Annihilate (Hive Trilogy #3)(44)

That was very true. Ryder didn’t seem to care though; he advanced on Blue Eyes. I needed to defuse the situation, now.

“His actions probably saved Tessa’s life. It was pretty genius.”

Although a small part of me was plotting revenge, my jaw would heal and Lincoln had saved Tessa from being charred bacon.

Ryder growled long and low then; the sound echoed around the cavern. Hair rose on my arms at the pure menace, the animalistic nature of his response. Lincoln took a step backwards, and it was the first time I’d ever seen the composed SWAT leader look concerned. Before Ryder could react though, my groan distracted him.

I was feeling faint now. “Help,” I murmured, because I wasn’t sure I could pry Tessa off myself.

Ryder, his eyes still flaming silver, moved like a swift wind. Leaning down, he covered Tessa’s nose and palmed the back of her head to dislodge her from my arm. She only fought for a second before slumping toward me. Ryder reached out and supported us both.

Tessa lifted her head to stare at me, and I could see the way her eyes flared to life with swirls of silver. “Shit, Charlie. I’m…”

The rest of her words were incoherent as she started bawling. I reached out to comfort her.

Lucas cleared his throat. I’d sort of forgotten he was even there. “With Allistair dead, I can take control of the Quorum again. No one liked him, but he had too many secrets on us.”

Ryder nodded.

Lucas leaned forward, dropping his voice. “Let me know the day the plan goes into action. I’ll do everything I can to make sure this Hive is ready.”

I patted the still sobbing Tessa on the back, before handing her off to Ryder and standing to meet Lucas head on. “My promise to you holds. Thank you, friend. I appreciate everything you’ve done and sacrificed for me.” Lucas was one of the rare vampires who didn’t lose oxytocin. There was no other explanation for his kindness.

The smile he gave me then was like nothing I had ever seen on him before. I realized then that he loved me, in some weird small way. The way his eyes roamed tenderly over my broken jaw to my lips. I quickly looked at Ryder and the look on his face said that he saw it too. It didn’t matter; I would never be with Lucas, I would always belong to Ryder. We would bring the vampires down and I would make sure Lucas had his cure, had his human life back.

We all made our way back to the golden elevator, climbing over broken-necked vampires. The SWAT member we had lost was gone now too. Someone must have retrieved him already.

Once we got to the elevator I turned to Lucas. “Are you sure they’ll take you back?” I asked uneasily, eyeing the bodies behind him. Surely they would wake up and talk, right? I couldn’t bear it if Lucas died because of me.

Lucas gave me a sly grin, holding up the torch. “I’ll have to burn a bit more evidence, but yes, they will. Most of the vampires are under lockdown, they’ll have no idea what actually went down tonight.”

Okay then. It was hard to believe that Fugly was gone. That bastard had made my life hell, all of our lives hell. Good riddance.

“Thank you,” I said, squeezing his hand. He nodded and squeezed back. After stepping into the elevator, we selected the ground floor.

“Kyle?” I asked Ryder.

“Fine,” he said.

Tessa had been quiet this whole time, but was managing to walk on her own. I turned to face her. “You’re coming with us. By tomorrow you should be human.”

She surprised me by bursting into tears again. “Blake,” she said.

Fuck Blake. “He can’t come,” I ground out. That bastard wasn’t down in the pit with Lucas trying to help us, so I didn’t care about him anymore.

She nodded. “I know … he’s dead. Allistair got to him.”

Oh fuck. I was totally kidding before when I said he’d better be dead. Dammit. That explained a lot. That’s probably what got her thrown in the pit. A story for another time. I wouldn’t ask her about it now in front of everyone.

I just held her as the elevator doors opened. Kyle was waiting on the other side, and the sight of him made my heart soar. My family was okay. We could get through this. We could get through anything.



An hour later we were all back at Lincoln’s house. Sanctum had bailed right after the fight, but we’d see them again pretty soon. They already had a lot of their members stationed in the hospitals and blood stations. The others were heading off to join them.

The clock had started now, and we were on a three to four day countdown.

At the moment, Ryder, Kyle, and I were being interrogated as Tessa slept off her vampire hangover in the guest room. Tattooed chick’s name was Sasha and she was officially my woman crush Wednesday. She had already stitched up her own thigh wound and was now eye screwing Kyle every second she got.

It was definitely clear she had these boys by the balls. In the last fifteen minutes she had gone around to collect blood samples from all the SWAT team. I guess it was protocol after a bloody fight with the vampires to get checked and make sure no one was infected. She had some type of handheld machine, and she came over to Lincoln, who was mid-sentence.

“…I have about thirty minutes before I have to report everything that went down tonight. We lost a man—”

Sasha grabbed his finger and poked it, letting a few drops fall onto the wand before sticking it into the meter. Then she walked away as Lincoln sucked his finger, and I became very aware that I was thirsty as hell; we hadn’t had blood in a while.