Chapter 10
The thrill is immediate.
It hits Dimitri the moment Knox’s cheek meets stone, a burst of nervousness and shock flooding through the bond, bright and electric, Knox’s composure fracturing for one delicious second before his training kicks in and tries to plaster it back together.
Dimitri drinks it in. He presses closer, pinning Knox flat against the wall with his body, and the size difference is obscene from this angle, Knox’s narrow frame dwarfed by Dimitri’s, his wrists caught in Dimitri’s hands and held against the cold stone above his head.
His wrists. Fuck, his wrists.
Even this, just this, just the circle of Dimitri’s fingers around those fine bones, sends that same scalding electricity arcing between them.
It races up Dimitri’s arms and pools at the base of his spine, and through the bond he can feel the mirror of it in Knox, a twin current of heat that the Templar is fighting to suppress with every ounce of his iron discipline.
He’s not fighting, though. That’s the thing.
Knox’s body is rigid, every muscle locked, but he’s not struggling.
He’s not reaching for a blessing. He’s just standing there, pressed into the wall, breathing in short controlled bursts, his blond hair falling forward over his shoulders, and Dimitri can feel through the bond that what Knox is experiencing right now is not fear and not anger but something much more dangerous and much harder to compartmentalize.
Dimitri leans in. He dips his head until his lips are beside Knox’s ear, close enough that his breath stirs the loose strands of gold hair at Knox’s temple.
“What are you willing to trade,” Dimitri murmurs, “for the boy’s safety?”
Knox inhales sharply. The sound is small and involuntary and it goes straight through Dimitri.
He can feel Knox’s pulse hammering against his fingers where they circle his wrists, rapid, frantic, completely at odds with the controlled stillness of the rest of him.
The bond is a riot of sensation: Knox’s nervousness, Dimitri’s hunger, something hot and unnamed that belongs to both of them and neither of them.
They stay there. One second. Two. The hallway is empty.
The stone is cold. Knox’s skin is warm under Dimitri’s hands, and Dimitri is thinking about turning him around, about seeing those green eyes up close, about finding out what Knox’s mouth tastes like with that split lip still healing, and the wanting is so vivid and so immediate that it pours through the bond without his permission and Knox makes a sound, barely audible, a caught breath that could be protest or could be something else entirely, and Dimitri’s grip tightens on his wrists and—
A blessed fist hits Dimitri in the ribs.
The impact is staggering. Consecrated force detonates against his side, holy energy ripping through the point of contact and sending Dimitri stumbling sideways.
He loses his grip on Knox’s wrists, loses his footing, hits the opposite wall hard enough to crack the plaster.
Pain blooms across his ribs, bright and burning, and he hasn’t even gotten his feet under him before a hand fists in his collar and hauls him upright.
A Templar is in his face.
Not Knox. This one is new. He’s tall, as tall as Dimitri, which is unusual for a human, with dark scraggly hair that falls into a face built for fury.
His eyes are dark and murderous, and the fist in Dimitri’s collar is shaking, not with fear but with the barely restrained urge to hit him again.
He’s wearing a Templar coat, charcoal gray, and the blessing rings on his right hand are blazing white.
Dimitri looks into those murderous eyes and wonders, with detached academic interest, if this Templar kills him whether Knox will suffer too.
Knox is there. Dimitri can feel him through the bond, a flare of alarm and urgency, and then Knox’s hand is on the new Templar’s wrist, gripping hard, pulling.
“Vale, wait!”
Vale. The name means nothing to Dimitri.
What means something is the way this man’s fury is shaped.
It’s not the fury of a soldier encountering a threat.
It’s personal. It’s intimate. It’s the kind of rage that comes from seeing someone you care about in danger, and the way Vale’s dark eyes sweep over Knox’s face, cataloging the damage, the healing split lip, the faint bruise at his jaw, the flush that hasn’t entirely faded from his neck, is not the assessment of a colleague.
It’s the assessment of someone who knows this face well enough to know what doesn’t belong on it.
Dimitri looks at Knox’s wrist on this man's hand and the protective fury in those dark eyes and thinks: oh, they’re fucking.
The jealousy that detonates in his chest is so sudden and so violent that it obliterates everything else.
It isn’t the sharp territorial flare from the Sable.
This is a wildfire. This is consuming. It floods the bond in a torrent of black heat before Dimitri can even think about suppressing it, and he watches Knox’s expression change in real time, the alarm shifting to confusion, then to something worried and searching as he feels what Dimitri is feeling and doesn’t understand why.
Knox’s green eyes find Dimitri’s across Vale’s shoulder.
His brow creases. His lips part. He looks confused and concerned and faintly flushed, and Dimitri hates him for it, hates that Knox can feel this, hates that the bond has made him transparent, hates that a Templar he’s known for two days can look at him with worry in his eyes while another Templar holds him by the collar, and Dimitri buries the jealousy under fury and bares his teeth.
“This demon attacked you,” Vale says. It’s not a question.
“It’s not like that.” Knox’s voice is distracted. His eyes are still on Dimitri.
“Not like that.” Vale’s grip tightens on Dimitri’s collar. The blessing rings flare, and the consecrated energy bites into Dimitri’s chest through his shirt, searing and bright. “Then what is it like, Knox? Because from where I’m standing, it looks exactly like that.”
Dimitri bares his teeth wider. “Your little blond boyfriend is bound to a demon, Templar. If you’re going to hit me again, I’d recommend asking him what happens to him when you do.”
He says boyfriend and means it to cut, means it to confirm what he already knows, and the word tastes like poison in his mouth.
Vale’s fist cocks back.
Knox grabs it. Both hands around Vale’s wrist, pulling with all his weight, which isn’t much but is apparently enough because Vale lets himself be pulled.
Not because Knox overpowers him. Because he chooses to let Knox stop him.
Because even through his fury, even with a demon in his grip, Vale trusts Knox enough to let him intervene, and the easy intimacy of that trust makes the buried jealousy flare again, hot and ugly.
Knox pulls Vale back a step. Then another. Vale releases Dimitri’s collar and Dimitri settles against the cracked wall, rolling his shoulders, and gives Vale a slow amused grin that he knows will make the man want to hit him again.
It works. Vale’s jaw clenches so hard Dimitri can hear his teeth grind. But Knox is between them now, one hand on Vale’s chest, and Vale’s dark eyes drop to Knox’s face.
“Is that true?” Vale asks. His voice is quieter now, but no less dangerous. “You’re bound to him?”
“It’s true.” Knox drops his hand from Vale’s chest. “A novice witch botched a summoning and caught us both in a soulbind. And we need help breaking it.”
Vale’s gaze cuts to Dimitri, then back to Knox.
The fury is still there, banked but burning, and underneath it Dimitri can see the worry again, the fear, the desperate protectiveness of someone who would burn down the world to keep this man safe.
Dimitri knows the shape of that feeling because it’s been growing in his own chest for two days and he is only now, watching it on another man’s face, beginning to understand what it is.
He hates Vale for having it first. He hates Vale for having it longer. He hates the ease of it, the history, the context that Dimitri doesn’t have and can’t earn.
Knox explains what they need. Three things: close the rift, exterminate the rifthounds, find the witch.
Vale listens with the focused intensity of a man already building a plan, and Dimitri watches the exchange between them and the jealousy settles into something colder and more permanent.
These two have a language that doesn’t require words.
A shift in posture from Knox and Vale adjusts.
A look from Vale and Knox nods. Dimitri watches them and wants to break something.
“August might be able to close the rift,” Vale says. “When he gets back.”
Dimitri raises an eyebrow. “Who?”
Knox glances at him. “August is a necromancer. He’s working as a psychopomp for the Lord of the Underworld. Dimensional magic is his specialty.”
Dimitri stares at him. Then he stares at Vale. Then he huffs out a laugh, short and disbelieving and genuinely delighted. “A necromancer. Working for the Lord of the Underworld. And he’s working with Templars?”
Vale gives him a look that could strip paint. Dimitri opens his mouth to elaborate, catches the look, and keeps his comments to himself. He has excellent survival instincts when he chooses to use them.
“I’ll get in touch with August,” Vale says to Knox, deliberately turning his shoulder to Dimitri. “I’ll find you when I have something. Where are you staying?”
“My apartment.”
Vale’s eyes flicker. “With him.”
“There’s not much choice, Vale.”
Vale stares at Knox for a long moment. Something passes between them, silent and loaded, some form of communication that Dimitri doesn't get. Then Vale nods, once, tight.
He turns back to Dimitri.
Vale moves fast for a human. His hand shoots out and fists in what’s left of Dimitri’s shirt, yanking him forward until they’re nose to nose. Vale’s dark eyes bore into his, and this close Dimitri can see that the murderous expression isn’t performance. It’s a promise.
“If you lay a finger on him,” Vale says quietly, “I will personally remove them. One by one. With pliers.”
Dimitri grins at him. Wide, wicked, all teeth. “I like you. You’re fun.”
Knox, standing behind Vale with his arms crossed and his green eyes fixed on the ceiling, looks very much like a man who has been asked to carry a very heavy burden up a very steep hill and is only now realizing how far he has left to climb.
“Are you two done?” Knox asks.
Vale releases Dimitri. He straightens his coat, gives Knox one last look, worried and fierce and protective, and turns on his heel and walks down the corridor without looking back.
Dimitri watches him go. Then he looks at Knox.
Knox opens his eyes and gives Dimitri a look that contains years of accumulated patience straining at its absolute limit. Then he turns and walks down the hallway, and Dimitri follows, grinning at his back.
The grin stays because it’s easy, because it’s a mask he’s worn for years and it fits the way old armor fits, comfortable and concealing.
Beneath it, in the place where the bond lives and the unfamiliar feelings are beginning to accumulate faster than he can bury them, Dimitri is thinking about the wall.
About Knox’s wrists in his hands and the sound Knox made when Dimitri’s wanting poured through the bond, that caught breath, that tiny fracture in his composure.
About Vale stepping in before Dimitri could find out what came next.
About the fact that Knox hadn’t fought.
Knox hadn’t struggled. Hadn’t reached for his mace. Hadn’t summoned a blessing or thrown Dimitri off him the way he had in the warehouse when they first met. Knox had stood there with his face against the stone and his pulse hammering and his body very still and he had let Dimitri hold him.
Dimitri follows Knox down the corridor and smiles and says nothing and files this information in the growing collection alongside the electricity and the salve and the way Knox says his name, and the collection is becoming something he can no longer pretend is casual, and the ground beneath his feet has shifted again, and he doesn’t know where he’s standing anymore.