Page 134 of Pulse Zero
“Please don’t hurt them.”
I brush my thumb across his wrist again, obsessed with the feel of his pulse against my skin. “Okay. I won’t.”
“Really?” he asks, clearly wanting to believe me but cautious.
Moving my hand, I lay it on the back of his, lacing our fingers together. “I will give you everything you ask of me, Cason.”
As much as I hate knowing that someonekilledhim, I blame myself as well. Had I not taken him again, had I not brought him into all of this when I spent so long determined to keep him safe instead, then he wouldn’t have felt the need to do what he did. He wouldn’t have had to experience death.
“Thank you,” he whispers. Then, after a beat, “What was it like for you?”
“Dying?”
He nods.
“It hurt like fuck,” I answer with a sad huff of laughter. “If you mean during, then…there was nothing. Can’t even describe it as darkness. It was literallynothing. I didn’t exist for a little over a minute.”
Cason makes a pensive noise, then says, “It wasn’t like that for me. There was color. A lot of it. Pinks and greens, purples and oranges, some colors I can’t even name. They were everywhere. And it was like I waspartof them, like Iwasthem. I know that probably doesn’t make sense.”
“No, not really.” I grin and add, “But I’m sure the experience is different for everyone.”
He nods, still contemplative. Then his jaw ticks, his muscles tensing.
“I wonder what Malcolm’s experience will be.”
“Don’t make Malcolm your problem. He’s mine.”
“That’s bullshit.”
I sigh because I know that look in his eyes. I’ve seen it before. It was the same one in Ash’s eyes, in Sebastian’s. But also in countless others who refused to be owned even if it meant me putting a bullet through their skull.
“I won’t convince you to walk away from it, will I?”
“Absolutely not. He doesn’t get to orchestrate my kidnapping, kill you, ruin both our lives, and just keep going. He needs to be stopped. Not just for us but for everyone he’s ever hurt or will hurt.”
I nod because I’ve felt the same for years.
“That’s what we’ve been trying to do—building something he can’t control, finding Ascended before he does, keeping them off his radar. But he has numbers higher than ours. And powerful ones. I took as many as I could when Ash and I deviated, but if—”
“Ash?”
I can’t help but grin at the jealousy in his tone.
“She and I started the resistance the first time.” At the sight of the way his nose scrunches, I lean forward and place a kiss right on the tip of it. “No need to be jealous, little menace. She was like a sister to me.”
His entire body relaxes. “Oh.” Then, a little of that tension returns. “Was?”
“She was killed. Shortly after…”
I glance away because, fuck, I don’t want to bring that up right now, all that fucking guilt I feel. Not after how amazing this night has been. But Cason is able to figure out what I don’t say.
“Oh,” he says again, his voice like a haunted echo. “Shortly after I fucked everything up.”
When I look at him again, he’s staring at our hands as tears gather in his eyes.
“Look at me, Cason.”
He does.
