Born of Ice

“That’s your maternal advice?”


“Absolutely. If she so much as breaks one strand of hair on your head, I will rip her into so many pieces, she’ll be begging me to kill her. No one touches my babies.”

Devyn had to bite back a laugh at a threat he knew she’d more than deliver on. As his father had said, his mother was tiny, but fierce. “All right, Mom. I have to go now. I can’t kill her while I’m talking to you.”

“This isn’t a joke, Devyn,” she snapped at him.

He glanced over to Omari, who was now snoring while Manashe slept at his booted feet. “Believe me, I know. I’m going to handle it. I’m not about to endanger Omari any more than you’d endanger me.”

“Good. Love you, precious.”

“Love you, too.”

“And?”

He cringed. The one thing he hated about talking to his mom . . . The one grueling, awful thing she insisted on . . .

He made a kissing noise at her.

She kissed him back. “Good night, baby. Sleep in peace . . . after you kill that bitch.”

“ ’Night, Mom.” He hung up and ran his hand through his hair as he debated what he should do.

Confront or wait?

If he confronted Alix, she’d only lie again. At this point, he’d lost track of how many of them had come out of her.

But if he waited . . . he might be able to turn the tables on Merjack. The man hated his parents. Even though Merjack’s father had almost killed Devyn’s—had ruined Syn’s life for the first half of it—Merjack still wanted blood from them.

And for what?

Because Merjack’s father and grandfather had committed murder, and Devyn’s father had uncovered the evidence and brought them to justice for it?

Obviously sanity ran shallow in their gene pool.

But that didn’t matter to him right now. Ousting the traitor among them did.

And now that he thought about it . . . Fuck mercy and screw deceit. It wasn’t in his genetic code to play head games. Devyn Kell might be a lot of things, but a coward wasn’t one of them.

It was time to face the devil in his midst and make her squeal. He might have been blindsided by Clotilde.

But this time, that advantage was with him.



“So Devyn threw away his entire military career to save Omari?”

Nodding, Vik helped her repair the hydraulics—that was the one thing she could take care of without a spare part. She was rerouting the lurine coils to compensate for it. Should they be attacked, it would give them the boost and stability they needed without tearing up the engines.

Vik held the line higher so that she could get to the screw. “He loves that boy more than anything.”

She frowned at his low tone. “But don’t you find the concept of love unusual?”

“Not at all. Love I understand completely. It’s hatred that puzzles me. I don’t comprehend finding pleasure in cruelty.”

She paused to look at him. “You know, Vik, you’re amazingly human at times.”

“I know. But I wonder if the feelings I have are real or just electrical stimulations in my cortex that simulate human emotion. I wish I knew if they were real or imagined.”

Alix smiled at him. “And that makes you completely human, sweetie. We all have those doubts.”

“Truly?”

“Every day. In fact, my mother always says that emotions are what the gods gave us to distract us from the pain of life. They are what make life bearable and what keeps us going no matter how hard it gets.”

“And what happened to your mother?”

She jerked around to find Devyn standing behind them. When had he arrived? She didn’t understand why he got so angry at Zarina when he was every bit as silent when he moved.

Bracing herself for the deceit, she dropped her gaze back to her work. “She died.”

“When?”

Vik scowled at him. “Are you all right, Devyn? I sense an elevation in your heart rate.”

“I’m good. Why don’t you go plug in and check on things for me? I want to see if anything else has malfunctioned.”

There was no missing the accusation in his tone. Somehow he was on to her. She knew it.

Vik handed her the wrench in his hands and left them alone.

Alix swallowed as a cold chill went down her spine. Something wasn’t right.

How does he know? What had clued him in on her treachery?

More than just her feelings picked up on his hostility. She could see it in the depths of those dark eyes. See it in the way he had his jaw clenched.

He definitely knows.

“Is there a problem, Captain?”

He moved closer to her with the gait of a ferocious predator. The air around him sizzled with his restrained fury, making her feel trapped. Suffocated. If she weren’t on his ship, she’d run for it. But there was nowhere to hide that he wouldn’t find her.

“I’m curious.”

She tried to act nonchalant against the frigidity of his tone. “About?”

“You.”

You’re so busted.