Chapter 30
CHAPTER
THIRTY
She expected to be thrown into some sort of interrogation room, or at the very least be sat in some sort of Patrol office for questioning, but once they bypassed the intense security at the door, she was led into a… living room.
It was a weird one, to be sure. A bit sterile, and large enough to accommodate far more than the average family.
It connected to a large, open-plan dining and kitchen space.
The table was large and everything was impeccably clean.
It seemed a bit like a club house, if the only members of the club had zero personalities and couldn’t be trusted with cutlery unsupervised.
Nonplussed, she let her escorts guide her to the head of the long dining room table. She’d only just began to sit down in the chair they pulled out for her when more helmeted elves appeared like phantoms in the doorway that led to what she imagined was the communal torture chamber.
Settling her butt slowly into her chair, she looked around with growing unease.
Raw human instinct buzzed in her veins, like some unused part of her brain recognized that she was now surrounded by predators who could strip her bones in a matter of seconds.
It was something more primal than even her danger sense.
She imagined it was the feeling the first animal with a brainstem experienced when a shadow passed over them in the primeval ocean.
Swallowing hard, she lost most of her bravado as they gathered around her. No one spoke. No one touched her. They simply stood, arms locked behind their backs and feet spread, observing her.
That, if nothing else, told her all she needed to know.
Taking a deep breath, she hoarsely demanded, “Which one of you is Vesta?”
The slim figure to her right, one of her escorts, dipped her head. “I’m Vesta Kincaid.”
“So you’re Sloane’s team,” she said, gaze crawling over each of them in turn. “Cool. Can one of you please get these damn cuffs off me?”
A larger figure hopped into action immediately, like they’d been dying for something to do. Circling around her, they gently pushed her shoulders forward so they could disengage the lock on the cuffs. It was a sweet relief to have her arms free again.
Swinging them around to her front, she massaged her wrists with a muttered, “Thanks.”
“You are… Sloane’s consort.” Vesta’s tone was impossible to hear through the modulator, but her body language was as stiff as a board. “Have you allowed him to bond with you?”
Unwilling to give any information out until she knew exactly who she was dealing with and what their intentions toward Sloane were, she snapped, “No offense, but I’m sick to death of faceless elves demanding things of me today.
You want answers? Take off your helmets and tell me what the fuck is going on. ”
A ripple of unease went through the room. She watched as their helmets turned toward each other. A wave of silent communication happened, a whole conversation spoken through the tiniest shifts of muscle and tilts of their heads.
After several tense seconds, they seemed to reach a conclusion.
It was Vesta who removed her helmet first. The others followed.
That familiar hiss of air from the seal disengaging went around the room like a discordant song.
An array of elves stood before her, their helmets tucked under their arms, and every last one of them had eyes like Sloane’s — the saddest things she’d ever seen.
“Have you bonded with him yet?” Vesta asked again, in a much higher voice than one would expect from a highly trained military operative.
Cecilia looked around at the group, trying to memorize their faces and assign them to the scant information Sloane had given her. Instead of answering Vesta’s question, she demanded, “Are you going to help Sloane?”
“If we can,” a man standing farthest away from her answered. Rich magenta skin was accompanied by a dark beard and heavy eyebrows that made him look even more serious than the others. “That depends on your answer.”
Gripping the arms of her chair until her nails bit into the wood, she cautiously replied, “He told me that he’s not allowed to have a mate, and that if we were found out, they’d kill him.”
“Not necessarily,” a soft voice argued. It was the other escort, who’d revealed herself to have delicate features and a pixie cut.
“The Starsbury Protocol states that when a member of the unit discovers their consort, they are to immediately separate themselves and report to a superior officer, with permanent separation the most likely outcome. Termination is only necessary in the event of a threat to the public.”
“Why?” she cried, gaze darting between impassive, colorful faces. “Why would that be the right thing to do? Don’t you all deserve to find love if you want it? Why—”
“Because we’re too dangerous to the general population,” the one with the pixie cut explained.
“The chemical changes a bonded elf go through are extensive and dramatic. The fear is that should we suffer mental disruption during that process, or were our consorts to leave us, we could do a disproportionate amount of harm to ourselves and others.”
“Sloane would never hurt me,” she insisted.
“That is unlikely,” pixie cut agreed, “but I can only assume that the people who caused your injuries were not so lucky.”
Cecilia paled. “He was protecting me.”
“Correct,” Vesta interjected. “And that was when he wasn’t bonded. Imagine the damage he could do if you were and someone threatened you.”
“Well, then they’d fucking deserve it,” she snapped. “Are you really saying that he’d be wrong for defending me? If it’d free him right now, I’d fight all of you!”
The elves shared a long look. One of them, a younger looking man with impossibly dark, iridescent skin, marveled, “She’s very fierce.”
“The officers who brought her here told us to leave her cuffs on,” pixie cut replied, like Cecilia wasn’t even in the room. “They were terrified of her.”
Cecilia muttered, “Well, I don’t know about terrified…”
“She’ll make a good consort for Sloane,” the bearded one sighed. “If they don’t kill him.”
“Why would they kill him for finding his mate? You just said—”
“They wouldn’t kill him for that,” the young one replied, all earnestness. “They’d kill him for assaulting and abducting a civilian with the intent to cross territory lines. And for abandonment of duty, of course.”
Her mouth dropped open. In a high, squeaky voice, she exclaimed, “He didn’t do any of that! I mean, not the way they think. He— he saved my life and then took me somewhere safe. The only reason he tried to leave the territory or abandoned his post was because he believed I’d be taken from him!”
Her breath shuddered as she looked around, desperate for her only potential allies to understand. “He didn’t want to leave you. You’re his family. He just didn’t think he had another choice.”
“Your story will be more believable if you don’t look quite so awful,” pixie cut noted. Holding out an ungloved hand, she offered, “I’m Johanna Titus, the healer assigned to this unit. With your permission, I can heal your wounds and lend you more credibility.”
Elvish healers? Cecilia shook her head. That was something to think about later, when Sloane wasn’t stuck in a cell and being accused of crimes he didn’t even commit.
“Sure, fine,” she replied, dropping her hand into Joanna’s.
A warm tingle rushed through her as a peculiar kind of magic permeated her very cells, knitting things back together and fading bruises like they were nothing.
“And for your information, no, we haven’t…
bonded or whatever. He kept his helmet on. ”
The bearded one’s eyebrows lifted. “Why would he do that?”
“To give me a choice,” she answered, horrified to find her chin beginning to wobble.
Vesta caught her eye. In a low voice, she asked, “Is he your choice, Cece?”
Do I want to be with Sloane forever? She could hardly imagine what that even meant. She’d only known him — really known him, not just his shadow or a flicker on the roof — for a few days.
But something in her knew something in him, and when she tried to imagine leaving him to go about her life like it was before, she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.
Whatever their future looked like, she damn well intended to see it for herself.
“Yes,” she answered, meeting Vesta’s seafoam green eyes with a stubborn tilt of her chin, “he’s my mate. I won’t let anyone take him from me.”
Johanna set her hand down on the arm of her chair. “Good. Then our plan might just work.”
Cecilia slammed her hands on the table. “Plan? What plan?”
All at once, the elves seemed to lose some of the starch in their spines. They folded in around her, all liquid, catlike grace, to fall into the chairs closest to her.
The young one leaned his elbows on the table when he said, “I’m Cesare, by the way. I’m very excited to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too, Cesare,” she replied, carefully pronouncing his name as cheh-suh-ruh. “Now please explain to me how I can get my man out of jail.”
All excitement, he gushed, “The Starsbury Protocol is all about prevention, but there’s no rules in place for what happens if the protocol fails because no one’s gotten around it before. That means that there’s no precedent in the event that a member of the unit is already bonded to their consort.”
“Legally speaking, it’s pretty cut and dry,” Johanna butted in.
“The sovereign didn’t think to make a provision for us when he passed the new laws.
Anyone who seeks to separate an elf from their bonded consort, elvish or Other, can be charged with attempted murder, and no institution or authority is exempt from the law. ”
“They never think to plan for us,” Cesare whispered, like he was confiding a hilarious secret.
Cecilia eyed him warily. She wondered just what kind of crimes they got up to that an entire government ought to consider how each individual law might be used by seven individuals.
“If we can get you inside his cell, he can begin the process of fully bonding with you,” the bearded man explained. “It won’t necessarily absolve him of the crimes against him, but it will be illegal to separate you.”
A soft breath escaped her. “You… want to break into wherever he’s being held and sneak me in?”
“If you’re willing,” Vesta answered.
Cecilia gripped the edge of the table. It was one thing to take a lifelong mate on a whim, but it was another to break into what she could only assume was some sort of jail. If she did that and she got charged with something, her career as a teacher would be flushed before it ever even floated.
Throat constricting, she asked, “And you’re willing to do this for him, too? You could get in serious trouble.”
“He’s one of us,” Johanna replied.
“And we want consorts,” the bearded one added, a grave note in his deep voice. “If he gets one, we all get one.”
Something indescribably sad passed over Cesare’s youthful face. “We don’t want to feel like we have to run. We should be together. And we want Sloane back.”
Reaching out instinctively to cover one of his gloved hands with her own, she rasped, “I don’t know much about any of you yet, but I don’t think you should be separated, either.
You’re a family. And family helps each other.
If I can, I want to help you, too. But first we’ve got to get my man out of jail. ”
Eyes wide and white in his striking face, Cesare turned his hand over to hold hers with such a gentle grip, she wondered if he thought even the slightest pressure would break her bones. “You want to be part of Fracture?”
Fracture? God, whoever picked that name had a sick sense of humor.
She shrugged. “Are we about to do some crimes together?”
“Yes,” they answered as one.
Cecilia let out a hoarse chuckle. “Then sure, I’m a member of Fracture. Why not? A family that crimes together stays together, right? That’s how the Amauris do it, anyway.”
Vesta stood up from her seat. “Understood. Do you require a weapon?”
A nervous laugh burst from her lips for all of a second before she remembered. “Um, no,” she mumbled, pulling her hand back to pat the pocket of her puffy jacket. “They didn’t frisk me, so… I brought my own.”