23. Addie
ADDIE
HELEN JANE LONG – OVERWHELMED
The ceremony—for lack of a better word—ended with Bodie and Sebastos joining Dakarai as Shrikes and the silent witnesses departing without so much as a glance in our direction.
Cogs in a constantly moving wheel, that’s all we were. And cogs were replaceable should they break.
“Ads,” Ethan murmured under his breath. “Addie, I’m sorry—I had no idea—”
“It’s fine.”
He used the distraction of moving bodies to grab my arm and spin me round to face him—his face, a plea, his eyes, a white flag. “It’s not fine.” He swallowed roughly. “This was your designation. You worked harder than anyone—”
“I said it’s fine,” I snarled. I didn’t need reminding of all the hours I spent shooting targets while everyone else hung out or slept. I didn’t need reminding of yet another thing I had lost.
“And I said it’s not,” he growled. The ferocity of his tone startled me into silence. “It’s complete bullshit that I get to go off and do whatever it is that Eagles do, while you…”
He let the sentence trail off, scarcely able to finish the thought, let alone aloud.
I got to put my body on the line in the least noble of ways. My body was a means to an end; a tool in the arsenal of the Academy.
Being a Swallow meant seducing targets into revealing their secrets or letting their walls down. It meant actually sleeping with them or at least going far enough to let them believe that was the end goal, right before slipping a knife between their ribs.
No more guns for me.
Guns were loud. Messy. Absolutely not synonymous with anonymity and obscurity.
And as if my karma was genocide-level in a past life, Sebastos sidled up behind me, offering naught but a cold rasp of laughter. It brushed past the nape of my neck and along my cheek, inciting an instantaneous wave of nausea and a nigh-on-impossible urge to resist squeezing his balls to bursting.
“What did I tell you, little bird?” he taunted. “You were never gonna be anything more than a glorified whore. But if you want some practice before you get started”—he grabbed his microdick suggestively—“I’ve got something you can swallow.”
Bodie and Eric snickered behind him—dumb and dumber, never far away.
I smiled at him—a flash of teeth more than anything else.
“Sebastos,” I purred, saccharine sweet. “If you put anything near my mouth, make sure it’s not something you value.
” I leaned in suggestively, gratified to see him jerk back involuntarily.
“Because you can bet your last dollar I’ll bite it off, then shove it down your throat. ”
His bullshark eyes narrowed in murderous fury. “As if I’d spend my last dollar on the likes of you.”
Then, in a total dickwad move, his fist snapped out and slammed into my gut.
I hissed, folding in half, clutching at my abdomen. Ethan’s arm wrapped around me, but I jerked free, resenting any kind of physical contact after such a cheap shot.
One I should have seen coming a mile away.
“Is there a problem over here?” a familiar voice thundered.
I glanced up at my ex-physical instructor, blinking away the tears that had sprung up.
“No, Sir,” I answered, straightening though it pained me to do so. “Just cramps.”
A snigger came from the direction of Sebastos, and my brows twitched in barely contained wrath. Seb was racking up a list of reasons I should kill him, long enough to rival a shopping list.
“Won’t have to worry about those much longer, little bird,” he murmured menacingly, stepping back as Varco’s second-in-command strode through the rows of recruits passing out manila envelopes containing each of our respective futures.
Mars slammed Ethan’s into his chest without ceremony.
Eth clutched at it more out of reflex than anything else, his head jerking down when he registered a distinct metallic jangle.
Tipping the contents into his palm revealed two sheets of paper, an iPhone, a new passport stamped with the United States coat of arms, an American driver’s licence, and a set of keys.
He looked up at me, overwhelmed, and the tension fled me at the sight. I reached out to help him try and make sense of his new life. Because he wasn’t Ethan Taylor anymore. For the foreseeable future, he would be known by pseudonyms and stolen identities.
Plucking the licence out of his hand, I flipped it over, revealing his smiling face accompanied by an unfamiliar name.
“Well, hello there, Egan Thomas from Tupelo, Mississippi.” I smirked. “Nice to meet you.”
Eth scowled. “There’s no way they’ve given me some fucked up, cookie-cutter name like—” He cut himself off after discovering the identification page of his US passport revealed the same. “Well, what did you get then?” he whined.
“I haven’t got mine yet, but there’s no way it’s gonna be that bad.” I grinned up at him, snickering at his curled lip. “What do you get to drive?” I asked, almost drooling at the prospect of being behind a wheel again.
He held the sleek black rectangle up to his face, squinting at the brand emblazoned along the side edge. Eyes wide, he almost dropped the key, gawking up at Beckett.
Beckett, ever the stoic, did not react. He simply grunted, “Range Rovers are standard.”
Well, shit. I whistled, my whole body lighting up at the thought. “Do I get one too?”
Beckett’s brows lowered into his usual frown. “No. Mars,” he barked, summoning Varco’s bodybuilder-sized personal assistant.
Mars, furious at said summoning, prowled over, two envelopes left in hand. One mine, and one… Mercy’s. I was sure that was no small coincidence.
Beckett held his hand out, waiting. When Mars refused to relinquish them, he snatched the files with his left hand while his right dropped to the Glock holstered at his side.
Mars, daft but not suicidal, departed after a long, hard glare in Beckett’s direction.
I raised a brow, curious. Mars was higher ranking than Beckett, but the latter apparently scared the former into submission.
Huh.
Seeing my name printed in typewriter-style lettering across the top of one of the envelopes, I attempted to snatch it from his grip—but Beckett was quicker, lifting it out of reach.
“Hey! That’s mine!”
Okay, so maybe I pouted just a little.
“And you are apparently mine,” he growled.
“I am no such thing, you arrogant, assuming—”
“Don’t forget beastly,” Van cut in, grinning, as he walked up.
“And ass,” Pearce added, a wicked gleam sparking in his hazel eyes. Eyes that were now conveniently pinned on mine.
“Don’t even get me started on you,” I seethed—severely enough to warrant intervention.
Eth slid his body between me and our former instructors, his gaze flitting between us like he was trying to work out who was in more danger. When he angled a little more my way, I almost smirked knowing that he’d apparently decided they were.
“Couldn’t look at me all morning, and now you can’t look away,” I snarled, imagining all the ways I could make Pearce hurt for what he’d done. “At least tell me if you tanked my ranking on purpose.” I didn’t mean for it to, but my voice wavered, betraying the hurt that cut deeper than any knife.
His gaze snagged on my wobbling lip. The spark in his eyes dimmed, but he offered no answers. Nor did either of his pals, each of them staring at me in melancholic or inscrutable ways.
Fuck ‘em.
I held my hand out, wordlessly demanding my file. My future.
Beckett just shook his head slowly, eyes softening for the briefest of instances, before barking, “Lopez.”
Mercy—who’d been standing within the sea of filtering bodies, adrift—jerked to attention. She slunk over to stand on Ethan’s left, right in front of the man who’d called for her.
“Sir?” she asked, her voice trailing up at the end.
Handing Mercy her file, Beckett warned her not to open it, and to go find the man owning the second name—the one printed below hers. “Then meet us in the medlab.”
“Yes, Sir.” She shot me a troubled glance then disappeared into the throng of remaining people.
I sighed, looked up at the painted ceiling, praying for strength, then faced Beckett head-on. I stepped around Ethan, knowing my face was cold and my eyes were hard—and that they were skewering the ogre in front of me.
“I take it your name is printed below mine, then.”
The muscles in his jaw worked, chewing on unspoken syllables.
“Actually, all three of ours are,” Evander said, wincing.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I deadpanned.
What the fuck did I do in a past life to deserve this?
“Wish I was,” he muttered. “But for the foreseeable future, you are our asset and we are your handlers. Varco briefed us this morning. Beckett will take point on all future missions, I’m to be in your ears at all times, and Dek will be your eyes, keeping watch from above.
“Varco has big plans for you, Adelaide,” Pearce warned. “And it’s up to us to get you ready for them.”
Beckett cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable for the first time since I’d met him. “First up is a trip to the—”
“Medlab, I know.”
And I did know. How could I forget? How could my mind have possibly omitted the fact that Blackwing considered every possibility and dealt with its assets in a way that prevented all of the predictable fuck-ups.
And how could a Swallow fuck up?
By getting knocked up.
First, Mercy and I—and probably that other girl who glared at me more often than not—would be chauffeured into the sticky, black leather chair—a throne all assigned assassins must pass through on their way to their new life—and present our left wrists for branding.
Tattoos.
We would join the ranks of permanently marked assets—so that any could take one look at the little midnight marking and know immediately what our ranking was and where they stood in the hierarchy.
We could save them the trouble though—Swallows were always bottom tier.
And then… then came the barbaric part.
Mercy and I would be whisked into surgery and put to sleep while the Academy doctors systematically and remorselessly removed our uteruses.
This prevented any side effects of a mission gone awry.
It negated the need for planning missions around menstruation cycles and ensured the assassin could continue working indefinitely. Until they aged out or died.
I’d never met a Swallow who’d aged out.
And the only Raven I’d heard of who got out without aging out or dying was standing right in front of me, waiting to shepherd me into that very same fate.
“Let’s get this over with then.” I laced the words with venom; with all the conflicting feelings I housed on this unwanted future.
On the one hand, my adenomyosis would no longer be something I had to suffer through, month after month. On the other, I’d be an empty vessel for the Academy to unleash at will.
I was a fucking virgin for Christ’s sake. And now I was being sent into every lion’s den—armed with the tools to slay the beast, but still in range of his claws.
I guess I’d just have to sharpen my own to match.