JEOPARDY: Love in War

3. Are you sure?

Caiden slammed the door to his room with a bang.

He was cold to the core, but, at that moment, everything in him was on fire.

His head, his muscles, his belly, his heart... his skin.

He could still see Kayla's half-shifted form as she looked at him in shock. He could still—

"Don't tell me you forgot your passport," Ryan barged into his bedroom, his voice filled with a Ryan-type of amusement. "I know you've grown a heart, but for you to actually start following the law... I never thought--shit!"

Ryan met Caiden's gaze and stopped talking. His hazel eyes widened as he extracted the movie of that day's events from Caiden's brain.

"Shit!" Ryan repeated after five minutes of skimming through Caiden's memories. "How didn't we foresee this twist?"

"They played us well... She played us well." Caiden finally spoke, breaking their connection as he started pacing. 

His brain was still trying to make sense of what had happened. What was happening. What had been happening, but he was too bewitched to notice.

"You think Kayla planned this?" Ryan sounded incredulous as his eyes widened further.

"I don't think." Caiden stopped his pacing to glare at Ryan. "It's pretty obvious that her pack was using her to weaken and distract me." 

And they had succeeded. 

Kayla was everything he had never expected, nor dreamed of, yet she was all he needed to steal his heart, soul, spirit, and body from the very first day

While he had been making plans to trick her into liking him. She had been playing a longer game. She hadn't been aiming for his desire or like, but his obsession. The possession and destruction of his very being... And she had won. 

He had been ready to die for her. 

"I think you're overestimating the enemy, dude." Ryan broke into his self-hate spiral. "Sienna is a smart woman, but even she can't come up with a trick like that. A plan this good requires the sort of genius no one in that pack is capable of."

"I thought I taught you to never underestimate your enemy." 

"You also taught me to know my enemy. Her weaknesses, her strengths, her thought process, her limits. Sienna doesn't have a brain for cunning. She has one for mobilizing and commanding armies... She's fearless, but equally a coward. This can't be her."

Caiden scoffed and full faced Ryan. "So, you think they just allowed a werewolf without a scent to guard their daughter? We have wondered for days on end on why they'd hire a human to protect Angela, and now we have our answer: She was never human. She was just pretending. Can you think of a better reason than me?"

Ryan was silent for a whole minute. 

But Caiden knew he still had something to say. He might not be a mind reader, but he knew Ryan. He knew Ryan was set on defending Kayla despite all the evidence against her. 

Right on cue, Ryan brought up another argument in Kayla's favor. "It doesn't explain the shock on her face when she saw your vampire side. Such a genuine look is hard to fake."

"Seriously? That's your strongest point? Her acting skills?" Caiden couldn't help the snicker that left his lips. "I can pretend to be anyone in the blink of my eyes and you'd believe all my fake emotions. If there is something we should know, then it's that she can be as good as me... Maybe even better since she had fooled you. We can't underestimate her just because she looks innocent and genuine."