Chapter 7 – NIKOLAI
NIKOLAI
"Are you fucking insane?"
The words tear from my throat before I can stop them, echoing off the kitchen walls.
Raven sits across from me, the picture of innocence with those wide blue eyes that I know damn well hide a calculating mind.
My fingers clench around my coffee mug so hard, I'm surprised the ceramic doesn't shatter.
"We all go to Surhiira," he repeats, as if I simply failed to hear him the first time rather than questioning his sanity.
"That is the stupidest fucking idea I've heard since Reese suggested we use explosives to fish," I snarl, slamming my mug down.
Coffee sloshes over the rim and onto my hand, but I barely notice the burn.
"Let me repeat, since it clearly didn't sink in the first time—Surhiira shoots outsiders on sight.
They're the most isolationist bastards on the fucking continent.
We may as well walk into an active volcano. "
"I hate to agree with Nikolai on anything," Geo rumbles from across the table, "but walking into Surhiira is suicide. Especially for a band of wasteland rejects. Present company excluded," he adds, giving Cosima a lopsided grin that makes me want to put a fork through his remaining eye.
"See? Even the curmudgeonly pirate thinks so." I gesture at Geo, who immediately scowls.
"Watch it, Vlakov."
"Make me, shithead."
Raven groans and presses his fingers into his temple like he has a migraine.
The Knight lets out a low growl, his claws scraping loudly against the wooden table leg in clear warning. I still don't know what to make of this towering monster. I do know the way Cosima looks at him makes my skin prickle with jealousy.
Cosima sits there, still as a statue, her violet eyes moving from face to face as we argue.
I can practically see the wheels turning in her mind as she considers Raven's idiotic plan.
Her damp silver hair hangs loose around her shoulders, making her look more like a water nymph from old Vrissian folk tales than the high-society omega from Reinmich that she is.
She's beautiful when she's thinking, she's beautiful when she's laughing at my expense, and she's somehow most beautiful of all when she's simmering with rage.
Which is often enough.
"It's not suicide if we have the right approach," Raven says, leaning forward.
There's an eagerness in his eyes that I recognize all too well.
The thrill of the scheme, the con, the game.
It's what made him so good at what he did back in the day.
Before he decided to throw all that potential away on running a glorified brothel.
"We have assets they might value. Information, tech—"
"They have most advanced tech on continent," I interrupt. "The planet, as far as any of us knows what's left beyond this shithole. What are you going to offer them? Your collection of exotic colognes?"
Raven's eyes narrow at me, but he doesn't take the bait. "We don't need to get into the capital. Just close enough to make contact. Use diplomatic channels."
"Diplomatic channels," I echo flatly. "That silver tongue of yours is only useful if you can manage to use it before they put a bullet in the empty space between your eyes."
"I don't see you offering any better ideas," Raven points out, smug as ever. "And I don't know why you're so heated about this. It's not like your opinion matters. You'll follow her like a lost stray puppy regardless."
The accusation hits like a slap in the face, mostly because he's not wrong and we both know it. I open my mouth to fire back a retort, but Cosima's voice stops me short.
"There is someone who would have the answers I want," she says, her violet eyes glinting. "Azarel's brother."
"His brother?" I echo.
"Plague," she clarifies. "One of the Ghosts who kidnapped me."
I bark out a harsh laugh. "Oh yeah, great idea.
Let's go knock on the Ghosts' cozy little retirement cottage right smack in the middle of a highly militarized territory known for its hostility to outsiders.
They can gun us down humanely, assuming the feral mutant doesn't chew us up first." I glance warily at Knight. "No offense, big guy."
He growls in response. Growling is pretty much his only response, but somehow I can tell this one's not friendly.
Cosima's eyes narrow. "You don't need to go."
"Bullshit," I snarl, leaning forward. The movement pulls at the wounds in my back, but I ignore the pain. "You think I'm letting you waltz into that den of vipers unprotected?"
Technically, she'd be far from that considering I know Knight will be there. And Raven, which means Geo will undoubtedly be tagging along. But leaving her side wasn't an option from the moment I laid eyes on her and caught her scent, even if she doesn't know it.
"You're just a mercenary the Ghosts paid to hold me captive," she cuts me off, her voice cold. "Why do you even care?"
Her words hit harder than they probably should. Harder than words ever have. I stare at her, struggling to keep my expression neutral. "Is that really all you think you are to me? After all the shit we've been through?"
She tilts her chin up, defiant. "What else, then?"
I freeze, the words catching in my throat.
How can I tell her? How can I explain that from the moment I caught her scent, something fundamental shifted inside me?
That the idea of her in danger I've never thought twice about running into on my own makes my blood run cold in a way I've never experienced before?
That she's my fucking mate?
"Yes, Nikolai," Raven says pointedly, his blue eyes glittering with barely concealed amusement as he leans forward, his chin propped smugly on one hand. "What else?"
I glower at him, every muscle in my body locked tight. This isn't how I wanted to do this. Not here, not now, with all these prying eyes.
Not when she's still raw from that royal bastard's betrayal.
Without a word, I push myself up from the table and stalk out of the room. I need air. I need space. I need to hit something—preferably until it bleeds. I ignore the judgmental muttering that follows me out of the room.
I stalk the circuit of Geo's underground empire, my feet carrying me through dark corridors and bustling marketplaces without conscious thought. The further I get from that room, from her, the tighter my chest feels.
What the fuck is happening to me?
I've never been the type to get attached. I've had my share of bed partners, of business associates, even a few I might generously call friends. But this? This bone-deep need to protect, to possess, to... what?
Love?
The very thought is the antithesis of everything I am. Everything I've made myself into.
Love, genuine connection, attachment—they're all things I've never had the luxury of having. Learned that lesson a long fucking time ago.
Love is weakness, Niko. Never let yourself love something you're not willing to lose.
My father's words echo in my mind all these years later, proven true time and time again.
I round a corner and nearly collide with a group of drunk alphas stumbling out of one of the seedier bars. One of them, a burly bastard with more muscle than sense, takes offense to my presence in his personal space.
"Watch where you're going, asshole," he slurs, shoving me hard enough to make me stagger back a step.
On any other day, I might have let it slide. Might have written it off as not worth the effort. But today? Today I bare my teeth in a feral grin.
"Make me," I growl.
He takes me up on the offer, unlike Geo. But he can't quite manage to follow through.
The fight is short, brutal, and exactly what I needed. By the time the last alpha hits the ground, my knuckles are split and bleeding, but the red haze of rage has receded slightly. It's not enough—not nearly enough to quiet the storm in my head—but it's something.
I continue my circuit, leaving a trail of bruised egos and bloody noses in my wake. Fights are even easier to come by than whores in this place. But no matter how many bones I break, no matter how much blood I spill, I can't shake the image of Cosima's face when she asked me what she was to me.
Fuck.
I don't know how long I wander the tunnels, picking fights and nursing my wounds.
But eventually, I find myself back at Geo's quarters.
As I walk toward the last room where I keep the few belongings I've managed to accumulate here, I catch a glimpse of movement through the crack of a door across the hall.
Cosima stands in the middle of the room, carefully folding clothes and placing them in a glossy black suitcase she probably got from Raven. Knight looms behind her, his massive frame dwarfing everything else in the room.
She reaches up, touching his silver mask with a gentleness I've never seen her display toward anyone else. The beast actually leans into her touch with a broken purr like some overgrown housecat, his human hand coming up to gently brush her cheek with the backs of his scarred fingers.
What I'm seeing is so far removed from the snarling, feral monster I kept in that pit that for a moment, I wonder if I'm hallucinating.
But his tenderness isn't quite as shocking as hers. Somehow, he seems more capable of it. After all, he crawled out of the same mud as the rest of us. He's a mutated hellbeast, but still mortal. Still a human being, as much as he doesn't look like one.
Cosima, on the other hand…
She seems too perfect, too distant to be real. Just like the moon her scent conjures images of every time I take a breath, whether she's near or not. Like she's inside my mind, my very soul infected with her in a way no fever could ever burn out.
She's a goddess.
Raven is right about that. It was one thing when I thought she just hated all alphas. When I thought there was no way of getting past those towering walls of ice and stone that surround her heart.
Now that I know it's me she hates?
That she's capable of tenderness, vulnerability, even love, whether she realizes it's in the way she looks at him or not…
"What does he have that I don't?" The words slip out before I can stop them, barely more than a whisper.
"Two eyes?" Raven's voice comes from directly behind me, dripping with false sweetness.
Leave it to him to turn my self-loathing into external loathing.
I spin around, a snarl building in my throat. "Fuck off."
Raven's lips curl into a sneer. "Now, now. Is that any way to talk to the person who so graciously packed your bag while you were off having your little tantrum?"
My eye narrows. "Don't touch my fucking things."
"You're welcome," he says airily, reaching out to wipe something from my cheek. His fingers come away stained red. "I see you found a way to occupy yourself."
I jerk away from his touch. "None of your damn business."
Raven's expression softens slightly, and for a moment, I see a flicker of the boy I pulled out of that hellhole all those years ago. The one who used to look at me like I hung the fucking moon.
"You should tell her," he says quietly.
I snort. "Tell her what?"
"That you're her mate," Raven replies, his voice uncharacteristically serious. "She deserves to know."
I laugh, but there's no humor in it. "Right. Because that worked out so well for you."
The barb hits its mark. Raven flinches, hurt flashing across his face before he masks it with his usual easy smile. "At least I had the balls to try."
Before I can respond, he turns on his heel and saunters toward the room where Cosima is packing.
"You'd better go say goodbye to your 'Daddy' soon," I call after him, unable to resist getting in one last dig.
Raven's steps falter for just a moment, but he doesn't look back. I watch as he approaches Cosima, saying something that makes her laugh. The sound cuts through me like a knife.
I've never made her laugh like that.
I push the thought away and go to collect my things, resigning myself to yet another suicide mission. Because there's no doubt in my mind now.
We're going to fucking Surhiira.
Gods help us all.