Page 57 of His Asset

“Is this a prank?”

“Call the cops.”

Their voices tangled around me, a net I couldn’t escape.I wrapped my wings around my chest, realizing too late that my torso was unclothed, my breasts bared.Heat rushed to my face, humiliation burning hotter than the sun.

I wanted to vanish.To sink into the river and let it take me away.Except, I couldn’t swim.I’d never been taught.The thought struck like a cruel joke.All this vitality, all this supposed power, and I’d never learned how to survive in water.

The crowds chatter grew louder, more frantic.Phones lifted high, screens gleaming.A few were already livestreaming.

Then I heard it.

A low thrum.Distant, but rising.The sound of blades cutting the air.

My heart seized.

The helicopter crested the tree-line, sunlight flashing off its chrome-plated body like liquid fire.The wind from its rotors whipped the river into whitecaps, sent dust spiraling across the shore.

I didn’t need to see the helicopter’s markings to know.I didn’t need to guess.

It was him.

Even through the glare, even through the panic clawing at my chest, I knew.

Adam had found me.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ididn’t know if Iwanted to scream, or run, or collapse.

But as the helicopter descended, scattering the humans back from its downdraft, I realized there was nowhere left to go.No sky to glide through, no ground safe enough to hide me.

So I stayed where I was, trembling, mud-streaked and half-nude beneath the sun, watching the man who’d come to collect his broken experiment.

Except I wasn’t an experiment, not really.I was the improbable child of two facility prisoners, born from a love that had consumed them both.I’d been conceived in defiance, then thrust into a world that would never forgive me for it.

The helicopter’s blades thundered above, shredding the air.Dust and river spray lashed against my skin as I tried to shield my face with my wings.Everything blurred...until I saw him.