Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
She starts to turn away, and I know I should let her go. I can’t. “Addie, wait,” I breathe out, and her name is torment on my lips.
She pauses but doesn’t face me. Seconds of tension-filled silence swell between us before I say softly, “You are my lifebond, and I would die for you.”
She half-turns, anger glistening in the depths of her green eyes. “I haven’t seen or heard from you in what felt like forever, Creed. So don’t give me that lifebond crap, because it obviously doesn’t mean anything. You’re a soldier. You would die for your cause, and I am a part of that cause right now, though I have no idea exactly what that is. You were with me at Groom Lake. Then you were gone. You were Zodius. Now you’re Renegade. I don’t know who you are. I wonder if you even know.” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Your damn bullet is in the glass by the bed. It’s green and spiked. Nothing like any bullet I’ve ever seen before. I’m taking a shower. I have a flight to catch.” She disappears into the bathroom and slams the door.
Chapter Three
Creed
Now probably isn’t the time to tell her she won’t be taking her flight out of here as she plans. Nor is it the time to explain that I’m not worried one fucking bit about “who” I am; I’m worried about “what” I am, and she should be, too. No normal person could communicate with the wind. No normal person feels the sense of unnamed power growing within them as I do, and that might or might not be about the wind. Nor was any other Renegade tainted enough to fit into the brutality of living among the Zodius as I am.
But again, it isn’t a conversation for now, or ever, in my book. She hasn’t slept, she hasn’t eaten, and she’s beaten up over my return. Oh yeah, and the little detail about Julian wanting her dead. In the end, though, she’s not going anywhere but underground, inside the Renegades’ Sunrise City headquarters. She’ll hate me for that, too. And the hate really fucking sucks, but at least the way it cuts, it checks me and keeps me from throwing her on the bed and fucking her until there’s no tomorrow.
And I damn sure won’t admit I love her when she hates me with such fierceness.
On that happy fucking note, I walk to the room phone and call the lobby. I can’t walk out of here with my shirt shredded and my pants bloody. As expected, an offer of a big tip scores me the promise of new clothes. I transfer to room service and order breakfast, including a large orange juice. Feeding my metabolism and my need for vitamin C translates to healing and being fully ready to protect Addie.
As for the room, I’ll need to just pay for the bed, which will cost a pretty penny, but I really don’t give two fucks. My money had been my father’s, and what I didn’t donate to charity, I now use to fund the Renegades. The Renegades can’t depend on government funding. Not when Zodius recruits cash from private sources in any way necessary—be it promises of power or intimidation.
I walk to the opposite nightstand and reach for the green, spiked bullet in the glass, and go cold when I note the rubbery texture. “Hello, Mother,” I murmur bitterly, all too familiar with the technology I’m holding. Upon my father’s death, I’d inherited a chunk of stock from Taylor Enterprises, which to some would have been surprising. I hadn’t spoken to either of my parents for years before his death, since the day I’d found out my father was selling to terrorist operations, and my mother defended him. She’d sworn my father hadn’t known and then called me a liar when I told her he’d admitted otherwise.
And yet, I inherited, and I expected it, too.
Up until the day he’d died, my father had been certain I’d come around, that I’d join the company and become as cold and calculatingly successful as him—a chip off the ol’ block. That the Army would make a man out of me, but I ultimately returned to the good life. I don’t dispute being like my father, and that’s the problem. I need that part of me for war, but I cannot allow it to take root and grow.
I’d been quick to sell off my stock, but not without doing a good share of research on its operations and contacts. And not before I studied the published data on the Green Hornets, including a number of manufacturing mishaps endured during testing that had gotten it—temporarily, it seems—shelved. Oh yeah. Green Hornets came from Taylor Enterprises, all right. Which meant my mother was the one supplying them to Julian. And if she took a clue from my father, she’d sell to the Army as well. A bloodbath in the name of money was, after all, the Taylor legacy.