Chapter One Hundred and Eighty- Seven
Asli glanced over her shoulder.
Her n were closing in fast now, boots pounding, guns raised, eyes sharp and waiting for her signal. The space between them and Aht was shrinking by the second. One wrong move and it would all collapse into blood.
Her chest tightened.
She shut her eyes briefly, just a blink, but it felt like a betrayal of everything she was.
"Hold ," she whispered.
Aht stared at her like he hadn’t heard right. Smoke curled between them, gunfire cracking sowhere to the side, but his focus locked on her face.
"What?" he breathed.
She didn’t wait for him to decide.
Asli dragged herself toward him deliberately, stumbling just enough to sell it, her shoulder brushing his chest as if he had yanked her in. Her voice was barely audible now, and sharp with urgency.
"Hold ," she repeated. "As leverage."
Understanding hit him like a punch.
For half a second, he hesitated. Then his arm ca up around her, firm and unmistakable, his gun lifting to her temple. His body turned just enough to shield her without making it obvious.
The field froze.
"Guns down!" Asli shouted.
Her n faltered.
Confusion rippled through them, hands tightening, eyes darting between her and Aht. Slowly... too slowly, so of the guns lowered.
A voice cut through the pause, sharp and furious.
"Don’t be stupid!" Demir barked from behind the line. "You’re on a battlefield! Your queen is being held hostage and you are lowering your guns?"
Sha flickered across a few faces. Then discipline snapped back in place.
Weapons rose again.
All of them aid at Aht.
Asli swallowed hard, her throat tight as panic clawed at her ribs. She forced herself to think. Forced herself to breathe.
"Guns down!" she yelled again, louder now. Commanding. Desperate.
This was madness.
She knew it.
Being taken as leverage was already unforgivable. Ordering her n to disarm in the middle of an assault? Her father would call it incompetence. Weakness. A failure unfit for leadership.
But she couldn’t let them shoot him.
She just couldn’t.
Of all the things ripped from her life: family, childhood, and even choices, there was one man standing here, though her enemy, he had sworn to love her in his own twisted way.
The realization burned.
Her vision blurred, and she hated that too. Hated the pressure behind her eyes, and the ache in her chest. This wasn’t her. She didn’t act on emotion.
Fck! She didn’t have emotions.
"Shoot him!" Demir roared.
The n wavered, torn between orders.
Before the balance could tip, movent surged around them.
Aht’s n poured in, fast and coordinated, their weapons raised, bodies forming a tight ring around Aht and Asli. The space narrowed, control shifting inch by inch.
Asli knew it then.
This mission was ant to fail. She had made sure of it.
Cole wasn’t there and that was intentional. This had only been the first set. Demir had forced himself into this operation, and against her better judgnt, wanted to be in the sa car as her.
Daniel or whatever his na was, was with Cole, exactly where he was supposed to be.
She kept her face steady, even as her heart raced.
If not, more of her n would’ve arrived by now and they hadn’t.
A grim sense of relief settled in her chest.
Cole had control.
That second unit would be intercepted by the Police. Delays engineered down to the minute.
She stayed still in Aht’s hold, staring straight ahead, as the battlefield around them stalled.
She had already lost it on purpose.
But did it an this was useless? No it wasn’t because his father was dying this morning. But what next?
Aht’s grip didn’t loosen.
If anything, it beca more exact and asured, deliberate, like he was holding sothing volatile and knew it.
"You planned this," he murmured, so low only she could hear. He wasn’t accusing her. It was a realization settling into place.
Asli kept her gaze forward, spine straight, breath controlled by sheer will.
"No," she said quietly. "I adapted."
His thumb shifted against her arm. It was barely a movent, but it burned all the sa.
"You don’t adapt like this unless you were ready to lose," he said.
Her throat tightened. She hated that he knew that.
Around them, the gunfire softened. n on both sides held position, weapons raised, waiting. No one moved. No one dared.
The world narrowed until it was just the two of them.
"If you wanted dead," Aht continued, voice low and steady, "you would have let them fire."
Her jaw set.
"If I wanted you alive," she replied, "I wouldn’t be standing like this."
That made him turn her.
Not roughly, just enough that her back brushed his chest and her face angled toward his shoulder, close enough that he could see her profile, the tension in her jaw, and the discipline holding her together.
Not the queen. Not the enemy.
Just the woman breathing against him. Just Asli, beautiful in the way she’d always been, and devastating in the way she was now. Smoke clung to her hair, tension sharpened her features, and still... yet still, his body betrayed him. Desire coiled low and sudden, inappropriate and furious. He found himself wishing, absurdly, that this would end quickly, that the noise and guns and eyes would disappear so he could peel her clothes off piece by piece and remind each other she belonged to him and he to her.
"You know what this looks like," he said quietly trying to take his mind off the dangerous thoughts.
"Yes."
"To both sides?"
"Yes."
"And you still did it."
She closed her eyes for half a second. That was all she allowed herself.
"I told them to lower their guns," she said. "Not to think."
A breath left him, almost a laugh, if circumstances had been kinder.
"You’ve always been terrifying like that."
Her eyes lifted then, eting his for the briefest mont.
"Let go," she whispered.
"Not yet."
His forehead dipped closer, nearly touching her temple, his voice rough now. "If I let you go, soone might panic. If soone decides they don’t care what you ordered, both of us could die here."
She hated that he was right.
"I won’t repeat the command," she said. "They’ll see it as a weakness."
"Then let be the reason they don’t move."
Her breath caught.
"That makes it worse."
"For you," he said. "Not for ."
Sothing shifted between them.
Choice.
"This will cost you," he murmured.
"I know."
"And you still..."
"Aht."
She said his na like it was a warning. Like a plea she would never own.
He stilled.
His grip tightened, not in a possessive, or cruel way. Just human.
"Fck," he breathed.
She felt it against her ear.
"I fcking love you."
The words slipped out raw and unarmored, dragged loose by chaos and the fact that she was standing there, choosing ruin with open eyes.
Asli froze. She was not startled.
Nor shocked.
She was stunned.
He exhaled sharply, almost angry with himself. "Don’t look at like that. I know how insane it sounds."
Her throat worked. Nothing ca out.
"You walked into gunfire and bent it around you," he went on, fierce and quiet. "You made killers hesitate. And... you chose when every rule said you shouldn’t."
His knuckles brushed her wrist once. It was gone before anyone could notice.
"How am I supposed not to admire that?"
"You shouldn’t say things like that... Especially not here, not right now.," she managed.
"I shouldn’t do a lot of things," he replied. "Yet here we are."
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