I nearly fell out of the RV as I practically ran down the steps, cursing my heels while I did so. I was not the type of girl that should have been wearing such high shoes, but I wasn’t about to walk outside and across the parking lot without any shoes on. I still wasn’t completely comfortable with flying yet, so that was out of the picture as well.

I rushed back into the DAU, my heels clicking against the marble floor, and then the red carpet that made its way all the way down the hallway. My hair had fallen from the curly bun it had been put in and it was now in free ringlets around my shoulders.

Hank seemed to be having difficulty keeping up with me, but we were both heading to the same place, and it didn’t matter if we got there at the same time or not.

I banged on the boys’ bedroom doors, not stopping as I continued on my way to the meeting room. I was sure Nay would be there, since she and Hank were most likely there whenever we were on missions, and I knew that she was going to have to be here for the conversation.

The boys exited out of their rooms and began to follow after me once they noticed where I was going. Aiden seemed to be beside me in a second, even though Anthony was the one with super speed.

“Where’s Kristie?” he asked urgently.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know how I was supposed to. But I did know that right then was not the right time to tell him that I didn’t know where Kristie was, but I knew who she was with. And I couldn’t tell him that.

“Violet,” Aiden now snapped, grabbing onto my shoulder and yanking me to a stop. “Where is Kristie?”

“Aiden, if you would let Violet go, you’ll find out,” Hank informed him, giving him a look that said if he didn’t let go of me, he would never know what had happened to Kristie. He reluctantly let me go, and we continued on our way to the meeting room.

Hank used his palm to unlock the door and it slid open, revealing Nay as she sat at one of the computers, studying something. When she saw how urgent Hank and I were, she immediately stood up.

“What’s going on?” she asked, looking from me to him.

I shook my head. “Redrum is what’s going on.”

“Redrum?” Aiden cried out from behind me, but I just couldn’t look at him.”Where’s Kristie?”

Both Hank and I didn’t want to have to be the ones to tell him the truth. We didn’t know how he’d react, though we knew that it was definitely going to be negative. Neither of us wanted to have to deal with that.

“Malicius and Lynx… kind of…” was all I was able to say, at first. “Malicius and Lynx, well, kind of… took her.”

Aiden nearly fell right over, and I took a step back away from him. That probably wasn’t the best way to tell him, but I couldn’t think of any other way to do so, so I just let it out. Hank hadn’t tried to stop me, so I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.

I then explained everything that had happened, from me leaving the club, to Malicius approaching us in the alley, to Lynx attacking Kristie, and to when they flew off. I didn’t know for sure, but it looked like Aiden was turning blue. Was he breathing?

“And you let her go?” Aiden blinked, unable to believe what I was saying to him right then. “You let her go?”

I bit the inside of my cheek, afraid to answer him. We did just let Malicius and Lynx have Kristie without a fight. I tried to go after them, but Hank knew that that would not have been a good idea.

“I tried to go after them,” I told him, hoping that this would somehow make him feel a little better. It didn’t. “But going after her by myself would not have been a good idea.”

“What wasn’t a good idea was sending her out there with someone as incompetent as you!”

I just stood there, unable to believe he had actually just said that to me. It wasn’t my fault that Kristie had gotten kidnapped; I even tried to save her! Why was he being so unnecessarily rude about all of this?

“Hey,” Dex growled, stepping in between Aiden and me. “Don’t talk to her like that.”

“This has nothing to do with you,” Aiden scowled, glowering at me over Dex’s shoulder. “Stop coming to your girlfriend’s aid and let her fight her own battles.”

“Then how about you stop coming to your girlfriend’s aid and let her fight her own battles?”

“My girlfriend got kidnapped!”

I rolled my eyes. “She’s not even your girlfriend!”

I didn’t know why I had said that instead of saying that I wasn’t Dex’s girlfriend, but I knew that it was a bad idea because this only made Aiden even angrier. He obviously wanted to be Kristie’s boyfriend, but she just wasn’t getting the message.

“Guys…” Anthony said from the side, but no one was listening to him. He was so quiet that we all pretty much forgot that he was even there with us.

“It’s all your fault that Kristie’s gone!” Aiden shouted now, shoving Dex right out of the way and taking a step toward me. “If you hadn’t left the club, Lynx wouldn’t have attacked her and she’d still be here!”

“This isn’t my fault!” I yelled back at him. “Do you think I wanted Redrum to take Kristie? No! I didn’t!”

 Aiden sneered at me. “I think you did,” he spat, and I took a step back in surprise. “I think you were so jealous of her that you wanted her out of the picture. I wouldn’t even be surprised if you were in cahoots with Redrum!”

Without even realizing what I was doing, I was lifting my hand and sending Aiden flying across the room, slamming him into the wall. I remembered when I had done this in the RV the first time I had met him. This was much more satisfying.

“You need a reality check!” I didn’t let him down from the wall; I kept him there the entire time I continued to berate him. “This team isn’t just about you, Aiden! I don’t care if you’re the leader! The only reason you are is because your dad was the leader of his team! And Kristie isn’t the only other person on this team with you!”

“She’s the only important one,” Aiden coughed, and I slammed him against the wall again. He groaned, and I smiled.

Hank was giving me a look I couldn’t exactly read; he almost looked scared. That, in turn, kind of scared me, and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be doing this anymore, no matter how good it felt to let Aiden know how I felt about him.

“How can someone like you be a leader of a team?” I continued on anyway with a sneer, not letting Aiden leave his spot on the wall. “You’re conceited, uncaring, and selfish. You don’t care about anyone but yourself, unless they benefit you like Kristie. But is she really benefitting you, Aiden? She still isn’t your girlfriend.”

This angered him so much that he shot a fireball at me. I jumped out of the way and dodged it, still keeping my hand up and keeping him on the wall while I did so.

This feeling I was feeling was weird. I actually liked teasing Aiden. I liked angering him. And I had no idea why.

My head was starting to hurt. With my free hand, I laced my hands through my hair and dug my nails into my scalp. What the hell was going on?

“Violet, put him down!” Nay shouted when she saw the pain I was in, and this caused me to snap out of it and immediately drop Aiden and let him crash to the floor. “You both need to cut it out! We’ll never get Kristie back if you two continue to fight like this!”

Aiden pushed himself up off the floor. “But she… she…”

“You cannot blame Violet for Kristie’s kidnapping,” Nay told him, and I silently thanked her in my mind. “Just because she stepped out of the club means nothing.

“She could have been the one that was kidnapped, not Kristie,” Aiden now muttered to Kristie and I found myself losing my temper once again.

“Do you want me to bash you against the wall again?” I screamed, raising my hand up to threaten him. “Because I will, you stuck-up little princess!”

Aiden’s hands engulfed in flames. “I’d like to see you try, teapot.”

I didn’t know why, but bringing up the video of my parents and me only made me feel even worse. I slammed him against the wall once again, and this only resulted in another fireball being thrown at me, which I dodged once again.

“Both of you, knock it off!” Nay snapped over her shoulder, still typing away on the keyboard of the largest computer in the room. “If you would look up at the screen, you would see that you have nothing to worry about!”

We looked at the screen like she told us to, but all I could see was a blinking red light on a map. I didn’t understand what it was, and Hank realized this.

“It’s Kristie’s tracker,” he explained, and it all made sense now. “They’re using her as bait. If they were just going to kidnap her or kill her, they would have taken her tracker off of her and destroyed it. But it’s still there. They want us to come after them.”

“And that’s what we’ll do,” Aiden nodded, turning and heading toward the door.

Nay shook her head and grabbed onto his shoulder. “Not yet,” she shook her head.

He looked completely dumbfounded. “And why not yet?”

“Because we have to wait until they settle,” she explained to him, but Aiden still wasn’t having any of it. “They’re still moving. We have to wait until they settle, or else we may lose them and just be on a wild goose chase.”

Aiden was antsy. I was still annoyed with him. How could Hank and Nay ever think that we’d be able to get along? After that fight, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we never even talked to each other again. That wouldn’t have bothered me very much.

“I’m waiting in the RV,” Aiden snapped, storming by me and right out of the room. Anthony gave us a look, but then decided to follow after him.

Nay sighed, her arms crossed over her chest. “I guess it would be best to wait in the RV,” she shrugged, starting toward the door along with Hank. “Then, at least, we’ll be ready sooner.”

And that left only Dex and me, though the silence soon grew awkward, so I knew it would be best if we followed after our mentors. I took a step forward, but wasn’t able to move very far at all.

“Are you okay?” Dex asked, stopping me from moving any farther.

I looked back at him and blinked. “Yeah,” I nodded. “I’m fine. I didn’t fight Lynx or Malicius."

“No,” he shook his head, placing his hands on my bare arms and rubbing them up and down slowly. “I mean, are you… okay?”

He wasn’t asking if I was okay physically, and for some reason, that meant a lot more to me.

“I’m a little shaky, but…” Honestly, I didn’t know how I was supposed to answer this. I felt nervous. I felt scared. I didn’t know if we would be able to get Kristie back. I didn’t know what Malicius and Lynx were going to do to her. It was a sickly feeling. “I’m okay.”

Dex could tell that I wasn’t exactly telling the truth, so he continued to rub my arms. This immediately made me feel better.

“How is it that you can make me feel so much better when you used to make me feel so much worse?” I couldn’t help but ask, even though it was rhetorical question.

Dex knew that this wasn’t a question he was supposed to answer, so he only continued to hold onto me, since there wasn’t anything else he could have done at that time.

But even though Dex was making me feel better, I still couldn’t help but worry about what was going to happen to Kristie, and even the rest of us. She used to annoy me so much, but now…

“Hey, Kristie’s going to be okay, alright?” Dex told me, as if reading my mind, but I still couldn’t help but worry. “You did everything you could. It’d only be worse if they got you, too. And it’d be much worse if they got you instead.”

I shook my head. “No, Aiden’s right,” I sniffed, not believing that I was letting Aiden get to me so much. I was not about to cry. “It would have been better if I was taken instead of Kristie. What can I do? I can barely even control my powers.”

“Hey,” Dex nearly whispered, so quietly that I almost couldn’t hear him. “Don’t talk like that. You’re a lot more useful than Kristie is with her good looks.”

I remembered what Hank had said about the few people of our kind with good looks. Sometimes it was useful, and sometimes it was not. It always seemed to be very useful when it came to Kristie. She was always stared at, and she seemed to really enjoy the attention all the males would give her.

“I just… I’m scared,” I finally admitted, even though I hated to do so. “Are we really ready for this? Are we ready to fight against Redrum? I don’t think that we are. We’re just kids, Dex! We’re not ready for this!”

Dex frowned. “Violet…”

“Our parents died, fighting for this organization,” I continue quickly, as if I hadn’t even heard Dex. “They died because they were fighting, and I’m sure it was because of something that had to do with Redrum. Our parents died, so what are we doing here? Why are we repeating the cycle? We’re just going to die too, aren’t we? Isn’t that how it all ends up? Only a few people live to retire. Our parents weren’t one of those few. What’s going to happen to all of our children if we all die? They’re going to have to go through the same things we did! Adoptive families, foster homes, never feeling like they belong…”

He stepped forward, holding onto my hands. “Our kids aren’t going to have to worry about not having parents around.”

I stared up at him in shock. “Our… kids?’

His eyes went so wide that I thought they were going to fall out of their sockets, and he immediately let go of my hands. “No, that’s not what I was trying to say. I meant yours and my kids—no, I mean… I… ugh,” he groaned, rubbing his hands over his face. “Forget I even said anything, okay?”

I didn’t say anything else about this subject, because we were now both completely embarrassed. Our faces were red and hot. Why did this always have to happen whenever I spoke to Dex? One of us always said something that made us both feel uncomfortable.

“Come on,” he muttered, looking down at the ground. “We should go. They’re probably waiting for us.”

He turned toward the door, but I clutched onto his jacket before he could get away. “Wait,” I called out, and he stopped and turned back toward me. “Just in case… we do die during this mission, will you… will you kiss me?”

Dex raised an eyebrow at me. “Why don’t you just kiss me?”

This made my face turn even redder. “Because,” I snapped, staring at the floor. “I’m still not sure how to do it correctly.”

I knew we should have been doing this right now. Our teammates and our mentors were waiting for us, though we would have been able to go anywhere if Malicius and Lynx hadn’t settled somewhere with Kristie yet.

Dex smiled at me, leaning forward and pressing his lips to mine for only a few seconds. I tried my best to kiss back, but I still didn’t really know what I was supposed to be doing.

He smirked at me once he pulled away, though his face was still red. “Are you going to kiss me before every mission now?”

I shrugged, still very embarrassed. “I don’t know. If you want me to.”

He now took a step closer to me. “Oh, I want you to.”

“Hey!” a new voice snapped, and we turned toward the door to see Aiden scowling at us. “Will you two hurry up already? This is no time to be screwing around! Malicius and Lynx have stopped moving; it’s time to go!”

He then took off down the hall again, and I just glared after him. I didn’t know what the Director was thinking when he assigned Aiden as the leader of our team. Just because his father had been the leader of a previous team meant absolutely nothing.

Eventually, we weren’t going to need Hank and Nay any longer, and we were going to move on with each other while they got another team to mentor. And then we were going to have to have to deal with Aiden calling all the shots. I was not looking forward to this time.

“Do you think Hank and Nay would be mad at me if I killed him?” I asked, not even sure myself if I was kidding or not.

Dex shrugged, walking toward the door. I followed him as he looked over his shoulder and said, “I don’t know, but please, be my guest.”

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I got a new computer and the space bar on it really sucks... It was really difficult to write this.

This book is always my favorite to write... I'm always so happy when it's time to write this. :)

Please COMMENT, VOTE, and FAN! :D