Chapter 6
six
CILLIAN
The Blackwood Group Chat
Dane
Briar says she won’t come down for dinner
Cillian
And we say she will.
I wonder who will win.
Rhys
You’re a sick bastard.
This is all a joke, right?
Cillian?
Cillian has silenced notifications.
Rhys
Motherfucker.
The Blackwood Crest looms over my desk, its stone scales as dark as the damask wallpaper behind it.
I lean back in my chair, rolling a crystal tumbler of scotch between my hands. Low light sifts through the amber liquid—a golden blur in my periphery.
Years of absolute control have taught me every edge and corner of my mind. I know I can’t flick my gaze from the sculpted seal hanging over my desk. The same way I can’t cross my ankle over my knee.
If I move a single muscle, I’ll stand up.
If I stand up, I’ll walk out of this room.
And if I walk out of this room…
No. I squash that seed before it germinates, grinding the grain under my heel.
Not yet.
I’ve built my entire life on those two words. Holding off, holding back, holding in.
If you stay still long enough, people forget you can move. You become a fixture. Something decorative instead of something deadly.
Which is when you strike.
I flex my fingers around the carved crystal in my clutches. Not yet.
There’s a plan in play here. I knew carrying it out would be damn difficult, but I underestimated just how torturous it’d be to have Briar in our house. Let alone on the other side of my study’s wall.
This wall.
I did that the same way I do everything: on purpose. Hanging our family crest where I knew I would see it each time I dared to glance in her direction. A reminder of the past. An omen for the future, if I’m not careful.
But I’m always careful.
My eyes slide over its shining onyx grooves. Scales. Precisely etched over a thick, coiled tail. Spread all the way up the forked body. Covering both of the snake’s hissing heads. Sometimes, when it’s late and I’ve been at my desk for hours, they almost seem to slither.
The battle-axe buried in the creature’s shimmering body isn’t nearly as interesting. Flat and lifeless by comparison—the rough-hewn stone is carved into an obvious token for our family business.
Weapons. Destruction. Death.
But Grandfather’s words wind through my mind like a curl of smoke. “Most people think the axe is there to symbolize us. Our company. But it doesn’t. The snake does.”
Because a blade tried to sever the beast’s head. And instead of dying, it grew another.
A keen observer might also note the Blackwood family tradition of producing two sons. No one knows how or why, but every generation of Blackwood men had two sons for nearly a hundred years, even if they had to cobble a family together the way my father did.
The result was the same.
Two sons.
One victor.
And one who wasn’t so fortunate.
Normally, staring at the two snake heads, their identical fangs bared, reminds me of my father and his brother. Today, with Rhys’s suspicious gaze burned into my brain, I find it hard not to see the parallel.
I decided we would be different a long time ago, though.
And what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him. Much.
Dane, on the other hand…
Our right-hand-man-turned-packmate appears in my doorway. From the time we were eight, he’s had a special gift for silence. My father once told me that’s why he selected him to be a ward of Blackwood Manor—and learn to be my bodyguard while we were still children.
It was a twisted plan, but one that seemed to suit everyone.
Dane enjoyed not living in an orphanage.
He got to go to all the same schools Rhys and I did, provided he agreed to take any stray bullets that came our way.
It turned out to be a paranoid over-precaution on my father’s part, but over time, Dane became my best friend.
And when I was old enough to defend myself, he took his talents to the Special Forces.
If anything, he came back more silent and steady than ever. To this day, he doesn’t even let the doorjamb click when he turns the antique knob to my office.
My most dangerous packmate suddenly just appears, glaring stonily over his half-mask.
He doesn’t need that goddamn thing. We’ve all tried to tell him.
The burns that melted the skin along his right jaw and cheek have long-since healed.
And his facial hair covers a lot of the scars, save for a few that were so deep they obliterated his thick brown hair permanently.
Those climb toward his right eye, a mottled patch just visible over the edge of his metal-and-mesh muzzle.
I’ve known Dane long enough to read the disapproval in his golden eyes all the way across the dim room. “Like I said; Briar won’t come down for dinner.”
Of course she does. Exasperation whips through my middle, melting into a puddle of begrudging admiration.
“She’s a touch on the defiant side,” I drawl, setting my tumbler on my desk with calculated movements. Holding myself in my rolling leather chair with every speck of control I possess. “I’ll have to train that out of her.”
Something fierce blazes across Dane’s visage. His deep voice drops even lower. “So you’re going to start right away? You won’t even give her a day to adjust?”
Technically, she has my word that I wouldn’t touch her without permission. I never said anything about the others, though.
“No,” I clip in return, noting the time—fucking hell, we have to go—and stiffly pushing to my feet. “But I will give her a choice.”
Instead of ripping the cursed family crest off the wall separating me from the omega, I force innocuous motions. One hand slides into my pocket while the other buttons my suit jacket.
I make for the hallway, keeping my gaze well away from the double doors to her room. Rhys can fetch her if Dane refuses.
I’ll control myself. For now.
Not yet, I think again, turning toward the stairs. Swallowing the urge to snarl. But soon.