The Brightest Night (Origin #3) - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,212

population?” Morton laughed again, catching my attention. “Who told you that? None of the humans who are infected with this flu will survive without our intervention, and we have already chosen who we will save.”

As if they were gods.

“The rest will all eventually self-destruct, most likely taking out a few people with them. That’s an unfortunate consequence, but it will create further chaos—”

“And hatred for the Luxen, because you convinced everyone else that we were making them sick,” Daemon filled in the rest.

“Exactly,” Morton confirmed.

Dear God, all those people who were bound to become sick? They wouldn’t even mutate, and I wasn’t sure which was worse, but they were all innocent. Billions of innocent people were going to die.

“If there’s no need for your army of Hybrids 2.0, then why do you have them?” Grayson demanded.

“Because a weapon as fine as he is shouldn’t be wasted on things that aren’t even human.”

Daemon blanched, actually paled when Morton’s words sank in, and I thought I might vomit.

The hybrids would be used to exterminate the Luxen and any humans with alien DNA.

And it could work.

Most of the Luxen would fall fighting the new hybrids while the world shattered apart around them, ravaged by sickness—a sickness that would fuel further violence against one another and against the one thing that could save them.

The Luxen.

But that was only a possibility, because Luc hadn’t made a move against any of us even though when I tried to reach him again, there was no answer.

“Luc,” I said out loud this time. “You’re still there. I know you are. You have to be. You’re still—”

“He’s no longer the Luc you knew,” Morton said quietly, walking toward Luc. He stopped beside him. “Keep her alive. Your maker will want to know why she’s defective. Kill the others.”

Your maker.

I tensed as Luc lifted his head. The Source pulsed intently around him, and I knew if he struck out, no one stood a chance. He’d kill any of us with a half-formed thought.

Tendrils of the Source reached out from Luc, filling the area in a wave of static before rapidly receding, finally, finally revealing the features I loved so fiercely.

A face I barely recognized.

It was Luc—his broad, angular cheekbones and carved jaw, his full lips and his golden skin—but those eyes, amethyst fractured with white, ever-swirling streaks of light, were not his.

Those eyes tracked everyone present. Morton. Daemon. Grayson. Me.

And when he looked at me, he did so like he looked at everyone else. Assessing. There was no softness or warmth. No love or want. Just endless hardness and ice, devoid of all emotions.

This wasn’t Luc whose gaze moved past me, back to the Luxen.

This wasn’t even the Luc after he’d fed for the first time.

This was what he had warned me about.

My heart broke so utterly and so heavily in my chest I could almost hear it. There was a scream in my mind, and it was my own as my knees trembled. A sob choked me, and tears crowded my eyes even as I let the Source rush to the surface.

The Luc I knew, the Luc I loved, wasn’t there. And that meant I knew something the Daedalus didn’t, something that only in their supreme arrogance they wouldn’t have taken into consideration.

“Morton?” I called out as Luc slowly turned his head in my direction. A shiver crept over my skin as those fractured eyes met mine. “I said you didn’t matter. I wasn’t wrong. You don’t. Worse yet, you’re dispensable. That’s why you’re here and not Dasher. Just in case…” I drew in a ragged breath. “You know, the Daedalus accidentally created something far worse than they could even imagine.”

Morton frowned as he looked from me to Luc. “Do what your maker commanded, Luc. Kill the Luxen. Subdue her. We need her alive.”

“Maker?” Luc finally spoke, and I flinched at the ice that coated the one word, the power that was so heavy I thought it might crush all of us.

Out of the corners of my eyes, I saw Daemon and Grayson react, taking a visible step back.

“Maker?” Luc repeated. “I am not made. I am a god.”

Morton didn’t even have a second to react. Luc turned those eyes on him, and that was it. The man caved into himself. Skin incinerating, taking with it blood and muscles. Bones shattered like glass, and within a heartbeat or two, Morton was nothing more than a pile of half-burned clothing and ash.

“Holy,” whispered Daemon.

“Shit,” Grayson finished.

Luc’s gaze inched back to