Chapter 22 Kit #2
“Right. Simple.” Rory’s fingers drummed against the table edge. “Issac would have laughed at me doing anything elaborate anyway.”
He stood abruptly, crossing to the shrine.
His hand hovered over one of the photographs—the one from that last Christmas.
Issac balanced on this very table, his bronze skin glowing in the warm light.
His leather jacket hung open over a ridiculous Christmas jumper, and that silver lip ring glinted as his face split in wild joy, pelting Rory with paper chains.
Rory’s fingertips brushed the photo’s edge, and a familiar thrum of cold, hollow ache radiated from him, seeping into my own chest. It wasn’t merely grief; it was the sharp, tearing agony of definitive loss.
I moved closer, my hand finding his shoulder.
I squeezed gently, wanting to absorb the pain, wanting to rip it out of him entirely.
But the words that should have come—comfort, reassurance, promise—stuck in my throat.
I couldn’t diminish this. What comfort could I truly offer when this loss, for Rory, felt like the end of the world?
This was his first real death, his first friend lost forever, unlike the countless fallen soldiers I’d learned to compartmentalise during Greywatch.
I said nothing. Just held him there, letting the weight of the silence cover us both.
Footsteps thundered down the corridor, then Seb burst through the kitchen door like he was fleeing something, his jaw set in that particular way that meant someone was about to get bollocksed.
“Right.” He clapped his hands together with sharp finality. “I’m off to Brixton in twenty minutes. Going alone—I think I know someone who might give me intel on where Vale’s hiding his sorry ass.”
Rory lifted his head. “Want backup?”
“No. Once we know his location, we’ll all go to handle it properly.” Seb’s gaze swept the kitchen before suddenly narrowing at Rory. “Anyway, you need to be up in Hackney by ten. You know, for the Harrington case?”
Rory glanced at the kitchen clock, its hands pointing to half-past eight. “I’ve got plenty of time.”
“What’s Priya doing today?” I asked, though something in Seb’s expression already told me this was a bad question.
“Manchester.” He spat the word like a curse. “She left on the first train. Her mother’s ill—or claims to be, anyway. The family’s guilt-tripped her into playing nursemaid and helping with sorting the house.”
Rory snorted. “Not sure Priya’s going to be much help if they expect her to clean. Last time she tried to hoover the basement, she nearly electrocuted herself.”
“I need her back here as soon as possible.” Seb’s voice carried the edge of barely contained frustration. “We can’t afford to be short-staffed right now.”
He turned on his heel, storming away from us. The door swung shut behind him with enough force to rattle the hinges.
“Bloody hell,” Rory muttered. “I wish Flynn could be permanently attached to Seb. He’s nowhere near this much of a grump when he’s around. I might start recording Seb to prove it to Flynn.”
But I was only half listening, my brain suddenly processing what Seb’s announcement actually meant. Rory would be in Hackney. Priya was already on a train to Manchester. Seb was hunting vampires in Brixton.
That left me and Felix.
Alone.
In the hotel.
At lunchtime.
I’d been half worried about how on earth we were actually going to manage to eat lunch together without arousing suspicion.
Freddy finished the last remnants of orange, then fixed his glowing eyes on my shopping bags with obvious interest.
“What is all that?” Rory asked, moving his hand towards the bread.
“That’s mine,” I snarled, possibly too violently—Rory jerked his hand back in alarm.
“Fucking hell, Kit. Sorry I dared to touch your sacred sourdough.” He raised both hands in mock surrender. “Didn’t realise you were bulking.”
“I’m just feeling hungry today,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Everyone’s in such a foul mood today,” Rory said, eyeing me warily as he backed away from my shopping bags. “I’m going to have to text Priya SOS. This is much more of an emergency than her mum having the flu.”
He grabbed Freddy and tucked the ferret under his arm like a furry football. “Right, I’m off. Try not to bite anyone’s head off while I’m gone, yeah?”
With a raised eyebrow, he left me alone.
Felix would likely be in his lair by now. He typically slipped in unnoticed without saying good morning to anyone.
Though I’d have to wait to see him. Until lunchtime. Like a normal person.
I glanced at my phone. Only two hours and forty-five minutes until I could legitimately suggest lunch without looking completely mental.
My calendar reminder chimed: Dale’s Pack Meeting - 10:00 a.m. I deleted it with probably unnecessary violence. Dale had cancelled yesterday. Fine by me. I had more important things to do anyway.
Well, more secret things to do.
The guilt sat in my stomach like a lead weight. This was explicitly against Seb’s instructions. Seb, my boss and best friend. The man who’d seen something in me all those years ago, who’d given me a place here, at Killigrew Street. A new home.
Seb, who trusted me completely. And here I was conducting my own private investigation behind his back.
But… White’s order to stop digging into Greywatch made no sense.
I’d told Rory we had to respect Seb’s decision to follow White’s orders.
Yet I couldn’t let it go.
Not with that chip still buried in my skull.
Not after they hurt Rory earlier this year.
Not after Cara, and the other countless wolves who died in combat.
Not when there were still answers out there, still people who might have information.
After we found out about my father being alive, I’d spent months avoiding an obvious line of enquiry—contacting anyone I knew from Scotland.
Too many painful memories, too many bridges I’d burned when I left.
But desperate times called for desperate measures, and I couldn’t help but suspect that Moira had recruited widely from the Highland packs.
Someone, somewhere, had to know something useful.
That morning’s calls turned out to be the usual mix of hostility and dead ends.
Wolves that knew my pack, who still saw me as Malcolm’s boy who’d run off like a disobedient brat.
A few who hung up the moment I mentioned Moira’s name.
Others who claimed they’d never heard of her at all, voices too quick and careful to be telling the truth.
Frustration burned within me as I crossed names off my paper list I kept hidden in the weapons room.
It didn’t help that I was mostly operating off scraps. Third-hand information from gossips who half remembered stories about young wolves going off somewhere, never to return. Or returning changed.
That was what I was ultimately looking for: someone who was ex-Greywatch like me, but someone with much more recent experience. Someone who might be able to give us a physical location of a base. Or something.
By eleven forty-five, I’d had enough.
The soft clatter of Felix’s keyboard drifted through his lair door, punctuated by the occasional frustrated sigh. I found myself lingering outside, checking my watch every thirty seconds like some lovesick teenager.
Eleven fifty-four. Was it too early for lunch? Would I look desperate if I knocked now?
I slapped myself. I was wasting precious alone-with-Felix seconds standing here like an idiot.
I knocked.
“Hello?” Felix’s voice, a high-pitched squeak.
“It’s me.”
The keyboard clatter stopped. “Come in.”
Felix swung around on his chair as I entered, offering me a shy smile that made my heart lurch. And then it just about stopped when I clocked he was wearing my glasses. His glasses. Those thin black frames that somehow made his eyes look impossibly larger.
Fuck. They were supposed to help with his eye strain, not give me a bloody coronary.
“Lunch?” I asked.
“Okay,” he said, voice dropping to a low murmur.
He turned back to his monitors, fingers moving slowly across the keyboard as he shut everything down.
Too slowly—the careful deliberation in his movements almost seemed like a delaying tactic.
Was he feeling anxious? Had last night’s texting been too much?
Had I pushed him too far with that bloody list?
“Just wait in the basement,” I said quickly. “I’ll bring everything down to you. I’d say we could go up to the rooftop, but it’s drizzling.”
“Oh.” His shoulders tensed. “Not the roof. I have, um… bad memories of that roof.”
Curious.
“Basement it is,” I said, and headed upstairs to collect my ridiculous feast.
When I returned, Felix was perched on the basement sofa, looking small and uncertain. He’d forgotten to take off his glasses again, but obviously, I wasn’t going to tell him that. I set four plates on the coffee table with perhaps too much ceremony.
“Four plates?!” Felix’s voice held laughter, though he still wasn’t quite meeting my eyes.
“I know how to spoil a man.”
A delicious blush painted itself onto Felix’s cheeks, and I had to grip the edge of the table to stop myself from doing something stupid like kissing him senseless right there on the sofa.
I unpacked the bags methodically before cutting into the fancy ham that the deli owner had insisted would change my life.
“Wow,” Felix breathed. “This is… a lot. I was sort of expecting a sandwich.”
I scoffed, settling onto the sofa beside him. “No way.”
I adjusted my leg slightly so it pressed against his, an innocent point of contact that caused a delirium of butterflies to flood my stomach. Felix didn’t pull away.
We ate in comfortable silence for a while, though I found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on my own food when Felix was right there, making soft satisfied sounds as he tried each cheese, his tongue darting out to catch a drop of strawberry juice from his lip.
“So…” Felix said eventually, setting down his plate.