Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
Dahlia
For the past two days, I haven’t been home, and despite talking to him, Lagos hasn’t moved an inch. Not when I kiss his cheek or when I hold his hand.
I don’t want to leave him, but my heart yearns to hold my tiny assassin. We haven’t been away from each other this long, and due to the nature of the Shadow connection, Spero can’t be anywhere near Lagos.
Exhausted and aching with grief, I wander back to my little cabin on the other side of the community to bathe before I go to Lucy’s.
I am walking through the front door, focused on getting in and out quickly, when I hear the babbling of a baby coming from my room. He shouldn’t be here…
“Hello? Lucy?” I call out just as I enter, finding Tomar leaning over the cot, waving a stuffed animal in front of Spero.
“Hey,” he greets.
“Oh.” I stop, blinking at them. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” My eyes dart around, taking in the messy sheets and an unfamiliar bag on the floor.
Unease sweeps through me.
Tomar straightens, appearing confident in my personal space. “Robert told me to stay here until we have more answers about Lagos.”
I lift a brow. “No Xin De in the community, remember?”
“I think I’m the Xin De they want here just in case the other one wakes up and ruins things.” His choice of words find a mark in my stomach, further stirring my restless insides.
He waves at the bed. “I didn’t sleep in your bed if that’s what you thought. I slept on the foam mat. I presume it’s Spero’s playmat.”
Suspicious, I move over to scoop Spero up and cuddle him to my chest, inhaling his sweet, weird baby scent. “Hello, baby boy.” I jig him and twirl around, smiling for him. “I missed you. Did you miss, Mummy?” I lean in and rub my nose against his.
“You’re so beautiful.”
I lift my head to look at Tomar, startled by the conflict in his eyes and the way they pierce right through me. And I know what it means now. I’ve seen it in him before. The last time we were alone… He makes me wish I was still pretty-but-plain-easily-forgotten Dahlia.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
His fingers twitch at his sides, seeming to be uncomfortable. Stiff. Waiting. “You’re such a special girl. I watched you become a mother and now look at you… Even after it all, you’re so sweet, pure, loyal?—”
“Stop.” I turn to leave. I can’t do this. Every slither of emotional strength I have is quickly draining from me.
He rounds on me and Spero, blocking the bedroom door. “I can take care of you,” he presses, taking a single step toward me, forcing me backward.
I gape at him.
“All three of you.” His eyes narrow as if trying to puncture the layers of denial that surround me. “He’ll never be what you need. Even if he gets better.”
“Do you want him to?”
“Yes, of course!” he bites out. Then pauses, too quick to answer. Too quick for his heart it seems…
He exhales hard, a painful truth riding his breath. “And no , because no matter what he does, you’re basically blind to it.”
“I am not blind to it.”
“I can’t stand this.” His voice swims with admiration as he says, “And now that you’re so pregnant, so damn beautiful…” He falters, resentment taking hold. “I hate that you’re with him. I can’t stand it. Three nights at the farmhouse. Three nights I had to listen to him fu—” Inhaling steadily, he seems to bridle his emotions. “I hated it. I sat in the kitchen and listened, tortured myself over you. And then, that last night, I let myself sin. I pretended it was me. I closed my eyes and pretended I was the one inside you. I don’t want to share you. I hated when Robert grabbed you from me, and I despise Lagos for coming for you.”
I swallow. “You’re my friend.”
“Am I?” He crosses his arms, puffing out his chest as he stares down at me. “You don’t treat me like a friend. The way you threw your arms around me in the tunnel didn’t feel like we were just friends.”
That hurts. I was desperately happy to see him. So utterly overwhelmed to see the man who was safe and kind to me. “I care about you. That is why.”
“See”—he shakes his head, not accepting the truth— “I think you do love me. I think you just can’t see it. I would be so good to you and Spero, and the baby. I have already worked it all out with Robert.”
Worked what out?
“Well, it is not up to Robert. This is… This is that thing you spoke of.” I walk to the cot and try to hide the way my hands tremble as I lay Spero inside. “How men become obsessed when they are denied.” I straighten. “Just stop, Tomar. I don’t feel that way about you.”
“Do you remember when you asked about sex?” His breathing becomes strange, fast and unsteady. “About finding a boyfriend and experiencing it . See, I think he just got to you first. You were so easily manipulated by him. Girls fall in love with the first man who they let touch them because they have been vulnerable. I saw him hurting you, Dahlia. I wouldn’t do it like that. I would be gentle with you?—”
“Stop!” I punch the word at him. “He isn’t usually like that. That wasn’t him. That was the coil. You know that.”
Too many feelings muddle my head, and I decide to push straight past him before we both say something we’ll regret, but he grabs me around the upper arms and shoves me to my backside on the bed.
I stare up at him in horror.
He looks down at his hands, shocked. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He lifts his gaze to where I am on the mattress, bracing myself on my hands, and a darkness coasts through his glowing blue eyes. “ God , you’re beautiful. If you were with me, vulnerable with me, just once, I could show you. I am a good man.”
“You’re scaring me,” I admit, feeling exposed and defenceless on the mattress, but unable to move. My muscles fill with heavy fear that locks me in place.
“I’m scaring you?” He spits out, still standing over me at the end of the bed. “ I’m scaring you. Me? When you have let him inside you, and I am the one who scares you?”
I don’t know what to say.
“Just tell me this,”—he clasps his hands together in front of him— “If he’s brain dead, if he’s broken or volatile and has to be destroyed, could you learn to love me?”
Destroyed?
He isn’t a machine!
Even crawling with unease, I answer him honestly because he is my friend. A little bit of me. “You remember when you said that you can’t control grief?” I recall a time when his presence was comforting and safe. “Remember, you said you feel it everywhere, in your stomach and chest. This is like that. I won’t ever love anyone else like this.”
He chuckles, but it’s unfeeling. “You will. You could. I could show you. If you let me touch you, you’ll see what it’s like to have gentle, loving hands on you. That’s all I want.”
The taste of metal slides along my tongue moments before, “Time to visit your God.”
Lagos’ inhuman voice booms from behind Tomar, the depth capable of shaking the small cabin to pieces, splinter by splinter.
“ Lagos .”
Tomar’s eyes widen.
My heart leaps—I have seen how quickly Lagos can kill a man, seconds, within the blink of an eye, the beat of a heart, he can have a man bleeding on the ground.
So when he grabs the back of Tomar’s neck, lifting him beyond the safety of his feet, I know he is fighting his own internal battle to not kill his brother, his friend, his companion.
“Brother,” Tomar gasps.
“I warned you,” Lagos seethes.
I blink up at my brute, dressed in grey pants but naked from the waist up, fierce, possessive rage thundering through every inch of him.
“Lagos, please. Put him down.”
Lagos growls. “Why are you in her room?” His black gaze cuts to me, blazing. “Why are you on the fucking bed with your legs like that?”
“Don’t hurt her,” Tomar begs, taking me by surprise. He’s still protecting me, so misguided and confused, and protecting me.
I hear a crack.
I think it’s from Tomar’s back as he hangs from his neck, his heavy body like a weight on the narrow channel of bones.
“Lagos, please ,” I beg again. Sliding from the bed, I take hesitant steps toward the seven-foot-tall Xin De assassin, reassuring him. “Nothing happened between us.”
“Bring those sheets. Let me smell your lies, little flower.”
I sob. “I swear it.”
“I can’t trust you,” Lagos snarls at Tomar, the statement final, a bullet to the heart. “I was locked-up, inhaling the knickers you stole, beaten, abused, altered. I’ve been through hell, brother . Would you like me to send you there?”
“ Lagos .” Beside him now, I touch his shoulder, and he freezes. His eyes slide to my hand, brows furrowing. “I love you .” I blink tears, wishing for everyone to disappear, fade away, and leave me alone with him.
Him.
Lagos.
My brute.
With darkness and cruelty and trauma. A vicious killer. More monster than man.
And mine.
As I am his.
“Do you trust me ?” I whisper beside him, my voice trembling with emotion. I reach for his other hand and place it on my swollen stomach. “Trust me. There is only you. There will only ever be you.”
Growling, he drops Tomar.
“You’re on your own,” he states, voice deep and flat, cold. “I paid my debt to you.” Lagos stares at his hand, cradling his unborn child, hypnotised—subdued. “Stay away from me, brother. I want you to live, so stay the fuck away.”
Tomar scrambles to his feet but stills at the door, risking a moment so he can memorise the sweet boy in the cot—Spero. The boy he showed the glowworms to, who he cuddled and sang to. Tomar’s blue gaze glosses over, and pain spears me right through the chest.
Then he leaves.
And I feel like…
It is for forever.
Goodbye, Tomar.
One little death.
Maple. Tide. Now Tomar. I am losing friends faster than I am making them, but I will not lose Lagos.
Peering up, I find his gaze locked on my pregnant belly. Steel-coloured eyes, open and soft, focused.
My Lagos.
“Is it you?” he asks, voice a deep whisper. “I felt you beside me just now, and then you were gone. I thought I was back there.”
“You felt me?”
He kneels in front of me to get closer to the second heartbeat beneath my skin, his head level with mine but tilted to track the movement of his huge hands on his unborn baby. “You made this for me? That’s why.”
“Why what?”
“Why it didn’t work.”
What didn’t work?
“The conditioning,” he adds more to himself than me. I don’t understand what he is saying, but his eyes lift to me, painful memories stirring within them. “My little flower.”
Emotions—too many at once—wash over me. Love. Sorrow. Anguish. And then fear, reminding me we do not have much time. Any minute now, Community Protection will come for him and force him to leave or… Worse.
Shoot him on sight.
“We have to go.” I cup his cheeks, fingertips nestled in his neat blonde beard. “I don’t know what Robert will?—”
“You said his name.” Lagos frowns. “I was here in this room, and you said his name. I remember. Who the fuck is Robert?”
A sad smile forms on my lips at his protective leer, and I stroke my hands up through his hair. “The doctor.”
Dark energy pulses from him. “Did he taste you?”
“No,” I cough out.
A pause separates time. While inside his eyes, I almost see memories clawing back. “What happened in this room, little flower? I’ve been here before.”
“We can talk about it later. We have to leave.” I try to hold his lost gaze. “They will never let you stay.”
His expression changes as he studies my face, brows drawn in tighter and eyes sliding from my teary gaze to my wobbling lower lip. “Why… Where is your awe, little flower?”
A sob bursts from me, my nose and throat burning as I try to stifle more emotions. “My awe, brute?”
“I can’t…” He exhales roughly.
“We don’t have time for this.” My hands drop from his face, my mind made up that I need to get Spero, and we need to leave. I can feel the darkness all around Lagos, my skin prickling with his volatility, and I am terrified that at any moment, he is going to explode.
And they will fight back.
I have to get him out of here.
Lagos catches my elbow. “No. You should stay?—"
“We don’t have time!”
“I did that,” he states, staring at my face, his gaze lost and out of focus. This huge man, inhumanly powerful, so crippled with torment.
I force a smile, trying to push it the length of my lips, but they only tremble against the effort. “We don’t have time for this, Lagos. Everything will be alright now we are together.”
He shakes his head slowly. “I can’t dull your awe. It’s too… Too remarkable, powerful, big.”
He uses the words I did when gazing dreamily at all The Cradle has to offer, the glowworms, the windmills…
I won’t let him do this. My swollen throat thickens, and my vision blurs behind tears. “Don’t you want to provide for me, Lagos?”
My words make him nod. “ Yes. But I would rather be dead than the monster who tarnished the way you see this shiny world.”
“It won’t be shiny without you.” He stops and studies me again. Studies the desperation in my eyes. The tear that escapes. Studies my neck— I cover the swollen column, hiding the red finger marks and tender flesh I feel so acutely. His pupils dilate, swallowing pretty steel-coloured rings, leaving only darkness as he forces my hand away to expose the bruising.
“Death,” he says, “has always been the best place for a Shadow. It is what we are made of. I have to die. I can’t be alive and not be with you, little flower. And I can’t be with you.”
I panic. “There is no awe without you!” When I cup his cheeks, he closes his eyes, blocking me out. “You remember the farmhouse, right?”
He smiles. He actually smiles with his eyes closed, and the curve of his lips is so perfectly rested and raw. “You loved that house, didn’t you, little flower?”
“Yes.” I sob, smiling, too. “And remember the shelter underneath? Let’s go there. Let’s live there. Like we pretended that night.”
His eyes open. “Not safe.”
“They think we are dead.”
“Who?”
“The Trade.”
“It’s too risky.”
“It’s been decades , brute, and that farm is still untouched. It’s ours! Don’t you see? We went a different way. We went west. They don’t go west. Spero and you and me, and our baby. The farmhouse is ours. I can feel it.”
“Our baby…”
I nod, tears rushing down my pink cheeks, leaving a pinching trail. “Yes. They took the coil out, Lagos.” My voice trembles with vulnerability. “And Tomar has sent a message to The Trade that we are dead. So, if we leave the last place they saw us, we can just disappear again.”
He rises to his full height, a towering seven-foot figure whose mere presence should instil terror in me and yet only draws me closer.
“It’s decided then?” A voice states from behind Lagos, slicing through the moment. In an instant, Lagos turns, tucking me behind him with a long, thick arm rippling with muscles designed for destruction.
“It’s okay,” I say, peering past him to see Robert in the doorway, holding a gun at eye level. “It’s Robert.”
Lagos is unnervingly rigid, the tendons and veins in his arms taut like steel cables. “This is my little flower! You understand, Common man? Mine.”
Robert lowers the pistol to his side and stares blankly at me.
“We are leaving,” I say to him, my voice shuddering at the sight of the gun.
Robert nods slowly. “I heard. I have always said you were free to leave. This isn’t a prison. It’s a sanctuary.”
“I know,” I breathe. “And it’s beautiful, but it’s not right for me. I don’t fit.”
“I cut part of your brain,” Robert mutters to Lagos, utter shock and wonder playing across his face. “But here you are, standing and impenetrable. We really don’t stand a chance against your kind, do we?”
“Are you waging a war, Common man?” Lagos’ voice seems even deeper in contrast to our company.
“No.” Robert shakes his head, dwarfed by the massive Xin De Shadow. “Least not yet.” They glare at each other. When Robert takes a step forward, Lagos growls and does the same.
“ Easy .” Robert holds his hands up, one of them clutching the gun. “I just want to give this to her,” he says, offering the handle of the gun to me. “It’s a taser. Which sends an electrical pulse through the body. For him, Dahlia. Use it on him.”
I go to protest. “I don?—”
“Good.” Lagos snatches the gun and forces it into my hands. “Use it, little flower. This will work better than that little nail file. If I frighten you, use it.”
I hold it loosely, my eyes glued to the strange device I’ve only seen but have never touched. “I don’t want it.”
“Flower.” Lagos’ tone drops, deepening with intimacy and throbbing with emotion. I peer up at the formidable man lording over me. “If you take the taser,” he says, “I will drive us to the farmhouse.”
I don’t want the taser, but his dark gaze pools with warm intensity, so powerful and confident that it calms the uncertainty in my heart.
“Okay,” I whisper, closing my fingers over the weapon and accepting it. He is a forty-something-year old Xin De Shadow, a trained killer, and I am a pregnant Common girl born for lace. I have to accept that he’s dangerous.
I have to keep focus. “Do you have a vehicle? You didn’t… walk here. Did you?”
“You can take Tomar’s truck.” Robert’s words throw me, and I blink at him.
“What? What will he take?”
“He’s staying here.”
My mouth drops open. “What happened to no Xin De in the community?”
He lifts his chin, his expression steadfast. “I stand by that. That rule has kept us safe for decades. So… he is staying in the gorge at our Community Protection base. He has skills and connections we could use. We spoke about it when— When he thought he was going to settle down with… Well, with you and the babies.”
I gasp. “He had it all planned.”
Lagos’ black gaze somehow burns. He strides to Spero’s cot and, with one hand, scoops the infant to rest along his forearm, his muscular torso rippling with a loud claim—mine.
This is mine.
He stares down at Spero, the moment binding, the assertion and connection pulsing through the air like tangible matter.
“Get your property, little flower,” Lagos warns without looking up from our tiny assassin, “before I decide to hunt Tomar down.”
I want to move, but my feet are stuck to the floor, my utter shock is like solid lead in my soles.
He is holding Spero.
He is cradling Spero in one arm, making the six-month-old look tinier than usual.
“Now.” Lagos growls. “Now, little flower.”
Right. I rush around the house and collect my possessions; my beibao with the stockings from Sweets and the silly trinkets from Tide, clattering around inside; a large duffle bag with all my new clothes and Spero’s fluffy toys.
As we fill the truck, tucking Spero into a blanket nest on the back seat, the Community Protection officers stand with rifles at the ready. It’s a formidable situation, the air stirring with wariness and concern.
I was welcome.
We are not.
Robert waits patiently by the vehicle, overseeing. “Lagos.” He calls over as my brute opens my car door for me. “She will need a doctor to deliver that baby.”
Lagos frowns at him, mistrust pulsing between them as I climb into the seat.
“You should consider bringing her back here in three months,” he states, dangling the offer, letting the dominant Xin De decide for himself. “We may not welcome your kind, but she is Common. I will induce her early and safely deliver the infant. I don’t want her to become a statistic of Xin De Maternal Death. Your kind is to blame for this… She deserves better.”
To my surprise, Lagos bares his teeth, agitation tight in his jaw, but nods.
And I know we will never really fit in anywhere. He is a rogue, and I am his. He is a loner who doesn’t want to live without me.
Even if he wanted to stay and do the same as Tomar, they would never allow him. Tomar, with his gentle, sophisticated words and cooperative nature, yes, but not Lagos. He is everything they want to keep out. The very essence of a dangerous Xin De.
As we drive off, I look out at the greenhouse, happy to know my nail file found a home and sad that I didn’t give Lucy a real chance at friendship.
Goodbye, Common Community.
One little death.
Goodbye, Lucy.
One little death.
Then, Lagos feeds his fingers through mine, resting them on his lap as he drives, and I look down at the way his hand encompasses mine. How we fit.
How mine fits.
His consumes.