. The trust.
And fuck me, it would never cease to amaze me that she trusted me.