Kyra

Chapter Fourteen

Ares didn't let up on his noose like grip on her arm, even if he thought it was hurting her. The fact she was still here with him hadn't fully sunk in yet. The fact that she wasn't dead. Something had to change. His daft mortal had gone to Romania alone at night. It was a wonder she'd come back in one piece. He'd bet his life on that being vampire blood staining her blade.

Done taking my chances.

She trained every day, constantly vulnerable to injury. What if someone sliced her too hard and she never recovered? What if she lost a limb before immortality took her?

I can stop that.

He could make her as good as an immortal until it all set in. If I'm completely sure of her. How much more certain could he be? The future had already told him where they were headed. Kyra will be mine. Ares could make her deathless. Only this once.

"Where are we?" She asked when he finally let go. She looked smaller than usual, like she was trying to sink in on herself—or trying to attract as little of his attention as possible. Finally understanding the beast she pokes?

"My office."

She stumbled further into the room, following him. Lost and confused.

"This isn't your office."

"I have a spare."

Her features morphed into something judgy. "You have a spare office. What kind of person has a spare office?"

He backed her up to the wall, lording his height over her.

"Do you really think it's smart to push me right now?"

She didn't shy away. No, pushing out of that shell of self-protection, Kyra stood taller. "We've established I'm not that smart."

"But you are, Kyra." It was the thing he hated most about her. "The evil, cunning kind." Her back hit the wall, a position she was getting to know more and more of as the days went by. "You sent me back to sleep last night, didn't you? What was the plan? To be back before I woke up and no one would know a thing?"

"If you must know, yes, it was." An admittance. Only making me angrier. He didn't want her to lie—but that didn't make the truth any more appealing. "And I have some suggestions about Amazonian armour. It's downright impractical."

Lecturing me?

"It works."

Her arms crossed, chin jutting outwards. "Not very well."

"You love to antagonise me. Do you get off on doing the opposite of what you're told?"

"It seems to be paying off so far. I got my answers. Answers that you had no intention of giving me."

"Satisfied?"

"Yes. I am. I know where I'm headed."

To that painting. The woman in that art had been hardened by bloodshed. Ares had spent hours glaring at it since she'd pointed herself out. The Kyra in that painting wasn't his Kyra. She was a woman reborn through war. A woman he couldn't allow this one to become.

"Understand me Kyra." He cupped her cheeks. "You're never leaving. You're not becoming that."

"That is not what it looks like. I won't be some ruthless mass murderer. The person in that painting is who I was born... who I was created to be. I'm the Amazon who went wrong." She paused, tasting a new word on her tongue. "Rogue. The Amazon who went rogue."