Chapter 11 #2
"Why?" Ryder asked, but I was already starting to piece it together.
"Because she's protected as long as she's our Consort," I said slowly, the implications making my stomach turn to lead. "Trivium law is absolute about that. A Consort under contract is untouchable. But if she were to lose that protection..."
"She'd be fair game," Cole finished, his face going pale in the moonlight. I nodded grimly, feeling the weight of understanding settle over me like a shroud.
"Remember what Blackwood said? That he'd have access to her soon enough? That only makes sense if he knew something we didn't. If he knew there was a plan to get her released from her contract."
"Killingham," Ryder breathed, the name coming out like a curse. "He's been pushing for us to take Julia Latters instead."
"And he's been very interested in our...
difficulties with Cadence," I added, remembering every conversation, every subtle suggestion, every seemingly innocent inquiry about our relationship with our Consort.
"Every time we've had to meet with him, he's made comments about finding a more suitable match. "
Cole was quiet for a long moment, his analytical mind working through the puzzle, connecting dots that had been scattered across weeks of interactions.
"There's something else," he said finally, his voice heavy with implication.
"Something about Cadence that's been bothering me.
Something that might explain why Dominic Blake is here.
I need to look into it more, but... what if the reason they want her unprotected has more than just to do with Blackwood's sick fantasies? "
"What do you mean?" I asked, though part of me already dreaded the answer.
"I mean, what if this goes deeper? What if there's something about Cadence specifically that they want access to?
Something about her family, her background, her mother.
.." His voice seemed to catch on the last part.
I shot him a glance, but he seemed deep in his own thoughts, conflict all over his face.
“Like her mother disappearing?” I asked. He shook his head, but didn’t clarify further. Ryder looked stricken, his face going white as bone.
"You think they made Lissa Turner disappear? That they're planning to do the same thing to Cadence?" Cole scoffed at his words and shook his head.
“It’s more complicated than that,” he said quickly. There was clearly something he was holding back.
"I think," I said carefully, choosing my words like stepping stones across a treacherous river, "that as long as Cadence is under our protection, she's safe. But the moment she's not..."
"She becomes a target," Cole finished, his voice flat with certainty.
The weight of that realisation settled over us.
All this time, we'd been focused on breaking her, on making her submit, on winning the power struggle between us.
But what if the real battle wasn't about control at all?
What if it was about survival? What if every moment we spent fighting her was a moment we weren't protecting her from something far worse than our possession?
"So what do we do?" Ryder asked, his voice small in the darkness.
"We keep her," I said firmly, the decision crystallising in my mind with absolute clarity.
"Contract or no contract, willing or not, we keep her under our protection.
Full surveillance. No more opportunities to meet with McIntyre or anyone else who might be feeding her information or making her promises they can't keep. "
"And if she fights us?" Cole asked, though I could see in his eyes that he already knew the answer.
"Then we break her completely," I said, hating the words even as I spoke them, feeling them burn my throat like acid. “For her own good. We make her hate us if we have to. As long as she remains ours, we can keep her safe.”
"And if we can't break her?" Ryder's voice was barely a whisper, barely audible over the distant music and laughter. “What if I don’t want her broken?” I met his eyes steadily, letting him see the steel in my resolve.
“Then she will probably end up dead, or worse. Which would you prefer?” Ryder flinched at my words before looking away.
The decision settled over us with finality, heavy as a stone.
It didn't matter if Cadence hated us for it.
It didn't matter if she never stopped fighting us.
It didn't matter if she never learned to love us the way we were learning to love her.
All that mattered was keeping her alive, keeping her safe, keeping her away from the men who would use her and discard her without a second thought.
"So we're agreed," I said, my voice carrying the weight of an oath. "No more talk of letting her go. No more second-guessing ourselves. We-"
A scream cut through the night air, high and terrified and unmistakably female.
The sound sliced through the ambient noise of the party like a blade, sharp and desperate and wrong.
Several people stopped what they were doing and looked towards the haunted house and Harrison looked up and met my eyes before rushing into the haunted house.
Ryder already had his phone out, his fingers flying over the screen with desperate precision.
"I've got her location," he said, his face pale in the glow of the device.
"She's behind the haunted house, not inside it.
" I don't remember making the conscious decision to move.
One moment we were standing in the courtyard, processing the implications of what we'd just realised, and the next we were sprinting around the side of the building.
Our dress shoes slipped on the damp grass as we fought to reach her, the formal wear that had seemed so important an hour ago now nothing but an impediment.
The sound of our footsteps echoed off the buildings, harsh and urgent in the night air.
The scene that greeted us was something out of a nightmare.
Cadence was on the ground, her red dress torn and dirty, the fabric that had looked so beautiful on her now stained with dirt and worse.
Her purple hair was spilt across the pavement like a dark halo.
A man straddled her, his face hidden behind a plain white mask that reflected the moonlight.
One hand pinned her wrists above her head with brutal efficiency, while the other raised a knife that glinted in the moonlight like a promise of death.
The blade was poised directly over her throat, and even from this distance I could see the terror in her eyes, the way her body trembled beneath his weight.
I saw red. Literally saw red, as if a film of blood had descended over my vision.
The rational part of my brain, the part that usually calculated odds and planned strategies, went completely silent.
All that remained was pure, primal fury and the absolute certainty that this man was going to die for touching what was mine.
I hit him like a freight train, my shoulder connecting with his ribs with a satisfying crack that I felt reverberated through my bones.
The impact sent us both tumbling across the pavement, rolling and fighting in a tangle of limbs and fury.
The knife went flying, clattering across the concrete with a sound like breaking glass, and I felt a savage satisfaction at disarming him.
He was bigger than I'd expected, stronger, his body solid with muscle beneath his dark clothes.
But I had rage on my side and years of training that kicked in automatically, muscle memory taking over where conscious thought had fled.
My fist connected with his jaw with a satisfying crack, and he grunted in pain, the sound muffled by his mask.
But he recovered quickly, his own fist catching me in the ribs hard enough to knock the wind out of me.
Pain exploded through my chest, but I barely felt it through the adrenaline and fury coursing through my veins.
I managed to get on top of him, my hands finding his throat through the mask.
The fabric was rough beneath my fingers, and I could feel his pulse racing beneath my grip.
His hands clawed at my wrists, trying to break my hold, but I held on with grim determination.
I was going to squeeze the life out of him, going to watch him die for what he'd tried to do to her.
But then Cole was there, pulling me back with hands that felt like iron bands around my arms.
"Logan, stop. We need him alive."
"Like hell," I snarled, trying to shake him off, my vision still tinged with red. "He was going to kill her."
"Which is exactly why we need to find out who sent him," Cole said firmly, his voice cutting through my rage like a blade.
"Dead men don't answer questions." The logic penetrated through my fury, and I reluctantly loosened my grip.
The man took the opportunity of the gap in my fury and bucked his body causing me to stumble off him.
He was up quickly and sprinting off into the night, before I could get a hold of him again.
“Fuck,” I yelled and bounced to my feet, ready to chase after him. But Cole grabbed my arm to stop me.
“Leave it brother,” he hissed and nodded towards the huddle on the floor.
Immediately recognised Cadence in Ryder's arms, her face buried against his chest as sobs wracked her body.
She looked so small, so fragile, nothing like the defiant woman who'd been challenging us at every turn.
This was what lay beneath all that fire and fury, a scared young woman who'd been pushed too far, threatened too much, hurt too deeply.
"It's okay," Ryder was murmuring into her hair, his voice rough with emotion.
"You're safe now. We've got you. No one's going to hurt you.
" But even as he spoke the words, I knew they weren't true.
This attack was just the beginning. Clearly there was more at work here than what we knew.
But now that we knew what we were dealing with, now that we understood the real stakes, everything was going to change.