Chapter 27
CIPHER
I scooped Annie up into my arms and she gave a startled yelp, her arms automatically wrapping around my neck.
I launched us straight up into the fog, feeling her grip tighten as the ground disappeared beneath us.
The fog swallowed us whole, wrapping around us like a blanket, obscuring everything but the woman in my arms.
“Holy shit,” she gasped, her fingers digging into my shoulders.
I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped me, part exhilaration, part disbelief that I was doing this. That I was showing her this part of me. That I wasn’t hiding.
“You okay?” I asked, adjusting my hold on her as we ascended.
“Yeah,” she breathed, her eyes wide as she looked around at the nothing surrounding us. “It’s just different when it’s not Havoc.”
I tightened my grip on her, suddenly irrationally jealous of the man who got to experience this with her first. “Better or worse?”
She tilted her head, considering. “Different,” she repeated. “With Havoc, it was like being strapped to a rocket. With you,” she paused, her gaze meeting mine. “It feels more controlled. It’s like I can feel you calculating everything.”
“I am,” I admitted, because of course I fucking was. The air pressure. The temperature. The wind speed. The exact amount of force needed to propel us upward without jarring her. The precise angle of ascent to minimize resistance.
Annie laughed, the sound bright in the muffled silence. “Of course you are.”
We continued upward, the fog growing thinner with each passing second. We broke through the top of it, the air suddenly clear, the stars visible overhead.
Annie gasped, her grip on me loosening slightly as she took in the view. Below us, the fog blanketed the city like a silver sea, glowing faintly with the reflected lights of Chroma Bay. Above, the night sky stretched endlessly, stars scattered across the darkness like diamonds.
“Beautiful,” she whispered.
“Yes,” I agreed. But I wasn’t looking at the view. I was looking at her face, illuminated by starlight, her eyes wide with wonder.
“Ready?” I asked.
Annie’s eyes sparkled with a mix of fear and anticipation.
“Yes,” she breathed.
That was all I needed to hear.
I tilted us forward and we plummeted back into the fog. Annie’s body tensed against mine, her breath catching as gravity reclaimed us. I felt her heart hammering against my chest, matching the wild rhythm of my own.
For anyone else, this would have been fucking terrifying—hurtling through opaque nothingness with no sense of direction or distance. For me, it was a complex equation of air pressure, sound waves, and temperature gradients that mapped the invisible world around us.
I banked hard left, feeling Annie’s grip tighten as we changed direction. Her squeal of surprise transformed into laughter as we emerged from the thickest part of the fog into the neon-drenched heart of Chroma Bay.
The city unfolded beneath us, a glittering labyrinth of light and shadow. Skyscrapers rose like luminous monoliths, their edges softened by the wisps of fog. Massive digital billboards painted the fog in ever-changing colors—electric blue, bright pink, molten gold.
I weaved between buildings, close enough that Annie could reach out and touch the glass if she wanted. The reflections of neon signs blurred as we passed, creating streaks of color that followed in our wake.
I hadn’t flown like this, without the constraints of my suit, in years. I’d forgotten how it felt. The pure fucking freedom of it. The rush that came from pushing the limits of what my body could do.
No calculated public persona. No technology to moderate my abilities. No pretending to be less than I was.
Just me. Just this power that was mine by birth, not by science or serum.
And Annie knew. She fucking knew, and she was still here, clinging to me as we danced through the urban canyons of Chroma Bay.
I pushed faster, testing the limits of what I could do with Annie in my arms. Her weight was nothing to me, a minor calculation in the physics of our flight, but her presence was everything.
The warmth of her body against mine. The trust implicit in the way she held on to me.
The knowledge that she saw me, really fucking saw me, and wasn’t afraid.
It felt like flying in a different way. Like something inside me that had been caged and confined was finally stretching its wings.
I pushed us higher, ignoring the biting chill of the altitude. I drove us straight up through the dense gray until we shattered the ceiling of the fog bank. The neon lights bled upward, washing across Annie’s skin. Acid green and blood red painted her cheeks, her throat, the curve of her jaw.
I stared at her face, tracking those shifting colors.
I needed to scrub every trace of that fucking gala from her memory.
I needed to erase Valor’s hands on her waist, the flash of the cameras, the hollow, broken look in her eyes.
I wanted my face, my power, this exact moment, to consume her until she forgot everything else.
I tipped us forward.
Gravity seized us, dragging us into a dead freefall. Annie gasped, her fingers digging deeply into my shoulders. The wind roared in my ears, tearing at our clothes as we plummeted back toward the earth. We were falling at terminal velocity, seconds away from a catastrophic impact.
Her eyes were wide, locked onto mine. I held her gaze, letting the rush of the drop overtake us both. The last wall between us was gone. The Trueborn secret, the one truth I guarded with lethal paranoia, belonged to her. She held the power to destroy me, yet she’d protected me instead.
A vicious, possessive joy clawed its way up my throat and settled deep in my chest. I didn’t have to hide the mechanics of my mind or the raw, unnatural power of my body.
I could just be the monster she willingly let into her bed.
She was my entire fucking world. Every calculation, every breath I took revolved around the woman clinging to me in the sky.
The joy was fucking intoxicating and I wanted to keep flying forever, keep her laughing, keep feeling her heart race against mine.
But eventually, I angled us toward the shoreline, finding a secluded stretch of beach where the fog had settled thick and heavy. I touched down gently, the sand shifting beneath my feet as I kept Annie cradled against me.
When I set her down, her legs buckled and I tightened my grip on her waist, steadying her as she found her balance.
The fog had cocooned us again, wrapping around us like a privacy shield. I could hear the gentle rhythm of waves lapping at the shore, but I couldn’t see the water. It was just us, suspended in a world of gray nothing.
Annie’s face was flushed, her eyes bright with adrenaline. Her hair had come partially undone, wisps of it framing her face. She’d never looked more beautiful.
And I’d never felt more like a complete fucking asshole.
“I’m sorry,” I said abruptly. “So fucking sorry for tonight.”
Her smile faded, replaced by wariness.
“I didn’t know how to handle...” I trailed off, the words sticking in my throat. I couldn’t even say it, couldn’t verbalize the image of Valor’s mouth on hers that had been branded into my brain.
“I should have asked if you were okay,” I continued. “Should have sheltered you after you were violated. Instead, I was...”
“A huge fucking asshole?” Annie supplied, her voice flat.
I nodded. It was something we absolutely agreed on. “Yes. I was.”
“You wanted to hurt me,” she said. “Deliberately.”
I considered denying it, softening it, explaining it away. But I owed her the truth.
“Yes,” I admitted. “But I was catastrophically wrong. And fucking stupid. I was a child who couldn’t figure out what to do with his feelings. I punished you because I couldn’t handle seeing Valor’s hands on you. His mouth on you.” My jaw clenched at the memory. “And I...”
I didn’t continue. There was no way to apologize for what I did. No words that could adequately express the self-loathing coursing through me. I’d betrayed her. Again. I’d broken her. Again.
Annie’s hands dropped from my shoulders. For a moment, I thought she was going to walk away, disappear into the fog and out of my life. I wouldn’t blame her.
“You hurt me,” she said softly. “You made me feel worthless. Disposable.”
Each word was a knife twisting in my chest. I didn’t flinch away from the pain. I deserved it.
“You’re not worthless,” I said, the words rushing out. “You’re not fucking disposable. You’re everything, fucking everything, to me. I’ve told you that before, and it’s still true. I love you. In my broken, fucked-up way, I love you.”
The words hung between us, suspended in the fog.
“You don’t have to say it back,” I added quickly. “Not after what I did. Not after how I acted.”
Annie’s brow furrowed, creating that little crease between her eyebrows. “I told you I love you,” she said, confusion evident in her voice.
“Yes, well.” I looked away. “That was before I fucked up. Again.”
“Let me get this straight.” Annie crossed her arms, her posture shifting from wounded to incredulous. “You think that because you lashed out when you were justifiably hurt, I wouldn’t love you anymore?”
I blinked. “Yes?” The answer came out like a question, because suddenly I wasn’t sure. The logic had seemed so clear in my head. I hurt her. I broke her. Therefore, she couldn’t possibly still love me.
“That’s not how love works,” she said. “People who love each other fuck up. They hurt each other. They make mistakes.”
“I made you cry,” I pointed out, the memory of her tears still fresh and raw. “I broke you.”
“Yes, you did,” she agreed. “And it hurt. It still hurts.”
I flinched at her honesty, but she continued before I could respond.
“But that doesn’t mean I stopped loving you. It just means you’re an asshole sometimes.” She stepped closer, her eyes never leaving mine. “An asshole I happen to love.”
The fog swirled around us, creating a world where nothing existed but this impossible woman who kept choosing me despite everything.
“I don’t deserve you,” I said, the words torn from somewhere deep and raw.
“Maybe not,” Annie agreed with a smile. “But you’ve got me anyway.”
She bit her bottom lip, her gaze fixed on my chest. I could hear the gears turning in her head.
“Is the beach clear?” she asked suddenly. “Any obstacles?”
An odd question, but I immediately scanned our surroundings, my senses cutting through the fog where normal vision failed.
“Thirty-seven yards of open sand directly ahead before the water. Twenty-two yards to the left before rocks. Forty-five to the right before the boardwalk starts.”
She nodded once, still worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. Something shifted in her expression. A decision made, a boundary crossed.
“Want to play?” she asked, her voice soft but steady.
The chase. The violence. The surrender.
I didn’t hesitate. Not for a second.
“Run,” I told her, my voice dropping to something darker, hungrier.
Annie held up one finger, a silent command to wait. She gripped my shoulder for balance, lifting one foot to unbuckle the strap of her heel. The shoe dropped to the sand with a soft thud, followed by its mate.
She looked up at me for just a second. In that fleeting moment, I saw everything—desire, challenge, the lingering hurt from earlier, and something that looked dangerously like forgiveness.
Then she was gone, slipping into the fog like a ghost.
I counted to five in my head, giving her a head start. Not that it mattered, I could find her blindfolded in a hurricane. Her heartbeat was a beacon, her scent a trail I could follow across continents.
But that wasn’t the point of the game.
The point was the chase. The hunt. The moment when I caught her and we both pretended she didn’t want to be caught all along.
I smiled, feeling something loosen deep within me. The night wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.
And time was up.
I stepped into the fog after her, becoming the predator she’d invited me to be.