“I didn’t say that.” I pulled myself straight and arched a brow at her. “If a plan fails, you must take the time to reevaluate and regroup. Or you will fail again.”
She didn’t respond, but rather stared off into the darkness.
“Anna.” My voice possessed the ring of command, and she stiffened. “You did what you thought you had to do. Your initiative be admirable. Analyze the situation. What went wrong?”
When her eyes met mine, they’d glazed over.
“Report, Shade,” I barked. “What went wrong?”
A hint of anger entered her gaze.
“They had a trap set in the tunnels. Haki had sent us there rather than through the building, which is where he said they’d set the trap for you. So either Haki betrayed us, or Xumi knew he’d send us there.”
I saw the comprehension dawn in her eyes as she outlined what had happened.
“That trap be set for me,” I reminded her. “And betrayal is not something that is easy to plan for. You had every reason to believe Haki. You should not be ashamed because the plan failed.”
Some lines smoothed around her eyes with my assessment.
“However,” I added.
Her mouth twisted. “I knew there had to be ahowever.”
I be privately relieved she’d recovered enough to snark back, but I pushed on to make my point. “You be poorly prepared for this mission, and as a result, when things did go wrong, they went very wrong.”
Her chin lifted, and her eyes sparked fire. “Maybe if everyone wasn’t so obsessed with keeping usoutof this mission, we wouldn’t have rushed in poorly prepared.”
The point hit home. That I hadn’t included them in my plans be not simply due to lack of training. It be largely because I be not much of a collaborator. It had been my biggest issue leading a team of Bellatis, a condition I be well aware of, but had done little to alter.
She be not done with me either.
“You rushed offon your ownto investigate a dangerous underworld operative. You didn’t even tell anyone exactly where you were going or what you were doing. Which meant Cara had to hare off to find you—to warn you,” she scolded.
I be just formulating a reply—difficult because she be, in fact, one hundred percent correct—when I felt them.
Just a tickle, at first. They be trying to hide their energy, as we’d been taught. But I be so raw on the heels of what Anna and I had just done that I be hypersensitive.
And I’d always been the best there be at tracking energy.
Oblivious to my preoccupation, Anna had warmed to her topic. “Don’t ignore me just because I’m right.”
“You be correct,” I said.
Her mouth opened, and closed again. But my mind raced. I didn’t reach for what I had sensed, because that would alert them that I knew they be there.
But as soon as I recognized them, a good many things fell into place.
It be not Xumi that wanted me. Talakai was just the bait for another who did.
And one driving need consumed me. I couldn’t let them find Anna. Because with her power so raw, sofull, they would immediately recognize that she be special. And my scent all over her would tell them that she be also specialto me.
I needed to get her out of here.
“Sebastian? Are you even listening to me?”
Anna stood with her hands on her hips. She had said a few other things to make her point, but I hadn’t heard her.
“We have to go,” I said.
