Chapter 51
FIFTY-ONE
CADEN
Nexing Rachel—and processing the horrific scene she, Hillary, and Emma had witnessed in South Africa—left me more than convinced the Collabs were being led by Gordon.
The way they described what they found, combined with what we uncovered at Sisu, made it painfully clear the Collabs weren’t only helping humans figure out where magic comes from. They were actively trying to merge species.
Exactly what Julian had done. With Gordon.
Once Sean and I finished mapping out our intel run to try and chase down the bastard’s shadow, which led to nowhere again, I needed to grind the nerves out of my system before we moved.
The clearing was quiet enough I could hear my own pulse.
Only trees, snow, a small body of water, and the kind of cold that tried to crawl into your bones and set up permanent residency. I stood in the center of it, breath fogging the air, hands bare despite the temperature.
I rolled my shoulders back, braced my feet, and let my inked haze rise, slow at first, then faster, until it hummed under my skin like a live wire.
Training to shorten my interface had always been satisfying, but now? With Emma in my life, with that stupid, intense happiness lodged somewhere behind my ribs?
My haze listened better.
My body moved cleaner.
Hell, even the almost failures didn’t piss me off the way they used to.
But when she walked into the space about an hour into my training, something shifted. A stillness settled over us—not heavy, just…intent. There was no real reason for it, but I knew instinctively not to speak.
I tracked her as she crossed the snow and settled onto one of the larger branches, the wood creaking softly under her weight. She stared out over the clearing, gaze distant, crowded with emotions I couldn’t immediately parse.
Whatever was going on in her mind, it wasn’t nothing. And it wasn’t small.
So I waited.
And then, without warning, she spoke.
“My mom lost her own dad the year she turned thirty.”
The words slipped out of her like they carried toward the water instead of me.
“Plane crash,” she muttered. “How ridiculously mundane.”
The tone wasn’t mocking. It was tired. Bruised. Like the world had hit her one too many times and she’d stopped expecting the blows to be poetic.
Her shoulders rose and fell in a slow, uneven rhythm. “She used to say that trying to breathe through that grief almost killed her. And that meeting my dad that same year, sent air back into her lungs.”
I shifted my weight, careful not to make a sound sharp enough to break whatever thin thread she was following.
“I didn’t get it back then,” she continued. “I sympathized, sure, but I didn’t truly understand. I don’t know if anyone really can unless they’ve lived through it themselves.”
Her gaze finally lifted to mine, quiet, raw, clearer than her voice had been. “My father once told me he’d never seen her cry. I used to think that was courage. Strength.”
A faint, bitter laugh slipped out of her. “Man, was I wrong. There’s nothing braver than letting yourself feel that kind of pain.”
I didn’t reply, but I shifted to a nearer branch—slow, careful—and sat down, keeping my attention on her as if looking away would break her open.
“I caught her crying once,” she said softly.
“She thought she was alone, sitting in her car. I was there by accident, walking around the neighborhood to meet up with Lisa.” She paused, lips trembling.
“I didn’t go to her. I didn’t try to console her.
At the time I’d convinced myself she’d needed that moment to herself. ”
I leaned forward, elbows braced on my knees.
“So I walked home instead.” Emma shook her head in regret. “She came in fifteen minutes later, makeup perfect, smile radiant. And I was grateful for it back then. Grateful she pretended she was okay. Grateful she spared me from…the pain of being a daughter watching her mother break.”
She swallowed hard. “Now all I can think about is how much she must’ve been dying inside. How much pain she carried just to protect me.” Her voice cracked, barely. “And how much of a selfish idiot I was for never asking her about it.”
Her tone was flat, as if the emotion had burned itself out before it ever reached the surface. Like she was still too scared to feel the full weight of it.
Then she closed her eyes for a single, shaking heartbeat.
When she opened them again, the wall was gone. And what replaced it hit me like a punch: raw, unguarded hurt, sitting right there without a shield to hide behind.
My chest tightened so much, it felt like something inside me snagged.
“I’m broken, Caden,” she whispered. “So broken I don’t even know if I can be repaired. I’m in pain every single day…”
My fists curled uselessly against my thighs, every instinct screaming to pull her into my arms, to fix what I knew I couldn’t touch.
“Except when I’m with you.”
I went still—completely still—every thought in my head dropping out at once.
Her voice barely rose above the sound of the wind. “You take my pain away. And that scares me shitless. Because if I lose you…”
She shook her head, fear stark on her face so real it scraped something raw inside me. “I let my mom pretend. I don’t want to make the same mistake.”
Emma locked on me, burning through the tears. “I’m done pretending, Caden. I’m done hiding. I want to tell everyone what we are.”
I didn’t think, I just moved. One heartbeat I was standing there, the next I was crouched in front of her, closing the space between us like instinct had overridden every conscious thought. My hands cupped her face, gentle, desperate to hold something I was terrified to lose.
“Emma,” I rasped, my own voice fracturing around her name. “Are you sure?”
“I don’t want to hide you anymore,” she whispered, the words trembling out of her. “I don’t want to hide us. Not from the Chiefs, not from Collabs, not from anyone.”
I kissed her hard, tasting salt and snow and the truth she’d finally let herself say.
“Then let’s not,” I murmured against her mouth.
“I want to tell the world you’re mine,” she breathed, her words finding their strength again.
I kissed her once more, softer this time, like I still couldn’t believe she’d said it out loud. “And I’ll tell them I’m yours.”
She burned—beautifully reckless. “And I want to fight the United Chiefs. Kill them all if we must.”
A slow smile tugged at my mouth. “You and me against the world, Nightcrawler.”
Then I kissed her again, pouring a year’s worth of love and fear and aching need into that single moment, everything I still hadn’t said finding its way into her mouth.
She nodded once. “Then let’s show the fucking world what that means.”
EMMA
Before we could declare open hunting season on the Collabs—which I was aching to do—we had another battle to prepare for.
When we informed Rachel—the day after our decision to go public—of the details of my deal with the United Chiefs, every threat, every demand, every unspoken or else, her fury ignited faster than I could finish the sentence.
She didn’t argue.
She didn’t ask for clarification.
She turned on her heel and called the entire team into the War Room without a single second of hesitation.
The doors slammed shut behind us, the sound echoing like a warning shot.
Rachel didn’t sit, but stood at the head of the table, hands braced against the surface like she was holding herself back from flipping it over. When she spoke, it was steady, but there was fire under it.
“You might think this ends with Emma,” she said, cutting her gaze across the room, “but it doesn’t. The moment we let them believe they can make an example of one of us, they’ll do exactly that, and the rest will fall in line.”
Her stare moved from face to face, daring anyone to look away. “This is how it always starts. One false arrest. One forced bond. One necessary sacrifice for the greater good. And every time someone tells themselves, This isn’t my fight, the line doesn’t disappear.”
She straightened, shoulders locking into place. “It moves closer.”
“Let me be absolutely clear,” she continued. “When you stand by and do nothing while someone else is turned into a victim, you are not neutral—you are complicit. All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. And the moment you do nothing, you are no longer safe. You’re just next.”
The room fell utterly silent.
“The United Chiefs don’t rule because they’re right, they rule because people are afraid. Afraid to speak. Afraid to resist. Afraid that if they keep their heads down long enough, the blade will pass them by.”
Her expression hardened. “It won’t.”
Rachel lifted her chin. “So. Here’s the choice. You either stand with us—against those who thrive on control and call it order—or you hide behind comfortable ignorance and watch yourselves become the next ones they decide to ‘manage.’”
She let that settle.
“I won’t kneel,” she added quietly. “I won’t hand one of ours over to people who think power gives them the right to break others. And I sure as hell won’t pretend this isn’t happening.”
One by one, the team straightened. Nods followed. Murmurs of agreement. Resolve hardening into something dangerous.
Someone said, “I’m in.”
Another: “Me too.”
By the time Rachel looked back at me, the decision was unanimous, and I realized, my relationship with Caden might’ve been the spark for open war, but it wasn’t about us anymore.
Every Kanata C Offensive was now primed to fight the Chiefs, not over romance, but over what the Chiefs represented: a consistent abuse of power.
But prepping for a fight against the United Chiefs wasn’t exactly a walk in the park; it was more like sprinting blindfolded through a minefield while someone whispered boom in your ear every five seconds.
For starters, the Chiefs weren’t just any opponents, they were the higher authority over every First Offensive on the fucking planet.