Chapter 68
SIXTY-EIGHT
EMMA
“Wake up, baby, please.”
A voice. A male voice.
Rough, ragged, clawing through the darkness like it was trying to pull me up from somewhere deep.
“I need you to open those beautiful eyes for me. I need you to come back to the surface and fucking look at me.”
His tone was slipping, more urgent, like the panic was getting harder to cage. Something about it cut through the static in my head, brought me closer to the edge of consciousness.
Where was I?
I felt like I was floating. Or falling. Everything was heavy and warm and oddly soft, like the moment before sleep, but too broken to be peaceful.
“Emma,” he growled, harsher now. “If you don’t open your eyes right now, I’m prying them open with my bare hands.”
Wow dude, that was rude.
Now I was definitely not opening them.
There was a pause. Then, softer, barely a whisper, “Nightcrawler…”
The word curled through the haze like a tether. Familiar. Mine.
“Don’t make me wish for death when you just saved my life. Give me your eyes, baby. Now.”
My chest tightened.
Caden.
I forced my eyelids open.
The world came back in blurs and blinding light, but the first thing I saw was him.
Hovering over me, sweat-soaked, eyes wild, face contorted in pure, unfiltered fear.
“Oh, thank fuck,” he rasped, the sound cracking in his throat, then yanked me into his arms like he couldn’t help it, like something in him had broken and would never fully set right again.
His face buried in my neck, breath shaking against my skin, arms locked around me like letting go would kill us both.
“You’re alive,” he breathed, like he wasn’t saying it to me but to himself. “You’re alive, you’re okay, and you’re alive.”
For a while, I let myself float in that, in the warmth of him.
But slowly, reality started to bleed back in.
The ache in my limbs.
The stickiness of blood drying on my skin.
The cold stone beneath us.
The fabric clinging to my body: not mine. Not soft or clean. It was ripped and stiff and smelled like blood and smoke and Caden.
I glanced down, sluggish and slow, and realized I was wearing his jacket. What was left of it, anyway. Torn down the middle, hanging off one shoulder. Barely enough to cover me.
The rest of me was scraped and bruised. Bare legs. Dried blood painted across my skin like war paint.
My voice came out hoarse. “What happened?”
He pulled back enough to look at me, his gaze still glassy with emotion. He blinked like he didn’t believe I was truly speaking.
“What do you remember?” he asked, his tone soft.
I searched the fog in my head. The dark corners where pure pain echoed.
“I remember…” My brow furrowed. “Agony. And burning. And…your voice.”
His throat worked, like swallowing physically hurt. He reached up slowly, ran his fingers through my hair with the softest, most reverent touch.
“You healed me,” he said finally. “You healed both of us.”
I blinked.
“Beneath the Chief’s bubble,” he added. “You shouldn’t have been able to do that. It should’ve killed you. It almost did, but somehow…your healing counteracted the magic of the bubble.”
His fingers traced down from my hair to the side of my face, brushing lightly over my temple, then trailing down to my arm.
He moved slowly, his hands checking the length of my limbs like he was trying to reassure himself I was still all here, that nothing had been taken.
And gods… There was something in the way he touched me. Not lust. Not relief. Something raw. Terrified.
He didn’t look away from me, not even for a second.
“I don’t know how you did it,” he said, voice shaky. “But you brought both of us back.”
I reached for him, weak but needing to feel him too. My fingers found his wrist. His skin was warm.
“We’re alive,” I whispered, the words barely audible, spoken more for myself than for him. A fragile string of syllables I needed to say out loud to believe.
His gaze stayed locked on mine, fierce and fragile all at once. “We are.”
His breath hit mine—ragged, hot, trembling—and then our mouths crashed together.
Hard.
Teeth clashed. Noses bumped. It didn’t matter.
His hands were in my hair, on my face, everywhere at once, shaky, frantic, grounding and desperate all at once. I grabbed fistfuls of his shirt, pulling him closer, needing to feel him, to know this was real, that he was solid beneath my hands and not some dying dream.
Our lips moved like we were trying to breathe through each other, too hard, too fast, soaked in blood and panic.
Tears blurred my vision, but I didn’t stop kissing him. I couldn’t. His mouth was warm and trembling, tasting like salt and something I’d thought I’d lost forever.
He kissed me like he was afraid I’d vanish in the space between blinks. Like if he didn’t feel every inch of me, right now, he might lose me all over again.
We were breathing too hard, and still, we didn’t pull away.
He made a sound—half groan, half sigh—and I felt it echo in my ribs.
His arms crushed me to his chest, and I let him. Let him hold me like he could press us into the same shape. Like he could keep me here with the sheer force of his grief and love.
I kissed him harder, our lips slipping, colliding, shaking.
It wasn’t a perfect kiss.
It was a survival kiss.
A we made it kiss.
A don’t ever leave me again kiss.
When we finally broke apart, barely a breath between us, our foreheads pressed together, he touched my cheek with the gentlest brush of his thumb. He wiped away the tears I hadn’t realized were still falling, as if he could erase the pain with that one quiet gesture.
His eyes were red, his voice thick with everything unspoken. “We’re okay,” he said, like he needed to believe it as much as I did. “We’re both okay.”
And maybe we weren’t. Not really.
But I nodded anyway.
Because for one fragile, borrowed second—after tasting the quiet desperation in his kiss—I almost believed it too.
After a few long, heavy beats of silence, I asked the question I hadn’t wanted to form. The one that had been clawing at the edge of my consciousness since the moment I woke.
“Where are James, Cara, and Stephen?”
Caden exhaled slowly, then pulled back enough to meet my eyes.
“I have no idea,” he said, and there was a low tension behind his words that made my stomach twist. “I woke up in this cell with you and those assholes. I don’t even know how much time has passed.”
Cold, creeping dread pressed against the back of my neck like a hand.
“Maurice really died?”
Caden nodded once. “He won’t come back from the dead a second time.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that—relief, grief, something uglier tangled in between—but this wasn’t the time or place to untangle it.
“We need to break out of here,” he added, as his jaw tightened in anger. “Find the others, and kill that fucking High Chief, once and for all.”
My gaze shifted to the room around us. Stone. Seamless. No windows. No visible doors. Nothing but blank walls and blood and silence.
“How are we supposed to get out of a room that has no doors, no windows…without translation?”
Caden looked at the wall.
Then at me.
“What?” I whispered, narrowing my eyes.
He almost smiled. Not the cocky grin I was used to. This one was quieter. Calmer. Like he knew something I didn’t and wasn’t afraid of it.
“You can get us out of here.”
I blinked. “I can…what?”
He reached up and gently tucked a string of my hair behind my ear, the touch so gentle, so intimate, I almost forgot we were bleeding on the floor of a prison cell.
The way he looked at me. Gods, like I could do anything.
“You’re going to break the bubble.”
I laughed once. “That’s not possible.”
“Sure it is,” he said, almost too sure. “A bubble is no more than a form of translation. Complex but still built from the same rules. If it can be built, it can be undone. But to break it, you must understand it. Really understand it.”
I stared at him like he’d lost his damn mind. “Let me guess: you’re going to explain?”
He nodded. “I’ll walk you through it. You’ll undo the weave of the bubble from inside, while counteracting its effects by healing yourself as you go.”
“Caden…” I started, shaking my head, “that’s—”
“You already did it,” he said, cutting me off softly.
“You split your haze in two. You healed us both. Underneath a bubble. You shouldn’t have been able to survive it, but you did.
You counteracted the kill effect without even knowing how.
Now all you have to do is the same thing again but use both hazes instead of only your golden one. ”
I stared at him.
Like really stared.
Because what he was asking—what he believed—was insane. And he looked at me like there was no one else in the world who could do this. Like if anyone could rewrite the laws of translation, unravel the impossible, and survive it, it was me.
The terrifying part?
Some small, buried part of me almost believed it too.
“Okay,” I murmured, nodding slowly. “Still sounds like a suicide mission...but I’d rather go out trying than sit here waiting for another round of Chiefs to tear us apart.”
Caden squeezed my hand, eyes steady on mine.
“Then let’s rewrite the rules,” he said, his voice alive with something dangerous. “Has anyone ever explained to you what a bubble does?”
I shook my head slowly. “No.”
He leaned back slightly. “Think of yourself as fire. When an Amplifier’s activated, it’s like pouring gasoline over that fire. It intensifies it. Makes it too big, too wild to contain. It doesn’t just burn, it consumes everything, including its source.”
He paused, exhaling hard. “The bubble is the opposite. It’s not fuel, it’s water. It suffocates the fire. It takes away the oxygen, snuffs it out. It doesn’t only suppress translation. It kills it by killing whoever is behind it.”
I nodded slowly, the metaphor beginning to crystallize. “So…if we had both—fire and water—they’d cancel each other out.”
“Exactly,” he said. “But we don’t need both.”
He looked at me with something close to reverence.
“We have you.”
Realization settled over me like ice and adrenaline all at once.
“Nightcrawler,” he said, and the nickname hit me like a jolt to the spine. His voice was firm, certain.
“Both your hazes—your red and your gold—they can work together. You just have to let them. Let the scarlet one burn hot enough to unravel the bubble from the inside. Let the golden one heal the damage, stop it from killing you. Fire and water. Destruction and salvation. One to break it. One to survive it.”
His eyes locked with mine, holding nothing back.
I swallowed. “Okay, I’ll try.”
Caden’s expression hardened. “Not good enough. I don’t need you to try, Emma. I need you to do this.”
Fear clawed at my throat, but I forced it down. I didn’t have room for it. Not now. Not when our lives were on the line.
Clenching my jaw, I decided then and there I would godsdamn rise to the occasion and do this.
I gave him a curt nod before closing my eyes.
Breathed deep.
And reached inward.
My red haze was already there, simmering right beneath the surface, thrashing against the bubble like it wanted to break free and burn.
The more I touched it, the hotter I became.
My skin felt like it was blistering from the inside out.
The fire was waiting, coiled and snarling on the other side, ready to tear me apart if I slipped.
I let go.
Released my energy, and it ignited.
The fire shot through me like lightning, burning down my limbs, across my chest, into my throat. I screamed as my nerves caught flame but didn’t stop.
“Counteract it, Emma!” Caden’s command cut through the heat, sounding almost angry.
I quickly reached for the gold.
It surged forward like cool light, latching onto the damage, healing what the red tried to destroy. My own power was eating me alive and saving me at the same time.
“That’s it, love!” Caden’s voice cracked, breathless with awe. “You’re doing it! Keep going!”
I pushed harder, let the two forces intertwine, wrap around each other, twist and knot and merge. Red and gold. Chaos and light. They spiraled outward, pouring from my skin in a blinding pulse of energy.
I screamed, the sound tearing through the walls, and then everything went still.
When I opened my eyes, Caden was standing in front of me, his Chela already drawn and glowing in his right hand. His grin was wild, unfiltered pride lighting up every inch of his face.
“You broke the bubble,” he said, awe and adrenaline tangled in his tone. “You fucking did it.”
Before I could even catch my breath, he pulled me to my feet like the space between us was choking him.
My pulse spiked.
His eyes locked on mine, blazing with something wild. Something feral.
Heat poured off him in waves. I felt it everywhere: on my skin, in my spine, deep in the hollow place behind my ribs where fear and desire twisted into the same ache.
His gaze dropped to my mouth.
His face was close. Too close. Not close enough.
His chest rose and fell like he was struggling to hold something back. And for a single, breathless, suspended heartbeat, I thought he was going to kiss me.
Not gently.
Not carefully.
The kind of kiss that destroys a person.
I leaned in, already halfway lost, when—
Caden dies if you love him.
The thought hit like a physical blow. I jerked back, vision blurring hard at the edges.
Caden stilled.
Not startled, alert. His grip loosened enough to give me space, his gaze snapping to my face, catching the panic I couldn’t quite hide.
“Hey,” he murmured, like he was grounding a live wire. “It’s okay.” A beat. “You’ve been through hell. Take all the time and space you need.”
I swallowed hard and nodded once.
Before I could explain—or even pull in a full breath—his mouth curved into a devastating smile. He lifted a hand and translated a clean set of clothes onto me with a single snap.
When he looked at me, there was no mistaking it. No mask. No indifference. Only raw, stunned intensity.
He shook his head once. “You broke a bubble, Emma. No one in the entire history of translation has done that. No one. And you just—”
He cut himself off, like even his own words couldn’t catch up with what I’d done.
I grinned, weak, but wicked. “Ugly ass spider for the win.”
His laugh cracked the air, full and beautiful. Then he turned, manifested his Nexus, and sliced through the space in front of us with a single sharp motion.
The portal tore open: green and pulsing. Like vengeance itself had been summoned.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said, stepping forward, his eyes lit with something fierce. “And finally kill some Chiefs.”