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She'd seen enough children orphaned by the regime who had somehow found their way into her rebel camp. She'd given them purpose and helped channel their grief and anger toward taking revenge on the enemy and freeing as many of their people as they could, but none of them had ever become whole again.

They were forever broken.

As they reached a paved road, Max shifted gears and accelerated away from the compound, followinga route they had mapped earlier that would avoid main roads and checkpoints.

In the rearview mirror, Kyra could see in the distance the compound burning brightly against the night sky, a beacon of destruction that would soon draw attention from the authorities.

"They'll think it's a terrorist attack," she said. "Or maybe an internal power struggle." She turned to the window.

With the adrenaline of combat wearing off, a melancholy settled in. "Yasmin's oldest boy asked about his father," she said quietly. "I had to tell him that he didn't make it."

Max tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "There's no good way to tell a child their parent is gone. But at least he has his mother and his siblings. Their future would have been a living hell if the Doomers had shipped them to the island, which they would have done now that Durhad is no longer around. They wouldn't have known what else to do with them."

If Yasmin was still fertile, she would have been sent to the Doomers breeding program, and so would her daughters. The sons would have been taken to the Doomers training program and turned immortal.

Max was right to call it a living hell.

"Nevertheless, they lost their father today, and I don't know how to make it better for them. When orphaned teenagers found their way to my rebelcamp, we trained them to fight and take revenge on those who'd murdered their parents." She turned to look at Max. "Is that what I should do with my nieces and nephews? At what age can immortals join the Guardian Force?"

They hadn't had time to discuss all the intricacies of life in the immortals' village, and Kyra realized that she wouldn't even know how to answer her sisters' questions.

Max smiled. "Eighteen, but that's not the only path available to them. There are many paths that can lead to healing."

16

MAX

The parallels weren't lost on Max. Kyra's own life had been torn apart by a member of the Brotherhood, her memories of family erased, and her chance to watch her daughter grow up stolen. And now her sister's family also faced trauma, their lives forever altered by violence and loss.

But at the root of it all had been their father's fanaticism and political aspirations. If he hadn't torn Kyra from her family, shoved her into that mental institution, and asked Durhad tohypnotizeher to forget her past, none of this would have happened.

Then again, Max would have never met Kyra, they wouldn't have fallen in love, and that would have been a great tragedy as well.

Should he be thankful to Kyra's hateful, abusive father?

Never.

One thing was for sure. Max didn't envy the Fates their job. He wouldn't have been able to stomach causing so much suffering just to match up two souls who were destined for each other.

After about twenty minutes of riding in silence, Max's comm unit crackled to life.

"We are withdrawing now," Yamanu reported. "Mission complete. Site sanitized."

The clinical terminology couldn't disguise what those words meant—every Doomer, every guard, every potential witness at the compound had been eliminated. It was brutal but necessary. The Brotherhood operated with similar ruthlessness, and showing mercy would only endanger more innocent lives.

"Copy that," Max acknowledged. "We are proceeding as planned."

He glanced at Kyra, finding her watching him with an expression he couldn't quite read.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said, looking away. "It's just that this isn't the kind of operation I'm used to. With the resistance, we were always outgunned and outmanned. We called it hit and run because that was usually the scope of our operations, either when freeing prisoners or stealing supplies. We've never done anything like this."

"Does it bother you?" he asked carefully.

"No, of course not. I'm just awed at the efficiency and that it was all done with such a small team. TheKra-ell are a great asset to the clan." She shifted, tucking one leg under her. "How did they find you? Or rather, how did you find them?"

He snorted. "That's such an amazingly convoluted story that it would take me a long time to tell it."