“Don’t—” Elijah was stepping toward her, but it was too late.
She yanked down her walls and gulped at Luis’ fear, dragging it into her own body in heaping amounts, barely able to catch her breath before another mountain of terror landed inside her. It was stacking into her body like great big lead blocks, forming a precarious, menacing tower.
Elijah caught her arms, spinning her to face him, his cold eyes flicking between hers, his handsome, aristocratic features a little blurry. “Stop it,” he whispered harshly. “You can’t afford to be sick right now, Carter. This attack could happen at any moment.”
She grappled with her walls, pushing out of Elijah’s hold so that he wouldn’t feel how badly she was shaking. She didn’t want him to know how much she had just shoved into herself.
She glanced back down at Luis, but he wasn’t clinging to Sophia anymore. He flung himself at Isobel, launching at her so heavily that she actually thought she was being attacked at first. His thin arms wrapped around her hips, his head pressing into her stomach, and she waited for him to squeeze too tight, to assault her with a hidden weapon, to try and force her to the ground where his mother and sister would be able to pin her …
But he was just hugging her.
His breaths were short and choppy, his tears wetting her shirt, his arms shaking as much as hers were. She slipped to her knees, and his arms unlatched only to fling up around her neck, his trembling body crashing against hers again.
“It-it’s okay,” he hiccupped. “Y-You’ll be o-okay.”
Why was he comforting her?
Why were her cheeks wet?
She hugged Luis back, trying to hide her tears as his shaking hand patted over her hair in clumsy, soothing motions. Heat suddenly surrounded her spine, the scent of spiced cloves and unfurling woodsmoke wrapping her up and whispering to her limbs that true comfort was only a breath away. She released Luis, and Elijah caught her instantly, lifting her back to her feet, and then higher, until she could wrap her legs around his waist, her arms hooking around his neck, her nose buried in his throat.
“She took everything the boy was feeling,” he explained, his arms wrapped tightly around her.
“Is she okay?” Sophia whispered.
“She will be,” Elijah grunted. “Can we have a minute?”
“Of course,” Maya responded softly. “Luis, come here, darling. We’ll give you five minutes, but you shouldn’t stay in here too long. They’ll send a crew to check on you.”
“I’m aware.” Elijah’s voice was short, but he seemed to wrangle it into something more polite. “It was … interesting to meet you, Guardian.”
“Take care of her.” Alpha voice. Maya’s voice.
“Can I say bye?” Luis whispered.
“Another time, grasshopper,” Maya soothed him. “We need to give them a moment. Come on.”
As soon as the door closed, Elijah moved to a bench, yanking it away from the wall so that she wouldn’t have to unwind her legs from around his waist. He sat, his hands catching her face and lifting it from its hiding spot against the warm security of his neck, where her sorrow unfurled in thoughts of woodsmoke.
“Are you going to pass out?” he asked. His face was blurry, but she was pretty sure a heavy frown weighed down his lips.
“No.” She grimaced. “I just took it really fast, and it was … he’s so …”
“He’s a child dreaming of his entire family being murdered,” Elijah supplied dryly. “I’m sure he’s thoroughly traumatised. You taking away the emotion won’t even touch that trauma.”
“Stop it.” She swatted weakly at his chest. “S’my power,” she slurred. “I do what I want with it.”
His lips seemed to quirk, his thumbs rubbing at the drying tears on her cheeks. “I’ve only seen you cry once. The day you died.”
“Which time?” She tried to bury her face in his neck again, to draw that powerful scent back into her lungs, but he held her face firmly.
“You’re so strong,” he said quietly, those cold eyes boring into hers. “But you’re not unbreakable. Stop pushing your luck.”
“I heard about what you do,” she blurted, feeling embarrassed by his scrutiny as her vision began to clear, Luis’ emotion finally finding space inside her to settle properly. “I heard you like to humiliate people.”
Elijah’s grip loosened, falling to her waist. The edge of his mouth twitched even further until it was half a smile. “Really?”
“I thought you hated bullies.”
“I do.”
“Then why?”
His regarded her flatly. “Why what, Carter?”
“Why do you like to degrade people?”
“Did you ‘hear’ that I like to degrade people, or did you ‘hear’ that it was something I did? Because there’s a difference between doing something and liking it.”
“Why do it if you don’t like it?”
“Now that’s a better question … but I never said I didn’t like it.”
Isobel groaned, swatting his chest again. “You’re—”
He caught her wrist, and then her other, twisting both of her arms behind her back, and then he straightened his posture, using his grip on her arms to press her chest against his. She had to tip her head right back to still meet his eyes.
“I like to be in control,” he explained in a whisper. “But the fetish room isn’t about what I like. It’s about what people want to see. What they would pay to see. And they love to see other people begging to be reduced to vessels for whatever we want to do with them.”
“What do you do with them?”
“You’re very curious today. Why?”
She shrugged—as much as she could with her arms twisted the way they were. “Just wondering.”
“Well …” He transferred both of her wrists to one of his hands, using the other to grip her hip and draw her closer. “I wouldn’t worry, sweet girl. You’re going to love what Kalen does. And when he does it to you, it’ll be a nice experience.”
When, not if.
“How do you know that?”
His cold gaze was crawling over her face, categorising the drying tears on her skin. She could still feel the wetness clumping her eyelashes together.