Jelisette would pay for this. He would tear the vampire limb from fucking limb, deal be damned. He’d?—
“Ryker, stop.”
The words were barely a whisper, but it was as though she’d shouted them at him.
He was still wearing the headphones.
Turtles moved faster than Ryker as he turned and met Brynleigh’s black gaze from down the street.
“She hurt you,” he snarled, not recognizing his own voice.
Part of him recognized that he was being irrational. He shouldn’t care if Brynleigh was hurt. Not if she was just an asset. Not since she was his would-be murderer.
But he did.
He cared too gods-damned much.
“Yes.” Brynleigh looked resigned as she lifted a shoulder. “I told you this would happen.”
She retracted her wings, wincing as the dark appendages slipped out of sight.
He growled, the need to kill someone surging through his blood.
She sighed, her sad, obsidian eyes pleading with him. “Please, let’s just go.”
In the end, that look had Ryker marching back to the car. He didn’t want to cause her any more hurt.
By the time he’d returned, Brynleigh had buckled in and removed the earrings.
Her chin rested on her fist, and she stared out the window as blood dripped down her face. She was healing slowly, but it wasn’t fast enough for Ryker.
He’d never felt the need to take a life as strongly as he did at that moment.
“What did she give you?” he asked, jerking the car into drive. He needed to get away from here.
“A phone and credit card,” she whispered.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
And after that, no more words were exchanged between them.
CHAPTER 9
It wasn’t a Lie
Six days had passed since Brynleigh’s meeting with Jelisette.
Six very quiet, very tense days followed by silent, long nights. Brynleigh’s nightmares were back, filled with lightning and storms and death.
So much death.
When Brynleigh and Ryker came back to the bungalow after the disastrous encounter with her Maker, she had retrieved blood from the fridge and fed under the weight of the fae captain’s silent stare.
He had been upset about the way Jelisette treated her, but what the fuck had he expected?
Brynleigh had warned him that her Maker was likely to kill her, and she’d been right.