“Holy shit. I’m a fucking A.I.,” I breathed.
“What, mate? Is there a problem?” Evon rose at once to loom behind me like a shadow. I felt his breath fan my neck, his hands resting on my shoulders.
I shook my head and waved him off with a negligent flick of my wrist, barely acknowledging his question, although the heat of his hands lingered even after he sat back down. I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want him here, not right now. I needed to be in my bubble where the code flowed through me like my birth language and nothing else existed. I was in The Zone, and I didn’t want him or anyone else to take me out of it. If they distracted me now, it could take me hours to get back to this point.
And I was about to break their system wide open. For Liam. For all of us.
Just…one…more…
“Got it.” Satisfaction and triumph poured through me and I was in. Just like that, their entire system was laid bare. I saw the network of commands, the firewalls around the individual security codes, the system in place to protect them.
And I dismantled it all in moments and went looking for what I knew must be there.
Someone had accessed Liam’s codes, and that kind of thing always left a trail of breadcrumbs for me to follow. A few minutes later, I had it. A workstation ID. A time stamp.
Shortly after that? The security camera feed. An empty chair. Someone approaching. Blonde hair. A face I recognized. My eyes widened as I stared at the display.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered.
“What is it, mate?” Evon stood directly behind me once again, looking over me as I watched a recorded security feed in the bottom corner of the screen, as his sister sat down at a monitor and set Liam up to be charged for murder.
Evon’s hand came to rest on my shoulder and he leaned in close to my ear, his voice the barest whisper of sound. “Is that Thalia?”
“Yes.” I wasn’t sure what to say. How do you tell a man you barely know that his own flesh and blood betrayed him? Betrayed everything he’d spent every day of his life trying to protect. Hell, she’d betrayed their entire family. I knew how Evon’s brother and father felt about service to Viken.
“Turn it off. Now.” The hand on my shoulder squeezed to the point of pain, but Evon abruptly let me go.
“But, what about the judicial panel? And Liam? We have to tell someone—”
He grunted. “No. Turn it off. There must be some mistake.”
No way. I looked up at him, blinked, confused. “No. I’m sorry. It’s not a mistake.”
He backed toward the door. “Turn it off. Now. That’s an order.”
I rose to my feet, spun to face him. “I’m not a soldier, Evon.”
“Turn. It. Off. Now!” He gently moved me aside and closed down the system, closing the window on hours of work in the span of a few seconds. His fingers slid over the controls with deft movements, proving he was more skilled at cyber work than he let on.
I slid back to block him. “What the hell are you doing?”
Those ice-blue eyes met mine. The usual heat I saw in them was missing now. “Leave this to me.”
He was fucking kidding with this, right? “It took me hours to get that data, Evon. Hours.” I waved my hands in the air as if that would help him get my level of frustration.
“I am aware of that, Bella. It’s time to go.” He tugged on my hand, trying to pull me toward the door, but I dug in my heels and refused to budge.
I was no match for his size and strength, but I was putting up a good resistance. “No. What about Liam? The hearing with your father is in less than three hours.”
“Don’t argue. It’s time for you to go back to our quarters. I’ll take care of it.” His face had hardened even further, the pale blue of his eyes cold and unyielding, nothing like the heated blue flame I’d seen earlier when he was balls deep in my pussy, acting like I mattered. Like he cared. Like I meant more to him than his stupid family honor.
Does. Not. Compute.
I couldn’t wrap my head around what was happening right now. Was Evon willing to betray Liam and Rager over this? To deny what Thalia had done? Just how far was he going to go to protect his real family, his sister? “Evon—I don’t think you understand.”
He ignored me and reached for the comm station in the wall. Pressed it with more energy than necessary. “Rager? It’s Evon. Where are you?”
I heard my other mate’s reply through the speaker. “Just returned from patrol.”
Evon’s chin went up. “Are you in our quarters?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Evon eyed me as he spoke. “Don’t go anywhere.” He disconnected, or ended the transmission—whatever the hell it was called in space—and walked toward me. “Let’s go, Bella. You’ve done your job. You’ve done enough.”