The bullet melted before it could ever touch him.

Above the crackle of the flames, he heard the woman’s shocked gasp.

“When you’re as old as I am, the power is so much greater,” Dante murmured. He let his flames flicker away so that he could meet Cain’s stare once more. “Want to try again? Feel free to shoot every bullet in your gun.”

Cain’s hold tightened on the weapon.

“But you should know, they won’t hurt me.” Dante tilted his head. “Though they will piss me off.”

Eve’s hands fisted in the material of Cain’s shirt. “Cain . . .” Fear threaded his name.

Dante heard the grind of a motor. The elevator. Lifting up once more.

He couldn’t have an enemy at his back and one at his front. He leaped to the side, not sure who he would see when the doors slid open. Cassie was safe in the closet—

The doors parted to reveal Cassie’s worried face.

“Cassie!” Dante roared. He tried to leap toward her.

Too late. His roar had revealed far too much.

Cain had rushed toward her, too. Cain reached her first. Cain wrapped his arms around Cassie and pulled her close against him.

Dante hadn’t intended to make the phoenix shifter’s death particularly brutal. In that moment, he changed his mind.

The woman—Eve—had frozen, but Cain hurried back to her, pulling Cassie in front of him like the shield that she was.

“You want to let her go,” Dante snapped.

Cain shook his head and put his gun to Cassie’s head.

The fool.

“What are you doing?” Eve demanded. “That’s Cassie! She’s helping Trace!”

The elevator doors closed.

Cain shook his head again. “She set us up, don’t you see that? Lured us out here so he could attack.”

Cassie’s wild-eyed stare landed on Dante. “I didn’t,” she whispered. “I didn’t know what he’d planned.”

Dante saw betrayal in her stare, and that look made him feel strange. His chest ached.

“Move the gun away from her head,” he ordered.

The gun didn’t move.

“Cain!” Eve snapped.

“Don’t move the gun,” Cassie said in the same instant.

What?

“Eve, call up the elevator,” Cassie said softly. “You, Cain, and I will go inside it. Dante won’t—He won’t hurt us as long as I’m in front of you two.”

She was choosing to protect them? Even as that jackass pressed a gun to her head?

Cassie held Dante’s gaze. “I’ll lock the system down once we’re inside. He won’t be able to follow us.”

No, no. That would not happen.

“Cassie . . .” Her name was a warning growl from Dante.

Cain slowly backed them toward the elevator.

“You don’t follow us,” Cassie whispered to Dante. “You just . . . get the hell out of here. Don’t look for us, and we won’t look for you.”

He didn’t think Cain was going to agree to that plan. The expression on the guy’s face promised retribution.

Dante wasn’t leaving him alive. “That’s not happening,” he vowed.

“You used me,” Cassie said, shaking her head.

Had her voice broken? It had. Broken with pain.

“I trusted you, but you just wanted to hurt them.”

“No,” Dante said. “I wanted to kill the phoenix.” It was what he’d been taught to do. The only way he’d survived.

The phoenixes in his village had turned on one another, battling in a fury of bloodlust and fire.

Until only one remained . . .

Because of the siren.

Cassie didn’t realize that she was the danger that would destroy so many. He knew what powers she held inside. He’d known from the beginning.

Maybe he should have just killed her, but that act had always been beyond him. She made him weak.

Just as Zura had made his brother weak.

It doesn’t have to be this way! We can be strong together.

Hadn’t he tried to stop his brother? Hadn’t he tried to use reason before fire?

Until there had been no reason left.

Just flames.

Wren hadn’t wanted them both to live. He hadn’t wanted them both to be stronger.

I’ll be stronger on my own. Wren had told him those cold words, even as his fire burned hell-hot. And I’ll never fear you turning on me.

The elevator’s doors opened. Eve stepped toward those doors then stopped. “Trace?”