could feel it with his thumb against my pulse. He knew he had the upper hand in every way.
I was lost to his superiority.
No was a word I could never utter in his presence. Not without experiencing swift punishment.
Yet a part of me had to admit that I wouldn’t refuse him for more than just societal reasons. His presence endangered my senses, making it difficult to think.
Which was why it took me a moment to register the alarm sounding around us. The blaring siren barely penetrated my thoughts until Ryder leapt to his feet to stalk over to one of his security panels.
He had one in every room, including his guest suite upstairs. I’d tried to play with the one in my temporary room yesterday, but I couldn’t activate it. Which told me they only responded to him.
“Hmm,” he murmured, scanning the security images populating his wide screen. “We have company.” He looked at me. “Do you know how to use a gun?”
“No.” Humans weren’t allowed to handle weapons of that nature, only combat-style tools like batons and swords. That seemed like something he should know, in addition to several other things.
“We’ll rectify that later,” he said, typing in a code on his panel that caused the wall to part beside it.
My eyes widened at the adjoining room Ryder had just revealed. It was a giant armory. His hammer paled in comparison to all this, telling me he hadn’t been kidding when he’d said there were better weapons upstairs.
Because wow.
The large room boasted several rows of knives, guns, grenades, and a variety of other items. Ryder turned left out of my view.
I forced myself up onto my feet, my intention to follow him, except the panel caught my attention. Yellowish-orange silhouettes painted the purple-shaded background. It reminded me of the thermal scanners I’d studied in my university security course. The purpose of the class had been to demonstrate all the ways humans were observed and “protected.” Really, it was a way to deter us from escaping. Or that was how Rae, Silas, and I had interpreted it, anyway.
“How many?” Ryder asked from the other room. When I glanced at him, I found him watching me from the threshold. He didn’t seem to care that I’d checked out the footage. If anything, he appeared pleased by it.
“Nine,” I replied, assuming he wanted me to tell him how many yellowish-orange blobs were on the screens he’d left up on the panel.
“Twelve,” he corrected, disappearing back into his armory. “But you were close,” he called back to me.
I frowned at the screen. “Where are the other three?”
“They’re coming in from the west,” he replied from the other room.
“The west?” I repeated, trying to figure out which monitor showed that. There were six up on the screen, all angled at different parts of his property.
“Upper right corner,” he said as he returned with a gun in his hand. He used it to tap the image on the panel before securing it in his belt, where he had two others tucked away.
I squinted at the purple shading, my brow furrowing as I caught a slight shift in the color. “What is that?” They weren’t yellowish orange like the others. “Why are they so faint?”
“Age,” he replied. “Go pick out some knives. You’re going to need them.”
That didn’t sound good. I wanted to ask him what was happening, but he disappeared into his armory again before I had a chance.
So I did as he requested and picked a few knives from the wall of weapons decorating his sparring area. They were combat-style tools meant for hand-to-hand training, very unlike the items in his secret room.
I also selected two throwing stars, one of which I carefully tucked into the back of my boxer shorts. The other stayed in my hand, while I held two knives in the other.
This isn’t very efficient, I thought as Ryder returned in a dark vest that matched his black pants. He was still shirtless beneath, leaving his muscular arms on display. They bulged threateningly as he slipped a blade into his tool belt. It reminded me of one a Vigil would wear, only more high-tech.
I was about to ask for one, but my mouth forgot how to function as I caught the dark glimmer in his eyes.
“If you ever go in there without my permission, you’ll regret it,” he informed me as he approached. Then he seized my chin between his finger and thumb and forced me to look at him. “And