Prologue

Jean was dead, but somehow her death didn't feel real to me. Even as I watched the others gather over her fallen body to pay their respects, it felt like I was watching a play. Kitty's face was buried in Bobby's shoulder, Colossus was standing stoic guard, and Storm was on her knees smoothing Jean's hair. I should have been part of the tableau as well, but I couldn't bring myself to join my teammates.

Jean was dead because I had killed her.

It wasn't anything that I had planned, and it certainly hadn't been my intent when I'd woken up that morning. But I'd had a good reason.

If I hadn't done it, Logan would have.

I'd seen the resigned look on his face, and had known what it meant. He'd run through all the possible scenarios in his head, and then reached the same conclusion as everyone else—Phoenix needed to be stopped, and with his healing factor, he was the only one that stood a chance at taking her down.

Logan had always been the one to protect us, and to shield us from the true horrors of war. He was the one that took the difficult kills because he believed that that was his job. We had let him become our weapon because it was convenient.

He'd been prepared to take care of our "problem" this time too, and the rest of the team had been content to stand aside and let him do it. No one would have given him a direct order to kill Jean, but that was the beautiful thing about Logan, he was always willing to put himself in harm's way in order to save the rest of us. As if he was the expendable one.

He turned to me before making his final run at Phoenix, and caught my gaze for a long moment. It was something he had done dozens of times before. I was supposed to nod in response—both to assure him that I was okay, and to confirm that I had his back in whatever move he was about to make. But I couldn't. Because when our eyes met, I knew that I was going to lose him.

Unlike everyone else, I had carried Logan's plan one step further in my mind, and watched a horrible series of events unfold. If Logan killed Jean, it would break him. He would shut everyone out, and the guilt would slowly eat away at him, until one day, he convinced himself that we'd all be better off if he left the mansion. He would continue down a self-destructive spiral of fighting and drinking, and would end up far more damaged than he'd been when we'd met in Laughlin City.

I didn't want that kind of life for him. Logan deserved better, even if he didn't think so.

There had been another solution to the Phoenix problem. The second of two no-win scenarios, and the one that, in Logan's haste to fill the role of executioner, he'd forgotten about. Whatever he could survive, I could survive too.

Someone once told me that when a choice is difficult to make, that's how you know that it's the right one. That was why I was still a mutant. And that was how I knew that I needed to be the one to kill Jean.

I was the only person in the world that possessed the ability to take down the mighty Wolverine without a struggle. That was the power that he had given me when he'd decided to let me into his life. He never put his guard up when we were alone. By exploiting that vulnerability I knew that I would be destroying my relationship with him. Logan would never trust me again.

And yet, I hadn't let that stop me from making the hard decision.

It was selfish, but I'd wanted to give Logan one last, good memory of me before I sunk the proverbial knife into his back. Something for him to think back on, and remember that we'd had some good times too. His brows had crinkled in confusion when I pulled him aside, but then I'd gone up on my tiptoes and pressed my lips against his in a quick kiss, and he hadn't thought to ask questions. While he was distracted, my bare hand slid around the back of his neck, and I drained his life force with quiet efficiency.

His eyes never left mine—at least not until they rolled back into his head. I didn't think that I would ever be able to forget the way that his expression had turned from happily surprised to painfully betrayed.

There was one thing that I had forgotten, and didn't realize until I was helping Logan slump to the ground. Whatever hurt him, hurt me too. And I felt like someone had punched me in the heart.

He wouldn't have been able to hear me, but I'd whispered some things in his ear that I thought he should know—how sorry I was, how much I loved him. Then I'd dashed into the fray, and done what had fucking been necessary.

Jean was once a friend and a respected teammate, but I had looked past those inconvenient labels in order to do my job. That was how I had been trained. That was how Logan had trained me. If there was a threat, I eliminated it. I did it quickly, efficiently, and I didn't hesitate. Hesitation gets you and your team killed—that was Logan's mantra. I had absorbed all of his lessons over the years, and then, on the battlefield, I had absorbed the rest.

The element of surprise had worked in my favor. Jean never expected me to heal, or to have claws. A telepath should've known better, really, but she had been busy being the Phoenix, so I guess it was understandable that she'd missed Logan lying in a heap amongst the rubble.

I suppose, in a strange way, that Logan had been the one to kill Jean. He had just done it from behind my eyes. I consoled myself with the knowledge that at least the real Logan would never know what it felt like to have his claws buried in the gut of the woman he loved. It had been horrific enough for me.

I hadn't lingered at the scene, and when I'd stalked away from Jean's body, I had caught glimpses of my teammates' shocked expressions. I was sure that with Jubilee's flare for storytelling, my epic tale of heroism would be embellished. It wouldn't matter what anyone told Logan, though. I wouldn't be the savior in his eyes.

I would be Judas.

Logan would never understand that I had sacrificed everything because I thought that there should be someone looking out for him for once. From his perspective, I would always be the woman that had slipped past his defenses, invaded his mind, and stolen his powers. I'd be the woman that had murdered his 'Jeannie'. I would be the one that had robbed the Wolverine of his kill. He would hate me with every fiber of his being.

I had made my decision to kill Jean in a split second while a war raged around me. I hadn't had time to stop and think through all possible consequences of my actions. I hadn't anticipated anything beyond the inevitability of losing my best friend.

But as I stood on the periphery of the smoldering battlefield, with Jean's blood on my charred hands and Logan's turbulent memories mixing with my own, a chilling new thought emerged. Logan wasn't going to just let my betrayal go unpunished.

He was going to want revenge.

As soon as he woke up, the hunt would begin. I'd have a head-start, but I wouldn't be able to hide forever. The Logan in my head was adamant about that. You'll make a mistake, he taunted, and one day, I'll find you.

In a straight fight, even having his powers, I wouldn't be able to take him. He was physically stronger than I was, and metal beat bone every time. One day, he'd catch me, and then I reckoned he'd try to kill me.

I'd give him about even odds of being successful. The stolen mutation felt different than it had in the past—like I had finally taken too much from him, too many times.

But what would happen, I wondered, if he stabbed me like I had stabbed Jean, and I didn't die? I knew the kind of brutal and relentless torture that he was capable of inflicting. I had dark memories of the Wolverine playing with his prey. I'd felt what he'd felt as he'd brought men to the brink of death and then pulled back. A small part of him had gotten off on the bloodshed.

A quick death by his hand would be an act of mercy in comparison, and I wasn't afraid of that. No, the thing that caused me to break out in a cold sweat was the knowledge that when he caught me, he was going to make me suffer.

There was only one thing that I could do, and it was the same thing that had caused me to cross paths with Logan in the first place.

I ran.