Chapter 5 Kit #3
The venom in his voice cut me deep. I understood his rage—Christ, I felt it too—but hearing him speak about our father like that, even knowing what the man had done to both of us… it still shocked me.
“This is larger than just your father,” Seb said firmly.
“I know that,” Rory snapped back, but his shoulders sagged slightly.
Seb cleared his throat, glancing down at his leather journal. “Moving on. I believe you actually wanted to discuss something, Rory?”
Rory blinked in surprise, like he’d forgotten this entirely. He glanced at Theo, who nodded encouragingly.
“Right… so, Issac’s anniversary. Next April. You know, the anniversary of his death. I wondered if we wanted to do something. To mark it.”
We were all stunned into silence.
After Issac died, Rory had clung onto the hope that he was still alive somehow, even though he’d been devoured by a demon right in front of our eyes.
He’d spoken about him in the present tense, insisting that because Freddy was still undead rather than dead again, that meant our necromancer was still alive somewhere.
I’d begged Rory to let it go. Told him he was upsetting everyone with his denial. The others started changing the subject when he spoke about Issac, unable to handle his refusal to accept reality.
Eventually, he’d stopped bringing it up, though I knew that had cost him. Issac had been his best friend, the first friend he’d made here, in his new life in London.
“I know it’s absolutely ages away but I wanted to float the idea now. Because it will be three years.”
Another beat of silence fell while that sank in. Three whole years since that horrible day. Three whole years since we’d heard Issac’s laugh echoing through the corridors of Killigrew Street.
“That sounds lovely, Rory,” Priya said softly. “What a wonderful idea.”
“Yes,” Seb said, his voice softer than usual. “Absolutely.”
I watched his face as he spoke, catching the brief flicker of something raw beneath his composed exterior. Seb had lost many team members over the decades—good people who’d died protecting innocents. Yet Issac’s death had hit him harder than most, though he’d never admit it.
The grief lived in the lines around his eyes, in the way his shoulders carried invisible weight.
Sometimes I wondered how he bore it—losing person after person, watching the hotel fill up with ghosts.
Sometimes I caught him looking at Flynn with something like fear in his eyes, as if he might disappear too, at any moment.
“Right, then,” Seb said, closing his leather journal with a sharp snap. “Meeting adjourned.”
Shoes scraped against concrete as everyone began to move. Theo immediately pulled Rory in for a hug, and Rory melted against him like he was coming home. His small frame seemed to disappear into Theo’s embrace, all that blazing fury from moments ago dissolving into something soft and vulnerable.
I turned away sharply. I shouldn’t have been staring at a private moment like that.
“Uh… so, do you want this back now?”
I spun around to find Felix standing directly in front of me, holding my T-shirt. The fabric was stained dark with his blood, crumpled from where I’d pressed it against his nose. His gaze darted between my face and the shirt, like he couldn’t quite work out which one to focus on.
My mouth opened, but no words came out. Because there he was again—close enough that I could smell vanilla on his breath, close enough to see the tiny scrape on his cheek from his fall. My wolf stirred eagerly, wanting to lean down and…
“Don’t you think it would be polite to wash that for him, Felix?” Priya’s voice chipped in, bright and oh so helpful. She was attempting to sound casual, but I caught the mischievous edge to her smile. “As it’s covered in your blood?”
Felix’s face went through several shades of mortification. His grip on my shirt tightened.
“Right! Of course! Sorry! Of course I’ll do that!”
I groaned. “You don’t need to. I’ll wash it.” I reached for the shirt, trying to yank it from his hands, but Felix gripped it like his life depended on it.
“Come on, Kit,” Priya said, her voice practically singing with false innocence. “He should wash it. And then return it.”
I glared at her. Absolutely glared. A look I hoped communicated: “Stop your nonsense, you meddling witch.”
Felix looked suitably confused by this entire exchange, his wide-eyed gaze ping-ponging between Priya and me.
“Right. Goodbye, then.”
And with that, he clutched my bloodied shirt to his chest and walked towards his lair.
The moment Felix disappeared inside the cupboard, I marched up to Priya.
“You,” I seethed.
“What?” she said brightly, practically bouncing on her toes. “Do you want to thank me for my help?”
“You’re too obvious!”
“I’ve told you a million times, Felix needs obvious. Even more obvious than getting half naked in front of him.”
“And I’ve told you to keep out of it!”
“Kit, you need a plan. An actual plan. Other than gazing over at him with puppy-dog eyes.” Priya clutched her chest dramatically. “I can’t bear this whole unrequited love saga. My heart bleeds. Bleeds, Kit!”
“That’s a lie. You just like entertaining yourself.”
“Can’t it be a mix of both?” She grinned wickedly. “But seriously, now I have Emma, I’ve turned into such a romantic. I just want everyone to have what I have, you know?”
I stared at her. “Your girlfriend who still thinks you’re an interior design student working here as part of your master’s project on Victorian restorations? Who thinks Felix is an electrician and I’m a bloody plasterer?!”
“That’s the one!”
Groaning, I scrubbed at my face. I could hardly stand here and lecture Priya about telling the truth.
“But don’t worry, Kit, I’ve got some more tricks up my sleeve for you. Even better ones. You’ll see.”
“No!” I said. “Absolutely not! I forbid it! Look where your meddling at the Christmas party got me!”
“Hey! It’s not my fault you got blackout drunk at the pub, missing your golden opportunity to escort Felix home like a knight in shining armour. That was all you!”
I grimaced. That Christmas party was an utter disaster that I didn’t like to think about at all.
“And in January,” I said. “You caught me trying to fix the coffee machine and snitched on me to Rory. So then Felix continued to go to Fat Cat’s for coffee and see Wren. So basically, it’s your fault he ended up dating Wren!”
Priya’s eyes rolled so hard they disappeared. “You’re acting about twelve years old right now, Kit. But don’t worry,” Priya said, walking towards the stairs. “Just leave it to me. I’ve got this.”
“No!” Panic consumed me, imagining all sorts of horrors Priya might design. “Please!”
“I’ll send you the invoice for my services via email.”
Then she had the audacity to blow me a kiss before she disappeared upstairs. I shook my head in despair.
“What was all that about?” Rory asked me, standing over by the bookcase. His head was tilted to one side, eyebrows raised. Theo had disappeared.
“Nothing. Priya being Priya.”
The one thing I was thankful for was that Priya hadn’t told Rory about Felix. Then my life would truly be over. Rory would never let me hear the end of it—he’d be unable to resist cracking jokes in front of Felix until he gave me away.
“Are you okay?” I asked, though I knew the answer. Neither of us could be okay after the news we’d just heard. The idea of White shutting down our investigation felt like a sucker punch. “I’ll talk to Seb in private, find out if there’s more to this. Try not to dwell on it.”
I squeezed his shoulder, feeling the tension coiled tight beneath his jumper.
Rory twisted his lips. “I spoke to Uncle Alex the other day.”
My stomach dropped. “Still no news?”
Rory shook his head. “Still no sign of Isla.”
Our old pack had been searching for our cousin Isla since she’d run off after Rory discovered her involvement in Greywatch.
Four months now since she’d vanished without a trace.
Alex was beside himself with worry—his only daughter gone, and him not knowing if she was safe, or if she was still working with her mother who’d destroyed so many lives.
“She’s probably with Moira, hiding out in another country,” I said.
Rory frowned. “I just can’t forget how she was in Scotland. She seemed so… I don’t know, conflicted? Like she didn’t really want any part of it. We need to find her. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
“You have to,” I said, even though the words tasted like ash. “Even though it’s hard. We have to trust—”
“Trust who?” Rory’s voice cracked. “White? Some random woman who most of us have never met? Seb, who’s clearly hiding something from us?” His hands clenched into fists. “What if while we’re sitting here ‘trusting,’ Da’s out there killing more people? What if—”
I gripped his face between my hands, the way I used to when he was small and scared, usually after our father had been cruel, or after the kids at our school had bullied him. Before I fucked up our relationship.
“Rory,” I said. “I know. You know I know. But we have to hang tight for a moment. Greywatch isn’t some ragtag operation we can bulldoze through.
They’re backed by various governments’ money, military resources, decades of research and development.
They’ve got safe houses across multiple countries, connections in law enforcement, politicians in their pockets. This was never going to be easy.”
Rory’s shoulders sagged slightly, some of the fight bleeding out of him. He nodded once, reluctantly.
“We’ll find another way,” I promised. “We always do.”
Another nod, this one more convinced. The desperate edge in his eyes dulled to something more manageable—still angry, still frustrated, but no longer on the verge of doing something spectacularly reckless.
I hoped I’d temporarily solved that problem, at least. Bought us some breathing room before he decided to go off half-cocked and do something that would get him killed.
Which was good, because I had too many problems already.
Most of them Felix-shaped.
The bloodied shirt he’d carried away replayed in my mind on an endless loop.
The way he’d clutched it to his chest, his mortified expression.
With the feel of his skin still fresh in my memory, my wolf was restless.
It wanted more. Demanded more. Whispered seductive lies about how Felix had liked my touch, how he hadn’t pulled away, how his breathing had changed when I’d traced his cheekbone.
But those were just fantasies. Felix was with Wren. Sweet, uncomplicated Wren who drew cats on coffee cups and made Felix smile. Who was everything I wasn’t—fun, innocent, untainted by violence and trauma.
“Kit?”
I blinked. Rory was staring at me.
“You’ve gone all weird again.”
“I’m not weird.”
“You are. You’ve been acting weirder and weirder lately. You zone out all the time. Are you having bad nightmares again?”
My throat tightened. “No.”
It wasn’t entirely a lie. My near-constant insomnia helped with that particular problem.
“Then what’s wrong with you?”
Everything. Absolutely everything was wrong with me.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
Rory’s expression shifted to one I recognised all too well—the look he got when he was about to start digging. Like a terrier with a bone, exactly like his codename suggested.
“Is it about—”
“Rory.” My voice came out sharper than I intended. “Leave it.”
“—that secret person you refuse to tell me about?”
“Shh!” I hissed, pressing a finger to my mouth.
Rory laughed in delight. “I’m onto you, brother. You can’t keep secrets from me. I’ll start following you if I have to.”
Something in my face made him laugh even harder. The sudden image of Rory stalking me and discovering my Felix-stalking sessions had me feeling faint.
“Don’t… don’t do that,” I whispered, but he only laughed as he waved goodbye to me, off to cause drama elsewhere.