The gun in Catrin’s hand did not lower, but her entire body was shaking.
"What are you doing here?" Catrin demanded. Her voice was barely a whisper above the howling wind, but it carried all the sharp, jagged edges of her panic.
Zeviel coughed, spitting a streak of dark blood into the purple ash. He planted a hand on his knee, slowly forcing himself to stand. His human body was screaming, but he ignored it. He only looked at her.
"I came to find you," Zeviel rasped, his breath pluming in the freezing air.
"How are you here?" Catrin yelled, her cool, billionaire facade shattering completely. "The world ended four years ago! Everything burned to the ground! And you just... walk out of the fog?"
Jax kept his shotgun pressed against the scavenger leader’s head, but he was staring at Catrin in total shock. "Boss? You know this guy?"
"Shut up, Jax!" Catrin snapped, her green eyes wild, never leaving Zeviel’s face.
Quinn slowly lowered her sniper rifle, looking between the bleeding, silver-haired stranger and her boss. "Catrin, what is going on? He just threw a man twenty feet in the air."
"I said stay out of it!" Catrin’s voice pitched higher, laced with pure, desperate terror.
She looked at Zeviel. She looked at his glowing golden eyes and his silver hair. She thought about the massive, invisible alien warship currently hovering above her fortress. She thought about the flare her four-year-old son had shot into the sky.
He knows, Catrin’s mind screamed. He tracked the flare. He came for Nico.
Zeviel took a slow, painful step toward her. He held his hands up, palms open, showing he wasn’t going to strike. "Green Eyes, please. I know you are confused. You have to let me explain."
"I don’t want to hear it," Catrin cut him off, her finger tightening on the trigger. "Stop right there."
Zeviel ignored the gun. He took another step. "I saw the light in the sky. I know what happened. I felt—"
"I said shut your mouth!" Catrin roared.
Her heart was pounding so hard it bruised her ribs. She had too much on her plate. She was barely keeping her mercenaries in line. She was terrified of the alien ship. She was terrified of Nico accidentally crushing her base. She was running on no sleep, held together by duct tape and adrenaline, and now the ghost of her past was standing in the snow, threatening to rip away the only thing she cared about.
"Turn around," Catrin ordered, her voice turning completely, ruthlessly cold. "Turn around and go back to wherever you came from."
Zeviel stopped. His golden eyes widened slightly, a flash of genuine hurt crossing his aristocratic face.
"I am not leaving you," Zeviel said firmly. His voice was quiet, but it vibrated with an ancient, unyielding authority. "Look at this world. It is toxic. It is full of monsters. I am not walking away from you again."
"I survived the end of the world without you!" Catrin fired back, her chest heaving. "I built an empire without you! I don’t need you! I don’t want you here! Leave!"
"No." Zeviel stood his ground.
Catrin clicked the safety off her pistol. The sharp, metallic click sounded like a bomb dropping in the silent clearing.
Quinn gasped. "Boss, wait—"
"I am giving you three seconds," Catrin warned, her eyes burning with angry tears she refused to let fall. She aimed the barrel directly at Zeviel’s chest. "If you take one more step toward my home, I will shoot you."
Zeviel looked at the gun. He knew she meant it. He could see the absolute, fiercely protective terror in her eyes. She wasn’t acting like a woman scorned by a one-night stand. She was acting like a cornered mother wolf.
He didn’t care about the gun. His human body was fragile, but he was a Vanguard Prince. He stepped forward.
"One," Catrin counted, her hands shaking.
"You can shoot me if it makes you feel better," Zeviel said calmly, taking another step.
"Two." Catrin’s finger pressed against the trigger. She didn’t want to do this. He was Nico’s father. But she would murder God himself if it meant keeping her son safe.
"I am coming with you," Zeviel promised, taking a third step.
"Three!" Catrin squeezed the trigger.
She didn’t aim for his heart. At the last possible fraction of a second, she dropped her aim toward his thigh, just wanting to put him on the ground and run.
But the gun never fired.
Zeviel’s golden eyes flared with a sudden, blinding intensity.
Catrin gasped. The pistol was violently ripped from her grip, flying backward into the snow. But it wasn’t just the gun.
A sudden, invisible weight slammed down onto Catrin’s shoulders. It wasn’t violent, and it didn’t crush her bones, but it was heavy enough to completely paralyze her. Her arms were forced flat against her sides. Her boots were rooted to the frozen dirt.
"Hey!" Jax yelled, raising his shotgun.
Zeviel didn’t even look at him. He flicked his wrist.
Jax and Quinn’s weapons were instantly yanked from their hands, burying themselves deep in the purple snowbanks ten feet away. Both mercenaries froze, completely stunned.
Zeviel let out a sharp hiss of pain. A fresh trickle of bright red blood ran from his nose, dripping off his chin. Holding three human adults in a telekinetic grip with a ten-percent human brain was agonizing. His skull felt like it was splitting in half.
But he held the grip.
He walked slowly toward Catrin, his boots dragging slightly in the ash.
Catrin struggled violently against the invisible weight. She tried to kick. She tried to bite. But she couldn’t move a single muscle. She looked up at him, absolute panic washing over her face.
"Let me go!" Catrin screamed, her voice cracking. "Don’t you dare touch him! If you touch him, I will kill you!"
Zeviel stopped right in front of her.
He looked down into her terrified green eyes. He could hear her heart racing like a trapped bird. She was completely, utterly terrified of him.
The realization broke his heart.
Zeviel didn’t strike her. He didn’t yell. Slowly, fighting through his own pain, he raised his bleeding, bruised hand.
Catrin flinched, closing her eyes tight, waiting for the blow.
Instead, she felt his warm, rough fingers gently brush a stray lock of dark hair out of her face. The touch was so incredibly soft, so completely contrary to the brutal violence she had just witnessed, that it made her breath hitch.
"I am not going to hurt you," Zeviel whispered, his voice thick with emotion. "And I am not going to hurt our son."
Catrin’s eyes snapped open. The words hung in the freezing air between them, heavier than the gravity holding her down.
"I am not here to take him away from you," Zeviel continued, leaving his hand resting gently against her cold cheek. His thumb stroked her skin, leaving a faint smudge of his blood on her jawline. "I didn’t know. If I had known... I would have torn the stars apart to get back to you sooner."
Catrin stared at him. The absolute, unshakeable sincerity in his golden eyes stripped away all her defenses. He wasn’t lying. He wasn’t an alien warlord coming to steal a weapon. He was just a father who had missed everything.
The adrenaline suddenly drained out of Catrin’s body. If the telekinesis hadn’t been holding her up, she would have collapsed into the snow.
Zeviel swayed on his feet. The edges of his vision were turning black. His human vessel had taken too much damage. The bullet graze, the hound bite, the knife wound, it was all catching up to him.
He let out a shaky breath, his glowing eyes dimming back to a dull, exhausted amber.
The invisible weight holding Catrin vanished instantly.
Catrin stumbled forward, catching her balance.
Zeviel couldn’t catch his. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his massive frame crumpled.
He hit the purple snow face-first, completely unconscious.
The howling wind rushed back in to fill the silence. Catrin stood over his bleeding body, her mind completely blank.
"Boss?" Jax asked cautiously, slowly stepping forward and keeping a wary eye on the unconscious man. "Are you okay? What do we do?"
Catrin looked at the scavenger leader, who was still pinned on the ground, staring at Zeviel’s body in sheer terror. She looked at Quinn, who was rubbing her wrists.
Finally, Catrin looked down at Zeviel. He was freezing to death in the dirt.
"Jax," Catrin said, her voice hollow but steady. "Knock the prisoner out and tie him up. He goes in the holding cell."
"And him?" Jax pointed at Zeviel.
Catrin wiped the smear of blood off her cheek. She took a deep breath, accepting the massive, irreversible mistake she was about to make.
"Pick him up," Catrin ordered softly. "Bring him inside."