Grace hugged the box protectively to her chest as she shoved her way through the group of Suits until she was next to the leader.
"You swore you would let him go," she admonished him in Mandarin. "You swore it!"
"I did," he agreed with a shallow nod of his head. "I gave you my word, and I will honor it."
She closed her eyes, exhaling in relief.
"However," he continued, "I cannot be held accountable for what they will do." He jerked his head in the direction of the things holding Aiden.
Her eyes snapped open. "What? What do you mean? We had a deal!"
"You and I had a deal. And we have a deal with them," again he indicated the things holding Aiden. "The two deals have nothing to do with each other."
Aiden grunted and she whipped her head around, pushing her hair out of her face. The one called Steven had him by the hair on the crown of his head as he eyed up the box in her hands. As she watched, he pulled Aiden's head back until she thought his neck would snap, and two others had his arms outstretched painfully to either side. Fresh tears filled her eyes.
He looked like a sacrifice.
The leader of the Suits bowed to the hybrids. "We will meet you at the appointed place for the exchange."
Steven wiped the blood from his face with the back of his free arm and gave them a gruesome smile. "Agreed."
"Come," the Chinese man told her. "There's nothing we can do here. You can come with us to the meeting place, away from here. Give us the box there, and you will leave unharmed as we agreed."
"What about him?" She indicated Aiden.
The leader didn't even bother to look his way. "He is no longer your concern, or ours. There is nothing we can do for him. They will bring him...or they won't."
Grace locked eyes with Aiden, and his look of complete betrayal nearly knocked the air from her lungs.
Her mind spun as she frantically tried to come up with a way out of this. She couldn't just leave him here with those things.
She had no weapon, and what little magic she possessed was useless in situations like this. Still, there had to be a way. Something she could offer them, something she could do...
"Go along then," Aiden growled at her. "Get out of my sight, you bloody bitch, before I kill you myself."
His words hit her like a slap of cold air, and she reared back with a gasp.
"Aiden..." she nearly sobbed.
He surged forward with bared fangs, fighting his captors to get to her.
Pain and fear ripped through her. She spun away before he could see and automatically put one foot in front of the other, walking away in the midst of the humans.
What had she done?
He doesn't mean it, she told herself. He's just pissed off. Really pissed off.
Uncontrollable tears ran down her face, but she refused to look back. She couldn't. She couldn't stand to see the way he was looking at her anymore.
I didn't betray you! I was trying to save us! She screamed the words in her head hoping that somehow he would hear them, but knowing he wouldn't.
She'd been stupid. Stupid!
Why won't you trust me, love?
She fought back a sob as Aiden's husky voice came back to her. Why hadn't she trusted him? He would've gotten them out of there somehow.
But more and more of those things had kept coming every night, and he couldn't leave during the day, and she'd been running low on supplies. She thought she'd come up with such a great idea: the perfect solution. Play nice with the less dangerous humans by giving them what they wanted, and work out a way to get Aiden out of there.
She'd believed her Mom, believed he couldn't be trusted, and in turn, she had become the treacherous one.
Way to play hero, Grace.
The group picked up their pace as they got farther away from the sculpture, all of them except Grace looking back over their shoulders every few steps. Seems they didn't quite trust their business partners.
Couldn't say that she blamed them.
They got to one of the roads and hurried towards a line of vehicles parked on the one side. She was herded to the front car and she climbed into the back seat gratefully, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Her back was on fire from holding herself so stiffly upright, when all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball around the ice in her chest until it either melted, or hardened enough so that she didn't care anymore.
None of them noticed the soft sounds of padded footfalls following them to the cars within the shadows of the tree line.