Chapter 56
FIFTY-SIX
JAMES
Never thought I’d be standing on a cold Vancouver tarmac beside a chartered private plane, waiting for Caden Colt to show up, without a fully formed plan to let him crash with it.
Then again, I never imagined I’d be teaming up with Crown’s First Offensive to bring down the United Chiefs—the same men I’d spent half my life admiring—either.
When Caden stomped through his green portal a few minutes after I arrived, he marched past me without a word and stormed up the stairs like a silent, rage-filled Disney villain on a coffee detox.
I dropped into the seat across from him and immediately clocked the vacant look he had aimed at the window. Colt was always one glitch away from passing as a humanoid robot, but the way he was sitting there now… I’d never seen a man look so lost.
This was not going to work, though. I needed him focused. I needed him focused on the mission, not letting the shit in his head buzz like a jacked-up mosquito.
I cleared my throat, shifted in my seat, even tapped my foot loud enough to wake the dead.
Colt didn’t flinch. If anything, he sank deeper into whatever tragic, brooding abyss he’d crawled into.
Great. Just what I needed: Caden Colt entering his “contemplating the void” era right before we went after the United Chiefs.
Knowing him, there was only one thing that could get his thoughts this tangled up, and it wasn’t his First Offensive, no matter how tragic that loss had been.
The engines hummed beneath us—almost soothing if not for the company—and the soft cabin lights washed the private jet in a muted gold.
Nevada stretched somewhere far ahead of us through the night sky, but the only thing I could see through the window’s reflection was Colt looking like he’d swallowed a live grenade.
And apparently planned to sit on it until it exploded.
I exhaled, long and slow, then finally said what had been circling my mind for the past ten minutes.
“Look,” I started, folding forward with my elbows on my knees, giving him my full attention whether he wanted it or not.
“I don’t know what’s going on between you and Emma, but the last thing I want is to be another reason she’s unhappy.
And I really need you to focus on what we’re about to do.
So just to clear things up: you do know the True Bond between her and me is fake, right?
She healed us from it within seconds of us forming it. It was only to deceive the Chiefs.”
His response came clipped, flat, and immediate, without even bothering to look at me.
“I know.”
I eased back into my white leather seat with a slow exhale. “Right. So why are you still acting like someone force-fed you a handful of poisonous hedgehogs and then told you to shit it back out without anesthesia?”
That finally earned me something: Caden shot me a glare sharp enough to peel paint.
Had I been a lesser man, that look might’ve scared me.
A little.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
I shrugged, crossed one leg over the other, and translated myself a coffee right before we crossed the national border and flew into the bubble. “We’ve got about two hours to kill before we reach Nevada. Try me.”
He leaned back, tipped his head against the seat, and sighed like the universe itself had personally offended him. “Can’t believe I’m even considering discussing this with you.”
“Yeah, well. Fucking likewise, asshole.”
He huffed out a humorless sound—almost a laugh, almost a snarl—before running a hand over his face.
“What she did…” His voice dropped, rough and frayed at the edges.
“Breaking up with me. Faking the bond with you. Even if it was after losing Saoirse, and to save Nino, I never would’ve done that to her.
And I just… Fuck.” He shook his head and stared out the window again.
“I don’t know. My emotions are all over the place, which is… extremely out of character for me.”
“So?” I lifted a brow. “Only means she’s less of a selfish bastard than you. Think we all knew that already.”
He didn’t so much as twitch. “Figured you wouldn’t understand.”
I made a point of taking another sip just so I could snort into my cup. “Oh no,” I drawled, “my girlfriend cares about other people. What a terrible, catastrophic trait for her to have.”
Caden finally turned his head toward me, narrowing his eyes into razor–thin slits. “You know, sarcasm doesn’t really suit you.”
“And being an idiot doesn’t suit you,” I snapped back, patience gone.
“You really want to repeat my mistakes, Colt? Be the guy who only loves the parts of her that make your life easier and ignores the rest? Because let me tell you something: if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Emma, it’s that she cares.
About a lot of people. And that’s a huge fucking part of who she is, so you’d better learn to embrace it instead of whining about it. ”
His jaw flexed, but he didn’t reply.
Which meant he heard me.
I leaned forward again, my coffee now forgotten. “She loves you, Caden. More than she ever loved me. And knowing her, she probably has for longer than either of us realized. So here’s the real question: do you want to be worthy of it?”
That finally got him. His gaze lifted, stripped of every last layer of bullshit.
“Sounds like you’re letting her go,” he said quietly.
I let out a slow breath, feeling the weight of it settle in my chest. “She was never mine to hold on to.” Another inhale. “So, you do what I never could. You earn her love. You fucking earn her.”
Caden glanced away, and mumbled under his breath, “Can’t believe I’m taking notes from James fucking Walker,” like the universe had personally wronged him by forcing this moment into existence.
But when he faced me again, something in him had shifted. Not all the way, not some miraculous transformation, but enough. For the first time since stepping onto the plane, he looked like someone who had found a thread of clarity to hold onto instead of drowning in the madness he’d walked in with.
He gave a me a curt nod. “Thank you,” he said, the words low but steady, like he meant them.
I leaned back into my seat, settling into the white leather with a practiced nonchalance. “That wasn’t for your benefit,” I said, because admitting I gave a shit about him would’ve completely ruined the moment, and because it was the truth.
To my absolute shock, he smiled. It wasn’t much—quick, honest in a way he rarely let himself be—but it was real.
Before I could comment on it, he reached over and clasped my shoulder, his hand firm and grounding, an unspoken acknowledgment that said more than either of us would ever bother putting into words.
Then he leaned back again, and the silence that settled between us wasn’t heavy or strained. It was…strangely comfortable.
We would never be friends. There was too much history between us, too many fractures that would never quite mend, and the simple, undeniable fact he’d taken the first girl I ever loved from me.
But despite all of it, despite every reason we had to stand on opposite sides, we were allies now.
And for the first time, I realized I’d finally let go of the only reason we shouldn’t be.
Exactly two hours after leaving the airport, we touched down in Nevada, ready to start the trek toward the outer Layers of Cyclos.
The second I powered on my human phone, the screen exploded with notifications: texts, missed calls, the whole frantic parade. I didn’t have anyone saved in my contacts, but I had a pretty damn good idea who it was.
I tossed the phone at Colt. “Someone wants to talk to you.”
He caught it, stared at the screen like it was a bomb about to go off, and then—because apparently today was full of bad decisions—he hesitated.
I let out a low, warning growl. “You better use your brain here, Colt. I know you’ve got one. Emma swears you do.”
He shot me a look that could’ve curdled milk. “Relax. I’m just figuring out how to fix the biggest mistake of my life, asshole.”
“Oh good,” I said dryly. “He speaks. He insults. That’s more like it.”
Caden rolled his shoulders back, the last traces of uncertainty shifting into that annoyingly solid, unshakable confidence he wore like an accessory. Then, without acknowledging a single word I’d said, he hit the call button.
“Hey.”
Grand opening.
“No, we just landed. We’re making our way to the First Layer right now.”
A lot slower than I would’ve liked, but the man wasn’t lying.
“No, I…”
I couldn’t make out what she was saying on the other end, but based on the rapid-fire bursts of noise, Emma was saying a lot. No shock there.
“Yes, I understand, but—”
I snorted under my breath. Good luck getting a word in with her when she’s worked up. The woman could outtalk a courtroom full of lawyers strung out on cocaine.
“Emma, listen to me. You’ve got it all wrong.”
I winced.
Outstanding strategy. Women absolutely love hearing how wrong they are.
This was going to go swimmingly.
“Because it would be a fucking honor to fight by your side!” Caden finally snapped, voice cracking open with something raw and loud enough that I blinked.
Huh.
Not where I thought that was headed.
And, judging by the sudden dead silence on the other end, neither did Emma
Caden dragged in a long breath, steadying himself before continuing. “Look, Stephen’s ring will get us through the Layers, but since we can’t portal through them, it’ll take us about an hour from the Sapere gate to reach the Bastille. Why don’t you meet us there?”
I couldn’t hear her answer, and Caden was still talking—softer now—when out of nowhere, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
It wasn’t a sound.
Not a movement.
Just…a shift. A wrongness creeping in at the edges of everything.
My head snapped up to Caden at the exact same moment his snapped to me.
He felt it too.
Mutual understanding, mutual threat assessment.
Then, in perfect sync, we both moved, hands dropping to our knives, blades already half-drawn before either of us even breathed.
“Emma, hold on a sec,” Caden said, sounding a hell of a lot calmer than mine would’ve been in a moment like this.
He didn’t get the chance to finish.
A soft thwick sliced through the air.
Then another.
Then pain—sharp and burning—punched into the side of my neck.
“What the—” I grabbed instinctively, fingers brushing something cold and metallic. A dart. A godsdamn human dart.
Caden spun, knife fully out now, body angled protectively, not toward me, but toward the sound he’d registered a millisecond before I had. His stance was solid, ready, lethal.
Another dart hit him in the shoulder.
He snarled, tore it out with brute force, and tried to lunge toward the shadows—toward our ambushers—but the sedative was already eating through his muscles, dragging his limbs through quicksand.
“Caden? What was tha—” Emma’s voice crackled through the still-open phone in his hand.
Caden took one staggering step forward, knife slipping in his grip as his pupils blew wide. “Stay…back,” he tried, but it was unclear who the warning was for.
My legs buckled. The ground pitched sideways.
Figures moved in fast; shadows with hands and masks and no hesitation. I tried to raise my knife, but my arm refused the command, hanging uselessly as my vision smeared into streaks.
Caden dropped to one knee beside me, still trying to point his blade at something—anything—but it fell from his fingers as he hit the pavement.
A boot kicked the phone from his limp hand. It skidded across the ground until it stopped face-up, Emma’s voice bleeding panicked and tinny from the speaker.
“Caden? Caden!”
I wanted to answer. Wanted to warn her. Wanted to do anything but collapse like a drunk ragdoll.
But the black was coming fast.
The last thing I saw was Caden’s body slumping beside mine, while I heard Emma shouting his name through a phone no one was touching.
Then everything dropped into silence.
And darkness swallowed us whole.