The Watchers cannot train you like I can. But to get to me, you must go with them.
Nikolai swallowed. Go with them? He’d been raised to believe his safety lay in avoiding them.
Nikolai turned away from Lucas and Aria, gazing out a broken window to the dying sun. He closed his eyes, andreached.
They were there. Still only two. They had come a little closer, but were waiting, as aware of him as he was of them.
Up until now, he’d only brushed the surface enough to track their progress. But this time, he selected one, and pushed his presence deeper.
As he plunged further, he sensed her flinch, and her panic to erect walls in an effort to keep him out. But he swept them aside with ease. He couldn’t read her thoughts, but her emotional energy was another matter. A fierce instinct to protect all life was overridden by the suspected threat to it. Threatened by him. Anger that he existed. A desire to control him by any means necessary.
And beneath it all, fear. Fear of him.
He pulled out, and plunged into the other one. The emotions were even stronger in the second Watcher. He caught her desire for him to becontained.
Nikolai had spent his life running as free as the animals he moved among. The concept of being restrained—his eyes popped open to black fog swirling around his body. Lucas moved far away from him.
“They want to cage me,” Nikolai said. His voice vibrated with the strength of his horror.
Aria’s brows drew down, and she took a step toward him. Lucas grabbed her by the arm to hold her back, but she pulled herself free. “No,” she protested. “She wants totrainyou. That’s what she said, and I believe her.”
Nikolai shook his head. “That isn’t what I got from the other two. They are afraid of me. And they want me controlled.”
Aria scanned his gaze. “You saw that from them?”
Nikolai nodded.
“Do you deny that you suck life energy like a psychic vampire?” Lucas asked. His eyes had gone pure emerald.
Aria shot him a look. “What’s a vampire?”
“A creature that sucks blood from others,” Lucas explained.
“They don’t really exist,” Nikolai said. Then he glanced at Lucas. “Do they?”
“No,” Lucas admitted, but as he stared, he added, “I don’t think so, anyway.”
“He doesn’t suck blood,” Aria protested.
Nikola ignored her indignation as he fought to remain calm. “I had my reasons for what I did,” he stated, but his heart pounded. Nothing excused the death of the animals and trees...
“He doesn’t deserve to be caged for that,” Aria protested.
“We only have his word that those Watchers want to contain him,” Lucas pointed out.
She rounded on him. “What would you do in their place?”
Lucas locked gazes with her. His eyes flashed, but then they shifted from her to Nikolai. “I’d lock his ass up.”
Nikolai held his breath. Would Lucas try to stop him from escaping? Not much the Morph could do, but if he attacked, Nikolai didn’t want to hurt him.
Aria’s back straightened as she spat the words, “No way I’ll let them do that.”
It took a few long moments for Lucas’s expression to progress from active glare to resignation. “No. I guess not.” He glanced out the door to the fading sunlight. “So if we get to the gate, Aria and I have decided to take you through to the human realm.”
The way Aria’s mouth tightened indicated that this had also not been an easy discussion. But a part of Nikolai relaxed, just a fraction. He didn’t know why it mattered that Lucas was on board, but it did. And his heart lightened at the thought of going home.
“I can hide in the desert,” he said.
