I know that can’t be easy for you to see. What you are is why I have hope for you. The more powerful you grow, the more you understand the suffering of those around you. Maybe your empathy will keep you from denial. I convinced myself I wasn’t hurting people who didn’t deserve to hurt. I believed I was building a world where you could be powerful without needing to be brutal. Instead I helped create a world where your power can be used against you.
If I die, it’s because I fought to stop that. I can’t look in your eyes and know I helped make a weapon that could turn you into a killer.
I know the lessons I’ve already taught you seem harsh, but your life will be hard. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken the risk of passing this legacy on to a daughter. Your uncle’s too afraid to have another child, afraid that he’ll have a daughter and pass the Gabriel curse on to her.
But I can’t regret you. I love you more than anyone or anything on this earth, and there’s nothing I won’t do to keep you safe from my mistakes.
Your heart is so big, I still have hope you’ll forgive me for them.
Mom An emotional bomb, with so much that could either hurt Kat or set her free, and Andrew’s eyes zeroed in on one word: weapon. No time to feel guilty about that, not when Kat drew in a shaky breath and came to her feet in a jerky, uncoordinated movement.
She ducked under his hands and took a few steps away, leaving him staring at her back as the sound of her heart pounding thundered in his ears. “Whatever I am is so terrifying that Derek’s father wouldn’t have more kids. And Nick’s pregnant.”
If he let her continue down that path, give in to those thoughts, he’d lose her. “Kat, stop. You don’t know that’s true. Even if it is, your mom…” He struggled to find the right words without hurting her even more. “Your mom had shit going on. Do you blame him for being scared? It had nothing to do with you.”
“I don’t blame anyone for anything. I can’t.” She pivoted so sharply her hair whipped around, and the gaze she fixed on him was just short of wild. “Don’t you get it, Andrew? I get all the noble suffering of a martyr and all the guilt of knowing I wouldn’t be so damn selfless if I could keep everyone from shoving their pain down my throat until I give them whatever they need. I’m a fake. I want to be selfish.”
“You want a choice in the matter. It doesn’t make you a bad person.”
Color filled her cheeks, and the room pressed in on him. Anger—helpless, bitter anger, and not his own. “Why not? Why doesn’t anything make me a bad person? Not being selfish, or petty and jealous? I killed people, and all anyone can do is rush to tell me I’m not a bad person. Am I a bad person if I’d do it again?”
He didn’t stop to think, to analyze. “Maybe so. Maybe that means you’re just as low as the rest of us, and that’s the part we can’t stand.”
Silence. Her fists clenched, and she shook her head. “I can’t live up to that. You want me to be happy and loving all the time, and no one can be that.”
“It’s not about not wanting you to bum me out, Kat.” Everything between them had always been so fucking hard to explain. “If you think people aren’t worth saving, I believe you. You see inside them, know what they’re hiding way down at the core. You of all people have to think there’s something good here, or what the hell are we all scrambling so hard for?”
“Oh, Andrew…” For a moment she seemed at a loss. She crossed her arms over her chest—not an aggressive stance, but a defensive one. “It’s not… People are worth saving. They’re petty and confused and so many of the horrible ones are only afraid. Like me. I’m petty and confused and afraid.”
“I don’t need you to be perfect,” he said again, the words a harsh grind in his throat. “I need you not to think it’s all a total loss, including—no, especially you.”
Her gaze slid past him. Fixed on the computer. “I need to know what I am. What’s in my genes that turned my mother and all the other women in our family crazy, and whether it’s going to do that to me. Or Derek’s kid.”
“You need to know,” he agreed, “but don’t give it too much power. Everyone’s different.”
“I’m not so different.” She eased around him to settle in front of the computer again. Flexing her fingers, she took a deep breath and began to type. “I’m powerful. Callum taught me how powerful. I’m not a floppy little puppy who knows a neat trick. Empathy makes me vulnerable to the people I love, but it makes me dangerous to everyone else.”
“Believe it or not, there’s a middle ground between floppy puppy and psychic warrior.”
“There’s a middle ground between laid-back wolf and stone-cold alpha badass too.”
A middle ground he couldn’t, for the life of him, seem to find. “Point taken.”
“Really?” She bent over, slipped a flash drive from the side pocket of her bag and plugged it in without looking at him. “I don’t even know what my point was. Maybe my point is that we would have already gotten to the middle ground if we could. Maybe we should get used to being a psychic killer and a warrior alpha.”
They used to be just Kat and Andrew, and now he wondered if he’d fucked everything up a long, long time ago. If sitting on his ass and waiting her out had cost him everything. “I guess.”
Her fingers danced over the keys, the clacks coming so close together they sounded like one continuous noise. “I can send these to Ben once we get close enough to the city to get a decent signal with my aircard.
Then, I guess we wait? See if anyone tries to kidnap or kill us?”
It wasn’t funny. “We try to get back to some semblance of normal.”
“Do I—” Her voice cracked. She swallowed and stared straight ahead. “Do you want me to go back to my place tonight?”
She sounded so scared. “We shouldn’t split up.” He didn’t know how recently Jackson had buffed up the wards around her apartment, though part of him almost relished the thought of someone coming in to start a fight. “We can stay at my place again.”
“At the council headquarters?” She jerked the flash drive free and twisted to look up at him. “I guess there’s plenty of room there. And good protections.”
And an extra well-trained fighter. “Julio will be glad to have company for a few days. He can cook for more than just us.”
“Julio likes to cook?” The thought seemed to amuse her, at least enough to tease her lips up into a half-smile.
“Firehouse food. Gigantic pots of chili and spaghetti, stuff like that.”
“Of course.” Sighing, Kat rose and began packing up her things. “After this, I think I should swing by the dojo. I’ve missed four lessons in a row. If I don’t drag my ass in there, Zola’s going to kill me before any assassins get a chance.”
“You’ve been shot,” Andrew said firmly. “If she doesn’t understand why you might need to miss a few more sessions, I’ll set her straight.”
But Kat shook her head. “No, the healing spells worked. My arm’s fine. And if things are going crazy, training’s more important than ever.”
She was determined, he had to give her that. “Okay. After we talk to Julio and get him up to speed, we’ll head to the dojo together.”
“Good.” The letter from her mother was still up on the screen. She spared it one last look, then cut the power to the computer. “Let’s go.”
Time. She needed it for everything right now—decrypting the information on the disk, dealing with her mother’s letter. Dealing with him.