He hit the windshield and cursed. “What are you–”

“Sh!” She gestured up. “Drone,” she mouthed the word at him.

Grinding his teeth, he looked up and saw it. Then did the stupidest thing he could . . .

He exploded it with his powers.

Jayne sucked her breath in as she watched the sparks rain down over the hood of her stolen transport. Granted, she’d suspected his race when he’d taken the blaster without touching it and summoned his backpack during the fight, but things had been happening so fast that she’d hoped she’d imagined that.

There was no mistaking this.

“You’re Trisani.”

He didn’t say a word as he met her gaze. His eyes glowed with an unmistakable sheen that betrayed the heritage of a race that had been hunted to the brink of extinction.

Shit.

There was nothing she could do. If a Trisani wanted someone dead, they could implode a brain inside a skull. Cause a heart attack. Literally wish someone dead and they’d die.

Trisani were the assassins to beat all assassins.

No other race had ever been able to stand against them. Not without severe tech to dampen their psionic abilities.

Which meant that he already knew everything about her. He knew her thoughts better than she did.

Double shit . . .

Instinctively, she held her hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Why did you save me?”

Jayne froze at that question. Then she remembered his earlier one. “Don’t you know why?”

He narrowed his gaze.

Her jaw went slack as the answer dawned on her. “You can’t read my mind, can you?”

Hadrian tightened his grip on his backpack as she realized the one thing that he’d learned once they were free of other people. After he should have had absolute clarity and space to know every voice in her head.

Every doubt. Every fear.

Instead of those obnoxious intrusions he hated that usually overran his own thoughts, he’d heard nothing.

Not a single whisper from her, and that was highly disturbing. Abnormal. Only his brother had the ability to shield his thoughts from him like that.

But never had a stranger done this before.

It was something Nero had warned him about. Rare, and almost impossible and unheard of. Those tiny handful of creatures they couldn’t read. Clusas.

Yet Hadrian had never met one before. He’d believed them to be some other form of gremlin Nero had made up to frighten him with.

Apparently, they were real.

And she was one of them.

Figured.

He unclenched his teeth. “I don’t have to read your mind to kill you. So, answer my question.”

“I didn’t come here to hurt you.”

“Then what do you want?”

“My warrant was only to return you to your family.”

There was one problem with that. “My family’s dead.” And the sole member who wasn’t, knew exactly where he was as he’d dumped him here to keep him “safe.” So, there was no way in hell that Nero had sent someone else after him.