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dominated an arena, had finally lost the tight grip he kept on the world around him. She’d seen the slash of fury in his eyes, the hatred.
    But he’d caught himself. Like a rogue wave frozen before it could crash against the rocks, he’d forcefully cut off the emotion that had gripped him.
    She stared at him now, at the glint in his ridiculously green eyes, the shadow of dark whiskers covering the hard line of his jaw, and wondered what in God’s name she’d stumbled into.
    “There’s going to be a confrontation.” That much she could tell him. And if he knew, if he was warned, maybe he stood a chance. Maybe he would be the last man standing, not the one who lay in a pool of blood on the beach.
    The future isn’t etched in stone.
    God, how she hoped. Foolishly, naively, and yet still she hoped.
    “In the compound?” The harshness of moments before no longer laced his voice, just idle curiosity.
    “On the beach.” With the sun shining and the surf gently crashing. “You and Jorak, and the woman.” Flora?
    Everything changed. From the moment she’d mentioned betrayal, Ethan had been tense, on guard, almost bracing himself. Now the harsh lines of his face softened, the planes of his body relaxed, the glitter of his eyes turned to a gleam. “The woman?”
    The question was simple, a mere request for clarification, but Brenna was beginning to realize nothing was simple with Ethan Carrington. He lived in a world of complexity and strategy. Taking anything he said or did at face value would be a grave mistake.
    Still, she let the images roll back, tried to bring the woman into focus. They’d been painfully vivid the night before, etched with precision into the fabric of the dream, but the second she’d yanked herself awake, everything had faded from vibrant color to whitewashed pastel. It was all muted now, tattered, more sensation than concrete image.
    “The one you love,” she murmured, and her heart clenched on the words. That much she knew. That much she remembered. The strength of the emotion did cruel, cruel things to her heart. What would it be like, she couldn’t help but wonder, to be loved by this man. To be wanted. To be possessed. “You’ll die before you let Jorak touch her.”
    For a moment Ethan just watched her, very carefully, very pointedly, using silence as she imagined he would leverage it in a courtroom, as a commodity, to make a point or intimidate a witness. But she held quiet, waiting, knowing no matter how frenetically her heart beat, no matter how hotly emotion streamed through her, the ball now lay in his court.
    And then he laughed. It was a rich sound, deep and animated and oddly seductive, and it reverberated through the luxurious limousine. His eyes, hard and focused fragile moments before, crinkled in amusement. “You’re good,” he muttered. “I’ll hand you that, angel. You’re good.”
    Reality looped around her throat, tightened. He didn’t believe her. She didn’t need to hear the actual words to know the truth. Ethan Carrington was laughing at her, just like so many before him. So many others she’d tried to warn.
    So many others who had died anyway.
    “Trust me,” she said, squeezing the words past the knot of inevitability. She looked into his face, but saw only the man lying facedown on the beach, the sand no longer pristine white, but stained by his blood, “There’s nothing good about this.”
    “They’re your dreams,” he reminded quietly. “Not mine.”
    She ignored the scrape against her heart. “But it’s your life,” she countered, “whether you believe me or not.”
    He shook his head. “You almost had me,” he muttered. With a frown, he shoved a hand through his closely cut hair. “Right up until the bit about the woman, you almost had me.”
    There was a note of regret in his voice, an edge she didn’t understand. She held his gaze, looked deep, couldn’t fathom what she saw. Something glimmered in those green depths, a faint light