A Very Unhinged Christmas (Kings of Castlebrook)

Prologue

CILLIAN

Eight Months Before Christmas

The cabin is quiet tonight. Too quiet for some reason, and I can’t really say why other than the fact that I feel it in my gut. Something’s wrong, and since I live alone, that means whatever bullshit is about to happen is my grief to deal with.

This is the kind of silence I used to crave when I lived out of a backpack, moving between contracts, between continents, between versions of myself. Silence meant safety. Privacy. Control.

But lately…it feels like something is missing.

Someone.

I don’t know what that feeling even is. I didn’t grow up with family or softness or anything close to it. I don’t know what it means to want someone. But there’s a pull inside my chest I can’t shake, like I’m waiting for something I’ve never experienced.

I sigh and rub the back of my neck.

I never knew my parents. Not their names, not their faces, not the sound of their voices.

I grew up in foster homes that blurred together.

I knew cramped bedrooms, rotating rules that never made sense, adults who were already half-checked out.

I aged out at eighteen with a trash bag of clothes and no one to call.

I’ve been striving to control my own life ever since.

College wasn’t a dream, it was survival.

I worked every shift I could find, warehouse nights, campus security, whatever paid enough to keep me enrolled.

I didn’t party. Didn’t date. Didn’t have the time or the interest, really.

I’m attracted to women, or at least the concept of them.

But the idea of having to let someone in?

Share the control I’ve carefully mastered over the years?

I’ve never seen a woman who interested me enough to do that.

The government recruited me right after graduation. I don’t know how long they’d been watching me or why they thought I’d make a good sniper, but they were right.

Before I knew it, I was in the sniper program. Classified work. No attachments.

I took to it easily. Too easily, probably, and that’s another reason I don’t let myself get close to anyone.

Since then, I’ve spent my life on contracted work.

My choice. My terms. I’ve been with the program long enough that I pick the jobs I want and walk away from the ones I don’t.

No one questions it. I work a lot, mostly because there’s nothing else waiting for me and there’s a lot of bad fucking people in this world.

People drain me. Crowds irritate me, and noise puts me on edge.

So I bought this cabin in the middle of nowhere years ago. No neighbors. No visitors. Just quiet. Just control. Just me.

It’s better that way.

Until now. The silence is irking me now too.

I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs, silence and solitude were my only rewards.

Then I hear the bullshit I’ve been waiting for. It’s the roar of an engine.

My cabin is miles off any main road, buried in woods people don’t stumble into without getting themselves shot.

Except for the college kids who try to four-wheel onto my property and chase their girlfriends around in the woods wearing those dumb light-up masks.

Who even came up with that shit? I’m not experienced, not even at my mature age of thirty-nine.

But if I was going to fuck a woman, I wouldn’t cover my face in LED lights and run around on someone else’s property like a little twit.

I reach for my firearm, rack the slide, and move toward the door.

One look through the window tells me this isn’t stupid college kids again. A dark vehicle is already reversing down my long dirt drive, fishtailing in the downpour. Whoever was driving knows if they give me half a shot, I’ll take it.

I throw the door open and freeze.

There’s a girl on my porch. Eighteen? Maybe a little older. I feel like the biggest fist in the world just sucker-punched me right in the chest. She’s fucking beautiful.

Her long blonde braid is soaked to her spine and her jacket is plastered to her skin. She looks up at me with wide brown eyes, shining with unshed tears and gasps when she sees the gun in my hand.

Shit.

I lower it immediately because she already looks like she’s been put through the wringer. And something inside me snaps at the thought. I’m never emotional on any of my jobs, even when my target is heinous. But whoever hurt her? Dead. I’ve already decided, and I don’t even know her name.

The girl swallows hard and then pushes out like it’s hard for her to breathe. “I’m, uh… so sorry. I was just leaving. I think I have the wrong house.”

Her voice wobbles, but she doesn’t cry. Her bottom lip trembles instead. She’s small, brave, stubborn, and something about that thought has a sharp possession twisting in my chest.

Protect her.

The instinct hits so fast and hard it almost knocks the air out of me. I don’t even know her name, but everything in me reacts like she’s mine.

My dick twitches in my jeans from how fucking pretty she is. Great, that’s new. Exactly what I don’t need right now is to turn into one of those horny college kids.

Bring me my mask, I guess.

I need to keep my wits about me if I'm going to actually help her, and to do that I need to know who brought her here. “Who was in that car?” I ask, stepping closer to her, and I hate the way she flinches before she forces herself to relax. What happened to her? And who is the fucker responsible? “Why are you here? And don’t lie to me. This isn’t the kind of place you end up at by accident. ”

She bites her lip, unsure if she should answer.

That tiny movement almost ruins me. I want to reach out and brush her bottom lip with my thumb like an absolute fucking creep. I know how it sounds, but it doesn’t make the desire course through me any less.

I should be the only one biting that lip.

Then I notice it, the girl is shivering violently. Of course she is. Rain dripping down her face from her hair, and I feel like an absolute asshole for noticing everything else but how cold she is.

Whoever dropped her here, whoever left her alone on a stranger’s porch in the dark, in a fucking storm…

I want to put them six feet under.

She must decide that she needs to trust me because the girl finally moves. She shoves her delicate hand inside her coat pocket, and my eyes monitor every move just like I’m trained to do. She pulls out a soaked envelope with trembling fingers.

“My dad… I don’t know why he thinks you’ll help me. I don’t expect that. You have no reason to—”

I tear open the letter.

And everything inside me goes still.

Riley Montrose.

Not a best friend. I never let myself have those.

He was my college roommate. He was quiet, steady, decent in a way most people aren’t. We weren’t the type to sit around talking feelings or pretending we were closer than we were. But we learned how to look out for each other. How to share space without crossing lines.

He was the closest thing I ever let myself have to a friend. We played college hockey together. I did it because I was good at it and was able to get part of my tuition paid for just for being on the team.

We lost touch after graduation, different paths, different lives.

I never let myself look him up. I just assumed he was married, had a family, or at least I hoped that for him.

He was never flashy, never into collecting meaningless possessions.

He had a nice girlfriend who I saw around our dorm once in a while, and I just assumed he married her.

I’m not an easy guy to track down, but Riley somehow found me. Tracked me down. Trusted me.

With what I can only assume is his most precious possession of all.

“I’m so sorry. He was in a rush and he thought this would be safe, but I don’t think he was thinking through how you’d feel with some girl just showing up…

” she breathes out like she finds the whole thing absurd, like she can’t understand how her life has turned out this way.

She turns to go, stepping down the stairs, whispering another apology, but her foot slips on the wet wood.

I catch her without thinking, one arm snapping around her waist and pulling her into my chest.

She looks up at me through the rain, eyes huge, long soaked lashes, mouth parted in a breathless little gasp.

I’m fucked. Truly, deeply and utterly fucked. I’d do anything for her, give her anything she wanted.

Riley wouldn’t have abandoned his daughter. Not unless he had no choice. Not unless he was terrified. And he sure as hell wouldn’t leave her with someone he hadn’t seen in nearly twenty damn years.

None of that matters.

Because the moment I saw her, something inside me latched on. The feeling was silent, certain, primal.

This girl is mine. Off-limits, but still mine for now.

Mine to protect. Mine to keep safe. Mine to carry inside and take care of her.

I force my voice steady. “What’s your name?”

She flinches at the rough edge in my tone. I’m not used to talking to people, especially not ones like her. She should be treated delicately, and that’s something I’m going to have to practice.

I soften it immediately. “I’m going to help you. Your father was one of the best people I ever knew. I’m not going to hurt you. What’s your name?”

She exhales shakily, her shoulders dropping. “Eleanore Montrose. Ellie, if you want.” Her teeth chatter. She’s freezing. I’ve got to get her inside, but I need to make sure that I don’t scare her.

“Cillian Kavanagh. Kav, if you want,” I mimic her, and I swear my fucking heart pounds in my chest when she blushes at the attention I show her.

I shift my grip, guiding her toward the front door that will lead us into the warm cabin.

“Come on. We’re going to get you warmed up and figure things out. ”

She steps inside, small and soaked and trembling, and something inside me locks into place like this was what I sensed was happening. I’m insane to think that my college roommate’s daughter is the person I’ve been missing all along. The idea feels simple and absolute.

But it’s fucking crazy. The silence definitely got to me, and now I’m acting like some horny college kid who saw a pretty blonde for the first time.

Riley might have entrusted her to me, which means she’s off-limits. I can look after her, but nothing else. I won’t touch her, look at her for too long, but it’s too late…

Because deep in my chest, where it doesn’t seem so hollow anymore, there’s one truth that rises above everything else:

Ellie Montrose is meant for me to protect.

And I will burn the world down before I ever let anyone harm her.