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“Not your fault, Ember, and put that in your mind on repeat. I don’t blame you. They won’t blame you. You clearly do not have control over your assets and it’s obvious Jeremy was planning on stealing them the minute you turned twenty-seven.”

I rotate to lean on the wall, hugging myself against the ridiculousness of all of this but still find myself asking, “How would Jeremy take my assets?”

“It doesn’t matter how,” he says. “He’s never getting the chance.”

I decide that means the answer is by way of Jeremy possessing me or killing me, and he doesn’t want to say it. “Are we sure he won’t get the chance?”

“Once you awaken your assets, the game is over. He can’t take what you don’t give him.”

“If I awaken my assets.”

“When,” he amends, “but if you’ve been suppressed since childhood, which appears likely, it will take some effort. We’ll need to help you open up your assets for use.”

“My parents.” Just bringing them up is lead in my belly, but I can’t cope by way of denial, nor can I survive by shutting down. Knowledge. Actions. That is how I get through this. “Are you sure they’re Corrupted?” I glance over to find him watching me.

“I’m sorry, Ember.”

In other words, yes. I’m not surprised. At all. I wait for some pained reaction that doesn’t come. “There was a disconnect there,” I explain, all too aware of the interest in his stare. He expected a meltdown I didn’t give him. “Now I know why,” I add. “Who are my real parents?”

“I waited until I knew you were actually with us to start that search, but we’ll find them.”

He planned to kill me, I think. Finding my parents would have been awkward. I move on. “What about my grandfather? Was he Corrupted?”

“Service to either the Corrupt or the Eagles flows through generations, but in this case, it was on the other side of the family. Your grandfather was as oblivious to what was going on as you were.”

Relief rushes over me, and I can actually breathe again for the first time in about an hour. “I cannot tell you how much I needed to hear that. He was pretty much all I had.” I rotate to face him and pull my knees to my chest again, covering my gaping shirt and ignoring the blanket, that falls away. “What about you, Micah? Are your parents involved in all of this?”

“They’re long gone, but they served bravely, and they died with honor.”

The truck slows and abruptly cuts right. “And…we’re here,” he announces, pushing to his feet and offering me his hand.

I yank the blanket around me again and allow him to help me to my feet, aware of his body close to mine on every possible level. The truck rocks and halts. “Are you sure about me being here?”

“This is my domain, Ember. Stay close to me, and you’ll be fine.”

“As in, stay close, or they’ll come at me?”

“At some point, you’ll be challenged. That is the way of almost every race and being in existence, and that includes humans. You are destined to be a leader. Others will think your time as a human makes you unworthy. You’ll want to awaken your assets before you prove otherwise.”

“You’re not making me feel better.”

“Honesty first, remember? The Seers are inherently warriors. And warriors are territorial. You’d be good to remember that.”

My mind flashes back to law school and how brutally competitive I’d been, enough so that I was checked on numerous occasions. I can’t help but wonder now if that was some inner Seer in me—battle suppression.

“Stay where you are a minute,” Micah orders, and I rotate to watch as he crosses the truck bed and opens another cabinet, seeming to search for something, and then returning with a shirt in his hand. “Sometimes one of the men leaves behind a treasure. In this case, it happens to be me who left it behind, and this one’s for you.”

“Thank you, because I don’t think my bra is a good statement piece on a first meeting.”

“It probably worked better with me than it will the others.” His eyes twinkle, and there is enough heat in them to scorch all of Texas. “And yes,” he says, “we’re still being honest. I’ll turn around.”

He turns, leaving me with a smile playing on my lips with his flirty comments. He didn’t have to turn around, but I drop the blanket and pull on the shirt. “Ready,” I say, and he rotates to inspect me as I tie the skirt-length shirt at my waist.

“I think I like it better on you than me,” he approves, but I am certain I would strongly disagree should I have the chance to see it on him.

“Thank you for this. I feel better with it on.”

“Good,” he says, and shifts to the immediate action before us, motioning toward our path out of here.