“He’s pragmatic,” I say. “He thinks in options and outcomes. Sometimes he sacrifices what is tender to keep the rest breathing.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. Just the truth.” It is not enough. I can see that in the tightness around her mouth. I watch her fingers toy with the fabric of her bag, her mind clearly still turning over thoughts she doesn’t know how to voice.
“He doesn’t hate you, Lillien.” My voice drops lower. Rougher. “He never could.”
“Why was he cast out?”
I shrug, because some stories are his to tell. “Ask him,” I say. It is the honest answer. He deserves to say his own darkness out loud when he wants to.
My phone buzzes and Deimos’s name flashes on the screen. “I know where we’re going next,” I tell her, slipping the phone away. “Come on. We’ll get you somewhere safe tonight. Tomorrow we’ll buy you new clothes.”
She arches a brow. “You’re going shopping with me?”
“Hell no,” I say with a grin. “I’m only going as your hot body guard and sugar demon.” She snorts and the small sound loosens something inside me. I reach for her hand because it feels like the right and stupid thing to do.
The second our skin touches the air changes. Not a whisper but a roar. A pulse runs through me like molten iron. Her fingers are small and warmer than I expected, and the shock is physical. It is not the bond. Not yet. It is the first, terrible graze of something that could burn bright and long.
The want to protect hardens into something more dangerous. I do not say it aloud. I do not need to. I would killfor that small, soft thing in my palm, even if I do not understand why the idea makes me feel suddenly young and reckless.
I pull, a small tug of power, and the world swallows us. Darkness folds like a curtain and we step through into light.
The apartment is a blade of luxury cut into the night. Floor-to-ceiling windows show a city smeared in gold. Leather couches sit like dark sentries. A bar glints in the corner. The place smells of old money and new patience. It is the sort of safe people buy when they want to feel untouchable.
She inhales slowly and for the first time since we left the house I see her exhale. I let go of her hand but the warmth remains.
“Welcome to your new home,” I say, voice low and easy. The phrase is a promise and a warning.
For now.
THIRTY-TWO
The hot water cascades over me, washing away the grime, the tension, the blood. It runs in hot rivers down my ribs and hips, dragging the night with it and leaving me raw. I press my palms against the sleek, cool tile of the shower wall and inhale. Steam curls around me, heavy as a secret.
The scent of some expensive soap fills my senses, something dark and musky, cedarwood with a bitter backbone like smoke. It should cleanse me. It does not.
His scent rides the steam with the soap, a memory that clings to my skin. Deimos. He lingers on my skin, in my lungs, a phantom touch that brushes the edges of me until I am nervous and alive.
My skin flushes under my palms, but the feeling remains because it is not a thing on my skin. It is inside me now—woven into my bones, threaded through my blood.
I should feel lighter. Clean. Instead I am on edge, restless, a coiled thing that wants to tear and be torn. The hunger inside me is a bruise that hums when I breathe. Not hunger for food. For something deeper and more ancestral. It is animal and electric and it does not care for the names polite people give to appetite.
I want to break someone and be broken in the same motion. To make ruin into worship. The thought blooms hot and obscene and I let it sit there because denying it feels like denying myself.
A low growl rises in my throat and surprises me with how right it sounds. I shut off the water, muscles humming, and step out. I wrap a thick towel around myself but the fabric is a poor shield. Restlessness crawls beneath my skin. My pulse is loud in my neck and fingers twitch. The hunger grows louder until I can hear it like a drum in my head. A current of power stirs through me. The lights blink. Shadows curl along the walls though nothing else moves, like the room is listening for the thing I am about to do.
I do not wander for long. Around the corner, he appears—Bastion—stepping out of another bathroom, towel low on his hips. Water beads trail down the ridges of his chest, clinging to his tattoos, following the planes of him. His hair is wild and wet and falling into his eyes the way it would when he has just fought or fucked. When he freezes I know the smell of him before his voice cuts through the steam. Golden eyes skim me like a hunter reading a map of prey.
“Hellcat,” he drawls, his voice thick, rough. “What are you doing wandering around half-dressed?”
I swallow, grip the towel as if it will anchor me. “I—” I exhale and the sound dissolves into the air as if it never meant to be anything more than a small offering. “I don’t know. I just… I feel overwhelmed.”
I take a step closer though the towel trembles in my hands. Shadows behind me grow long and want to reach for him. His gaze tracks me slow and deliberate, nostrils flaring as if he could taste the shape of my need on the air.
“I feel—” I falter, cheeks flushing with the shame of wanting to sound anything less than monstrous. “Anxious. Hungry.”
At the word his body changes as if someone flicked a switch. The slow, easy warmth that is his usual armor snaps into something tighter and sharp. His pupils open until they are predatory coins. The space tightens. Heat and pressure roll through the room like a storm front; the air tastes like the metal on a new blade.
