Page 18 of A Touch of Crimson
Elijah stiffened. “Don’t say another word.”
“Someone has to say it! We shouldn’t have to live like this—fighting against our very natures and repressing our instincts. I saw you carrying Adrian’s fucking groceries. You’re better than that. Better than him!”
“Stop.” Elijah turned away. There was nothing he could do. An uprising would lead only to the deaths of everyone he cared about. “He saved my life today.”
“He’d take it just as easily.”
“I know. But right now I’m indebted to him.”
“I can’t not try, and we can’t succeed without you. I know you see what an opportunity this woman is. If Adrian is attached to her, who knows what he might give up to see her returned to him safely.”
“He wouldn’t give up his control over lycans!” Elijah sank heavily onto a bottom bunk. “If you think our protection has made the Sentinels weak, you’re delusional. They’re seraphim, trained to overpower other seraphim—the most powerful celestial beings aside from the Creator. Adrian lives and breathes his mission. The Sentinels train every day as if Armageddon is tomorrow. They would slaughter us all.”
“Better to die as lycans than to cower as dogs.”
Elijah knew Micah wasn’t the only lycan feeling reckless. Many believed the power struggle between the angels and vampires was no longer a lycan problem and that a revolution was in order to secure the freedom they felt was their due. Elijah didn’t disagree, but he also didn’t have a mate or pups to fight for. He had only himself, and hunting vampires was what he lived for. Working for Adrian gave him the intel and resources to do what he did best.
“We’re not cowering,” he said quietly. “We’re responsible for containing former seraphim. That’s huge.”
“It’s servitude.”
“What would we do with ourselves if we didn’t have that? Where would we go? You gonna take a desk job? Have a commute? Have human toddlers over to your house for playdates with your pups?”
“Maybe. I’d be free. I could do anything I wanted.”
“We’d be hunted. Every day, we’d be looking over our shoulders, waiting for Adrian to walk in the door and put us down. Running isn’t freedom.”
The redhead sat on the bed opposite him. “You’ve thought about this—a lot, it sounds like. Unfortunately, I have to pack—I’m heading back to Louisiana on a hunt—but we’ll talk more when I’m home again.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. Escape would be futile. Stop pushing.”
“I’m your Beta, El.” Micah grinned. “It’s my job.”
“I don’t need a Beta. I don’t have a pack.”
“Keep telling yourself that. Still won’t make it true. You control your beast, and somehow, that makes it strong enough to dominate the rest of us. I know you feel it, too, the way every lycan instinctively looks to you. We can’t help it. That makes you boss, whether you like it or not. We can stir shit up on our own, but when it comes down to it, we need a leader, and you’re the only one who exerts the force necessary to become one.”
Elijah stood. His uniqueness might be their one saving grace. If they couldn’t band together cohesively without him, that might just save their lives. He knew what was said about him: his ability to rein in his beast at all times was an anomaly among lycans. Fear, anger, pain—they could all trigger an unwanted shift, but he never altered unless he chose to. As far as he was concerned, that might make him a mutant, but it didn’t make him an Alpha. It sure as hell didn’t make it acceptable to lead his kind to slaughter.
“You’re asking me to lead a charge into a bloodbath,” he said, “knowing it’s pointless. Not gonna happen. Ever.”
“It’s too late to avoid, El. Centuries too late.”
6
As Lindsay licked a crumb from her lower lip, the thoughts sweeping through Adrian’s mind were unrepentantly sexual.
She was a beautiful woman—a tigress with her golden hair and dark, watchful eyes—but what roused him at that moment was the gusto with which she ate. She alternated between using chopsticks with skill and eating with her fingers, her enjoyment evident in her soft hums of appreciation and hearty appetite.
“This is really good,” she praised.
Her fervency made him smile inwardly.
Sentinels were created to be too neutral to relish anything with such passion. The highs and lows of human emotion weren’t meant for them. They were the weights that balanced the scales, the sword that leveled the field.
She held a shrimp up by the tail. “My dad took my grandma out to a teppanyaki restaurant for dinner once. She totally dug the flames and flying spatulas until the chef did this fancy maneuver that ended with a shrimp flicked onto her plate. I thought it was awesome. The guy had mad skills. But my granny just stared at the shrimp for a long minute—the stare of death, I’m telling you—then she tossed it back. She was so insulted. To her mind, the chef should have learned some manners before working in a nice establishment.”
Adrian’s brows rose.
