Chapter 37 #2
The trees ahead stretched into layered walls of gray and green, mist curling through the pines like smoke rising from something still burning.
The air smelled of wet earth, rain-heavy leaves, and that thick, waiting silence that always came right before a storm, or something worse.
EMMA
We left the dinghy tied up along the shoreline and headed into the woods on foot.
The forest was quieter than it should’ve been.
Not peaceful-quiet, more “the trees have collectively voted us off the island” quiet.
No one talked either. After everything—the abduction, the water, the portal—we were all still half-caught in the echo of it, moving through the dark like ghosts who hadn’t realized they were free.
James led the way with the grim determination of someone who fully expected the trees to mug us.
Jackson trudged after us, muttering curses every time a branch slapped him in the face, which was often enough it was starting to feel like the forest had chosen him as its unwilling sub in some deeply concerning tree kink.
Caden walked beside me, shoulders tense beneath his jacket, his attention everywhere but never far from me.
Finally, Jackson broke the silence. “So,” he said, “anyone wanna explain what the hell happened? The whole abduction setup? The rising water, the collapsing fort, the portal, what was the point of all that?”
James answered before I could. “To get Emma to see the future.”
I felt three pairs of eyes shift to me.
Jackson offered me a small, encouraging smile. “Want to tell us what you saw?”
Oh gods, I really didn’t.
Not now.
Not like this.
Not with all of them looking at me like I was supposed to deliver some world-altering prophecy.
I dropped my gaze to the uneven ground, picking at the dirt with the edge of my boot. “As I said before, it was…deeply personal. And I need to piece it together first.”
No one said anything for a beat.
Then Caden’s voice came out quiet and careful. “Did it show you anything about who orchestrated the whole thing?”
I shook my head. “No. But…”
He looked at me, waiting patiently for me to gather my spiraling thoughts. “But what?”
“Considering what they showed me, it was definitely not the United Chiefs who were behind it.”
Everyone stopped walking at once. Caden’s tone was softer now, low enough to feel more than hear. “It was about Alek?”
I met his eyes, and for a heartbeat, the forest didn’t exist, only the two of us and the question hanging there like a threat.
“Not exactly,” I said a lot rougher than I intended. “I’m not sure.”
I dragged a hand over my face, trying to push back the ache in my skull. “I need time to piece it together, and right now…I’m too exhausted to think.”
Before Caden could reply, James suddenly stopped short and lifted a hand. “Hold up.” I nearly walked straight into him.
He crouched low, squinting at the dirt, until I saw what he was studying.
Tracks.
Fresh ones.
Humans: heavy boots, moving in formation. And not passing through. Circling.
James exhaled sharply. “They’re sweeping the perimeter. If we all head straight for the border, we’re screwed.”
Jackson looked up. “So what, we wait them out?”
“No,” James said, already shifting into strategy mode. “We split. Smaller groups are harder to detect. Jackson and I will loop east. You two cut straight for the border, and portal out. We’ll meet you in Kanata C.”
He didn’t say if we make it. But I heard it anyway.
Caden gave a curt nod. “All right. Move fast.”
We peeled off, the forest swallowing us in two different directions.
Caden and I slipped through the trees until the shimmer of the border came into view, subtle, bending the world behind it.
We pressed our backs to a thick pine trunk, breath held, listening. There was nothing but the wind.
After a few minutes, Caden leaned in. “Looks clear.”
I nodded, adrenaline buzzing under my skin.
“We need to make a run for the border. You ready?”
“Hell yeah,” I breathed. The air ahead shimmered, freedom close enough to taste. I stepped toward the edge…and stopped dead.
Not because of anything in front of me.
Because of the sound to our right.
A rustle with weight behind it; footsteps trying very hard not to sound like footsteps.
Caden heard it too. I felt the shift in him before he even moved, the muscle under his sleeve coiling like wire.
I turned my head, slowly.
They stepped out of the tree line almost in unison. Dozens of them. Fifty, maybe more.
Humans, coordinated. Military.
Rifles raised, black gear gleaming in the gray light. Helmets, visors, body armor; the whole manufactured face of control.
In mere seconds, we were surrounded.
Between us and the border, stood a human blockade with enough firepower to flatten the clearing.
Caden’s hand brushed mine, barely a touch, grounding. “Stay behind me,” he murmured.
His words hung there, as the first soldier stepped forward, voice amplified through a helmet speaker.
“Emma Thompson,” he called, tone cold and official. “By order of the United States of America: you are under arrest.”
For a long, terrible second, no one moved. The world seemed to shrink, every sound narrowing to the ragged inhale in my lungs, and the shifting of boots against dirt.
Then, another voice cut through the silence. "Grab the girl, kill the other."
The words barely had time to register before the world exploded.
The swarm crashed into us before I could even process the sheer force of it.
One second, we were bracing for impact, the next, they were everywhere.
A wall of bodies slammed into us, fists swinging, boots kicking up dirt, the sheer momentum driving us apart.
Someone lunged at me from the side. I ducked, barely avoiding a wild swing, but another came at me before I could reset.
I twisted, shoving an elbow into his ribs, hearing the clear oof of pain as he stumbled back.
But they kept coming and coming. And coming.
Caden let out a snarl, his movements a blur as he twisted, fought, struck with vicious precision.
He landed a brutal punch, sending one man staggering back with a sickening crack of bone.
Another rushed him, and Caden pivoted, slamming an elbow into his gut before driving his knee into his chest. But it didn’t matter.
For every one he knocked down, three more took their place.
They hit him hard, bodies crashing into him with the force of a battering ram. His feet lost purchase.
I tried to inflict pain as much as I could, while watching Caden fight like hell beneath the suffocating mass of bodies, teeth bared, muscles straining, but even he couldn’t break free.
A grunt escaped him as they tackled him, the sheer weight of them forcing him to the ground.
Hands clawed at him, gripping his arms, his legs.
Boots slammed against his ribs, fists driving into his face.
He fought, tried to break free, but they were relentless.
His body jerked as more piled on top of him, pinning him, locking him down.
His strength—formidable, unstoppable under normal circumstances—was nothing against their sheer, merciless numbers.
I watched him fucking lose.
Something inside me snapped.
And exactly like before—once in the blood-soaked chaos of the Spring Palace when I thought James was dying, once when militia executed my parents in front of me—I reached inward, fully aware of how destructive this choice would be and choosing it anyway.
My dark scarlet power was there, waiting.
It surged toward me the moment I reached for it, vast and violent, a force too immense to ever truly belong inside a human body. It flooded my veins like wildfire devouring dry forest, roaring awake after hours of restraint.
And again, I didn’t care.
I didn’t care the bubble would burn me apart from the inside out.
I didn’t care these might be the last seconds I ever breathed.
Whatever instinct for self-preservation I once possessed had been eroded over time, shredded by trauma, and loss: Enya’s death. James’s betrayal. My parents’ murder. A thousand fractures I’d pretended didn’t hurt, each one carving away another piece of caution, another reason to save myself.
So when it came down to me or the person I cared most for in this godsforsaken world, I didn’t even hesitate.
“Emma, don’t you fucking d—” Caden’s barked warning was cut off, smothered beneath the weight of the bodies pinning him down.
His voice, his fury, should’ve stopped me.
Maybe once, it would have, but not anymore.
His survival—him being safe—was the only thing that mattered to me.
My fear for his life fear clawing through my chest, the outrage of this ambush, the rage I’d been choking down for months, it all detonated at once.
My dark red haze erupted from me, ripping across the battlefield like a storm with teeth, every pulse of it aimed at protecting him.
I didn’t restrain a single atom of it.
I opened the gates, knowing all too well what it meant to choose so beneath a bubble.
To die for the man I—
“NO!”
Caden’s roar tore through the chaos, followed by human shouts as my power engulfed the world in front of me.
But it was already too late.
His voice was lost in the destruction I’d unleashed for him.