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“Huh?” Foley’s fallen to his knees, his head wound spattering blood into the dirt. “She—who morphed? Whoa.” His brain finally catches up with mine. He facepalms in spite of the agony it causes. “Shit on a goddamned stick. Are you saying that Faline turned into Emma and then—”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” I snarl it from a burning throat and lips gone dry with rage. The dread that fills me is so immense, I silently beg God to reverse time by four days. This time, when we find the Source, I’ll gladly give myself up again into captivity—if only to save my soul from having to endure this moment. If only to spare Emma from having to live through this agony.

And agony is exactly what it is.

Her long, heartbroken moan is drenched in nothing less.

Her skin, flaming beyond solar heat, vows to express it even more.

And I don’t stop her. I don’t even want to. My mind is a raging firestorm as well, clouding the edges of my vision with brilliant cobalt while the center of my focus turns pure crimson. My breathtaking solar flare has grieved herself into the hue—and heat—of Mars itself. I’ve never longed to hold her more. I’ve never known, down to every last cell in my being, that it’s the last damn thing she wants.

And as a door across the driveway opens, I’ve never been more certain a sap could have crappier timing than Atticus fucking Scorpio.

Not that it changes one neuron in my mind about keeping the hell out of my wife’s way. Especially when all of those synapses now light up with a thousand watts of epiphany—the same message Emma proclaims with seething clarity as she clears the twenty feet to the bastard in three and a half seconds. The same meal she force-feeds him like the demoness she now resembles—the avenging angel I’ve never been more proud to call mine.

“You.” She roars it using every open orifice in her face, snarling it from her nose as well her lips, burning it from the bloodred flares in her eyes as well as the blinding brilliance of her bared teeth. “You!”

“The fuuuu…” But the man’s spiraling bellow is his self-interruption, hitting its peak as Emma hoists him off the ground—burning a hole into the crotch she’s using as a leverage point. “What the—holy Christ!”

“Shut. Up,” Emma snarls. “Just shut up and stop pretending you don’t know exactly what you’ve just done!”

“For the love of—”

“And don’t you dare use that word in my presence, either.” Her shoulders clench and she contorts her lips, as if realizing she’s actually got a cockroach by the bug balls. With a grimacing sob, she hurls Atticus away. He flies back, taking down his three musketeers with him. They’ve wisely stayed quiet and look determined to hang back. “Are you really talking to me about love? About love, when you’ve betrayed us like this? About love, when you’ve let that bitch with her coal-black heart come waltzing in here and—”

“Whoa.” Atticus has the balls—or maybe just the stupidity—to fumble back to his feet and pin Emma with a wider gawk than an owl in a Spider-Man mask. “I let who in?”

“Stop!” she screams back at him. “Just fucking stop it with trying to talk me into your innocence, asshole.” She emphasizes the last word by tossing Atticus back onto his, with the edges of his designer duds sizzling from the force of her wrath. “You told us you were done with Faline Garand. We trusted you were shooting straight!”

“Wh-What?” the guy sputters out. “For the love of—I, uhhh, mean—for fuck’s bloody sake, we were. And we are. What in all of Lucifer’s hell is going on?” He ditches the big-eyed mask for a pair of figurative magnifying glasses. His gape is so wide, I’m sure I can see to the back of his skull. “Holy shit. Was Faline here?”

“As if you didn’t know?” The indictment spews from Foley, looking ax-murderer lethal with his blood-streaked face and beard.

“We did not,” Atticus retorts. “I swear to God, we—oh, fuck me.” His glare has speared past us, to the mini luxury hotel on wheels they brought up the hill with them. “The motor home. It— It must have a tracking device attached!”

“That you didn’t sweep for?” This time, Alex barks the words. He, Wade, and Fershan have exited the lab after Atticus and his crew—whom our guys regard like boys with slingshots in the middle of a big-guns battlefield.

“Oh my God,” Emma spits.

“Fucking amateurs,” Foley fumes.

“Blow it up.”

And there’s the line I wasn’t predicting—especially from the individual it fires out of in a no-bullshit command.

“Ummm…boss?” mutters Athos. Or maybe it’s Porthos. I paid someone to take that final for me in high school. “You want us to blow what up?”

“What the fuck else?” Atticus bellows. “Mr. Foley is right. That bitch planted a tracker on our vehicle, and we were the idiots who let it get up here undetected. Blow the damn thing to shreds.”

Foley jabs his hands up, ready to plunge forward, but he’s beaten to the punch by a grimacing Fershan, with Kain all but yipping at his heels. If I wasn’t so fucking terrified right now, I’d be indulging some satisfaction about the instant camaraderie between those two.

Still, Foley pounds back up and approaches Atticus with a no-bullshit stride. “So even though she’s found the compound already, you want to attract extra attention to our coordinates, plus possibly start a raging brush fire, because…why?”

“It. Doesn’t. Matter.” The new words from my wife are separated by brutal stabs on the t’s, which also spike her coloring from dark gold to raging red. But just as fast, she’s whirling from them all and lunging back against me. “Doesn’t anyone understand?” she blurts into my chest, her form stiffening beneath my hold. “It doesn’t matter! They’re gone! Th-They’re…gone. She took them. She took them…disguised as me.” With that, the grief takes over. Her shoulders start to shake. “I hate that bitch. I’m going to kill her, Reece. I’m going to kill her!”

I clutch her tighter. Lower my head until I can feel her desperate breaths against my neck. Squeeze my eyes against their own encroaching sting but am unsuccessful. I don’t care. There’s only one goal I do care about now, and I rasp it into my wife’s waiting ear.

“And I’m going to help you.”