Antonio filled them both in on our conversation with Harry Covington.
Luther looked slightly optimistic by the end of it. “Let us pray that this woman can help us.”
“We have to find her first.” And convince her to help. If I had to resort to Jared’s new solution to everything and kidnap her, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
“Leave that to me.” Sebastian’s voice was full of determination. “There is no place the Keja can hide where I will not find her.”
“Sam and I will be doing our own investigations too,” Jared informed him. “Between all of us, we should be able to find Paige West in time to help the guys.”
Luther gave him an encouraging smile. “I have faith in you all, and so will Evan, Max, and Stuart.” He lightly touched me on the shoulder. But then he stiffened and a gasp flew out of him as his eyes took on a faraway quality that meant one thing – he was having a vision. Oh, this was never good. When Luther finally snapped out of it, his gaze ran along everyone in the room, who were all now standing.
Most likely in response to the sheer fright on his Advisor’s face, Antonio tensed. “What is it, Luther?”
“Please don’t talk in riddles,” I begged him. He had a habit of being very vague with his warnings, and it drove me bloody mental.
Luther inhaled deeply. “They will come for her. Paige West, they will come for her.”
“Who? Who will come?” demanded Antonio.
“There were so many of them in the vision. So many. If you bring her here, they will do whatever it takes to get to her.” He looked at me then. Oh bloody wonderful. “And it could mean that you are forced to make a very difficult decision, Sam. A decision no one should have to make.”
Well f**k a duck. I massaged my temples. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what that decision is, are you?”
“I wish I could. But as you know, sometimes a vision can be just a feeling, a knowing. I could feel the weight of a painful, frightening decision bearing on you – a decision that affects so many, that your safety rests on.”
Jared, who was feeling kind of numb as if he didn’t really know how to feel about all this, spoke. “So what you’re saying is that if we bring Paige West here, there’s a distinct possibility that things will go tits up and Sam could be harmed?”
“Yes.”
Sebastian sighed. “The question is: are we willing to risk all that happening in order to save the lives of Evan, Max, and Stuart?”
Cursing a blue streak that had everybody’s eyes widening, Jared dropped back down into his seat and buried his face in his hands. So many emotions were flickering through him so quickly that I couldn’t even identify what they were.
“We will give you both some time alone.” With that, Antonio led the others out of the room.
I sat beside Jared, placing a supportive hand on his back. “We have to do this, Jared. We have to help Evan, Max, and Stuart.”
He lifted his head, gazing at me with eyes that were filled with so much turmoil that it hurt to maintain eye contact. “I can’t risk you. Do you understand that? I can’t risk you.” Then he was on his feet, pacing.
“But we can’t risk them, either. You know this.” But he wasn’t listening. He was deep in his own mind, lost in his own thoughts. I rose from my seat and grabbed his arm to halt him. “We can’t ignore this. They’ll die, Jared.”
“I know,” he gritted out. “And I hate being in a position where I actually have to f**king choose between you and my twin brother. But baby, nothing in this world could make me risk you. I just f**king can’t.” He locked a hand in my hair and roughly pulled me close.
I tucked my head into the crook of his neck and slipped my arms around him. “You’re not choosing. I’m choosing.”
“No.” The word was filled with agony yet resoluteness. His overprotectiveness often tended to piss me off, but this was so much more than overprotectiveness – this was a bone-deep, all-consuming fear of losing me. I could feel the echoes of it. An ache started to build in my temples from the pressure of it.
“Jared?”
He pulled back to cradle my face. “You just don’t get it. You never have. You are essential to me. I told you the night of our Binding ceremony: I need you here with me, always, no matter f**king what.” His expression said, ‘And you’d agreed’. Yes, I had.
“But?”
“Did you see the look on Luther’s face when he mentioned that decision you’ll have to make?”
Yes. He’d looked stricken, wrecked. And it had put the bloody shits up me.
“He said your safety rests on it.” I opened my mouth to speak, but Jared shook his head and stepped away. “You might be prepared to risk yourself, Sam, but I’m not. Not for you, not for anyone.” His eyes, expression, and tone were adamant – he wasn’t budging on this.
Anyone else might have accepted their fate and backed down, but that wasn’t who I was. “I don’t expect you to like my decision to help them. I don’t even expect you to respect it. But I’m asking you to understand it. Evan’s been a great friend to me, like a brother, and I adore him. Max and Stuart are part of our squad, I care for them, and it’s my responsibility to protect them.”
Jared simply shrugged, seemingly unmoved. “They’ll understand.” Annoyingly, they would. In fact, they would insist that we didn’t even try to find Paige West. They would put me before themselves, the plonkers. I couldn’t let them do that.
My words were quiet, pained. “I can’t let them die.”
“And I can’t let you be hurt.”
“I love you for caring as much as you do, Jared, I do. But this is Evan, Max, and Stuart we’re talking about.”
He smiled a little. “Trying to put me on a guilt trip, baby? It’s not going to work. I know how you think.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s look at it this way: Luther said the whole ‘me being faced with a decision’ thing could happen, not that it definitely would.”
He shot me an ‘oh for God’s sake’ look. Of course he did. I was clutching at straws, and we both knew it.
“His vision means we’ve got a heads-up. It means we know we need to be even more vigilant and careful than usual. That puts us a step ahead.”
He shook his head, incredulous. In fact, he looked like he was considering throttling me. “You’re just not getting it. Maybe that’s my fault. Maybe it’s because I don’t tell you I love you often enough. Baby, you’re the only ‘good’ thing that I’ve ever had. There’s simply no f**king way I’m letting anything at all happen to you. No. Way.”