I smirk. “Good. That’s exactly what I was going for.”
As we walk toward the store, I feel the weight of their eyes on me. The tension is palpable. I can sense Karter’s possessiveness simmering behind us. Wyck’s dominance stretching like a tether, taut and ready to snap. But neither of them say a word.
Not because they’re mad.
Because they’re watching me choose.
And Dash?
He just keeps walking beside me, jaw tight, pulse racing. Like he knows his time with me tonight wasn’t a gift.
It was a war he just won.
Two hours later, and four truckloads of furniture signed, sealed, and set for delivery, we finally emerge from the fluorescent hell of IKEA and step back into the night. The air outside is sharp, biting, like it knows something I don’t.
We climb into the truck, my body sore from walking but buzzing from the adrenaline of having all five Devils orbiting me like I’m their axis. Their obsession is becoming a shield I both need… and fear.
As we pull away from the lot, I finally speak.
“Wyck… I think I should go back.”
“Go back where?” His voice is a blade. “There is absolutely no version of this reality where I let you return to my father’s house. And you’re not running back to Josie’s either. Not yet.”
“I don’t want to go back to your place and face those journals.” My voice is too soft, too exposed. I hate how easily he can hear my cracks.
“Why?” he asks, not unkindly… but not gently either.
“Because I’m terrified of what’s inside.”
His jaw ticks, but it’s Onyx who speaks first, his voice muffled beneath that damned mask. “Then be terrified. But you won’t be alone.”
“You’ll read them with all of us around you,” Dash adds, his tone dry and shadowed. “What’s the worst that can happen with five Devils flanking you while you unravel the truth?”
“Grr,” Wells grunts from the backseat, his version of a battle cry. Or agreement. Hard to tell with him.
I exhale slowly, fingers twitching in my lap. “I don’t know what scares me more… remembering or discovering why I forgot. Josie told me I buried my memories. But how? Can someone really teach themselves to forget that violently?”
What’s waiting for me in those pages?
Who did I write about?
WhatdidI survive?
“Athens,” Wyck says, his voice low and razor-sharp, “I’m only going to say this once. You’re not going anywhere. Not now. Not ever. Wherever we are, you belong. And whatever you find in those journals, whatever monster hid in your past, we’ll destroy it. Burn it out of existence if we have to.”
He turns, meeting my gaze dead-on. “You won’t go through that pain again. Not while we still breathe.”
I should be afraid of them. I should run from the men who speak like that, like gods who never learned to bow.
But I don’t run.
My heart is wildfire in my chest, burning for every one of them, and him most of all.
And yet… the question slips out before I can cage it.
“Wyck… do you already know what’s inside those journals?”
Silence swallows the car whole.
