Chapter 8
The common room had that weird between-acts feeling, everybody's discussion and question while Grayson drifted from person to person handing out flimsy reasons to be somewhere else. The whole performance had exactly one goal. Leave me and Kearan alone in it.
I watched him tip his head at Ryker, a not subtle let's-bail nod, and one by one the others started inventing places to be.
The man had all the subtlety of a magician yanking a rabbit out of a hat.
Big flourish, no trick. Nobody else seemed to catch it.
I caught all of it. I let it happen anyway, because the last thing I wanted was to wreck the fragile quiet that settled when Kearan leaned against the counter with his tablet.
He was completely focused, brow furrowed, eyes flicking across the screen. Every little thing about him pulled at me. Even quiet, there was a steady pulse to him that anchored the whole chaotic room.
"You'll want to check the east sector while you're out," Grayson told Seph, aiming for casual and missing by a mile. "Rumor is some... interesting things are happening over there."
She blinked, too caught in his nonsense to do more than nod on her way out.
"You really think we don't see you, Grayson?" My mouth tipped into a smirk as Trux ambled past, eyes ticking between Grayson and me, clocking my reaction.
"I'll be in touch." Grayson said it way too fast, threw me a cautious side-eye, and swept the last of them out on his fake authority. The door clicked shut, and the quiet rushed in thick enough to feel, pulling Kearan's gaze off the tablet and onto me. Curious. Focused.
Alone in the dim, the tension wound itself around us, enough to kick up those little flickers of hope and nerves at the same time.
I shifted foot to foot, heart skipping, the leftover conversation still drifting around the room.
Kearan didn't look away. He looked at me like he already knew every word I wasn't saying, like the walls I kept stacked up were glass to him.
"You alright?" Low and warm.
"Just admiring your boy's spectacular orchestration." I rolled my eyes to take the weight out of it.
His mouth curved. He didn't fill the quiet, so I leaned into it instead. I stepped closer. "What's got your attention?"
He angled the screen toward me, a flicker of interest in his eyes.
"Intel on the surge in demonic activity.
We're not guessing about the why anymore.
That part's settled." He looked at me, no blame in it.
"It's you. Ever since the soul ring, your bloodline's been lighting you up like a flare. They feel it. They come for it."
"So I'm the dinner bell." Fantastic. But this wasn't new.
I'd known it, more or less, since the soul ring went awol. I couldn't put it back on right now, which meant I'd continue flaring for all the demons. Didn't make it sit any better hearing it laid out flat. Every demon scratching at our walls was scratching because of me. Some gift.
"But both Ro and Jericho have now gotten in since we repaired the demon wards after they broke." His brow pulled tight. "It's how they're getting in. The wards should be holding. They're not, and I can't find the gap. That's what's eating at me."
"Have the wards ever just failed before," I asked. "Before I broke them, that is."
"No." His jaw tightened. "Either somebody built a way through, or we missed something.
I just can't see it yet." The information sat there between us, heavy.
I'd caused a lot of chaos since coming into their life.
"I know why you don't want to put the ring back on…
but maybe you could until we can get through the worst of it, then remove it again? "
"How do you know when you're making the right choice?" I held his gaze. "That the stand you're making is the right one… where do you find the resolution in your decisions?"
Kearan blinked slowly, working through it, uncertainty pulling at his brow. I waited. Didn't rush him, didn't fill the space with noise.
"I don't know that I've ever thought that deeply about it," he finally said.
I refused to ask him if starting the bond was the right choice; I was certain of that despite all the hurdles we'd run into.
"Maybe I should kiss you," he said, mischief sparking in his eyes.
"Oh, uh…" I stammered as his words surprised me. "Only if you're ready."
He took a step closer, and for one second I felt the Tsigo bond pulse between us.
The pull hit me before I'd decided anything.
That need to reach out. I leaned in, fingers hovering over the scar ridged tissue, giving him every chance to pull back.
He didn't. I grazed my fingertips along it, following each line, and met his eyes.
"I want to finish the bond with you," my voice was firmer than I thought it would be.
He didn't flinch. He breathed deeper and held my gaze, like he was letting me in.
"What are you thinking?" His voice came low and rough.
I picked my way through it. "I know the team thinks this came from Grayson. That he caused it." Barely above a whisper, the whole moment thin as glass. "But you're so much more than the things that hurt you. And I think we forget the weight of what you carry. What you've always carried."
Something flickered across his face. Anger, maybe, or the start of a wall going up. I braced for it, for the shutters to slam down. Instead he let my fingers stay on his skin, let me look at the part of him nobody else got to.
"It's complicated." The sigh that came with it carried something old and raw.
"This scar isn't about Grayson. It's mine.
Something I absorbed. A burden I picked up from choices I made and people who wore I let myself get too vulnerable with.
" His gaze cut toward the hallway. "I fought to keep my abilities contained, to hold the chaos down, and somewhere in there I started carrying everybody else's pain along with my own. The scars that came with it."
This was why he'd hesitated so much when we'd first met. It was proof of every time he'd pulled somebody else's hurt into his own body so they wouldn't have to. I squeezed his forearm gently, anchoring us both.
"You're not alone in it," I said, swallowing hard. "You don't have to carry that by yourself."
A faint smile. "I know that now."
Four quiet words, and they hit harder than any speech. I kept my fingers on the scar a beat longer, not ready to let the moment go.
And before the moment could tip into anything braver, Grayson's voice cut through the moment, loud and shameless. "Kearan! Just kiss Parker already!"
I turned to find him propped against the doorframe, arms crossed, grin enormous. "If I have to keep watching you two tiptoe around this, I'm going to lose my mind."
Heat flooded my face. A laugh burst out of me before I could stop it. The tension popped, the sheer absurdity of it landing somewhere between mortifying and exactly what I needed. Kearan shook his head, chuckling beside me, and the warmth of it circled us both and pulled us tighter.
"You're both adorable. Somebody had to say it." Grayson pushed off the frame and backed down the hall, grin intact. "Don't let me interrupt. Work through that... whatever this is."
I watched him go, equal parts grateful and ready to throttle him.
When the quiet came back, Kearan was still smiling, caught somewhere between disbelief and amusement.
"So." I tried for confidence. "Should we kiss?"
His brow ticked, a smile fighting the corner of his mouth. "We should probably finish that research on the dagger."
I laughed. "If that's how you want to dodge the whole kiss thing."
"Maybe another time."
"Yeah," I said. "Maybe another time."
We moved into the planning room. Kearan crossed to the low table and laid out a few books with this careful, almost tender precision that made me watch his hands longer than I should have.
"This one's got a solid breakdown of protection runes." He slid an open book toward me. "Might connect to the dagger. These are about demons and wards, which might tell us something about how the wards are failing."
I settled in beside him, close enough that the warmth of him filled the gap. My fingers brushed the cool pages while his traced the symbols.
"Each one of these have a different emotion… a different personality." It was something I'd noticed once I became more in tune with my witch powers over my demon ones. "Like each one's got its own story."
He glanced at me, surprised. "You have a way of cutting right to it, Parker. They are stories. Power wrapped in intention, with every mark tied to its own history and purpose."
I looked over more of the runes. Our shoulders brushed, and a jolt went through me. I let myself want it for a second. To lean in closer and press into the heat coming off him. Maybe I should just kiss him instead of waiting for him to initiate.
"This could give us something," Kearan said, tracing the inked symbols. "Like the runes work as channels. The magic flows through them. Maybe whatever's slipping past the wards is running the same kind of road. Though this is something that Trux and Rhiot would be better at."
I pulled the dagger out of my backpack and set it in front of us. "I know what these are," I pointed to all of them but the last one. "But this one is unfamiliar."
His eyes sparked as he nodded, curiosity catching all of his attention. "This one doesn't look like the others."
"What do you mean?" When I looked at them, they didn't look all that different.
"Runes, wards, glyphs, spells, charms, etc…
they are all just a different kind of language.
A series of symbols and patterns that evolved to work together.
" Kearan opened a different book and presented some new symbols I didn't inherently recognize.
"You're a witch, so it makes sense you would understand glyphs inherently, but something like this would be unfamiliar to you. "
Sure enough, the long flowy symbols in the new text were completely foreign to me. There was not a single bit of recognition in them other than they felt like a positive thing. "So what are these?"
Kearan grinned. "Healing spells. It's a basic guide to healing for Wigis, which is an extremely rare inherent ability for some shifters."
"Like you." He made a lot of sense.
"Yup, like me."
The door creaked, and Grayson strolled back in, no theatrics this time but somehow just as much chaos. "You two crack the secret code yet, or are we still pretending to research in here?"
Kearan raised an eyebrow and said nothing. I fought down a grin. "Just figuring out how to wield a little ancient magic. Care to join?"
"Maybe. If the two of you come out of this room with some kind of understanding." He stepped closer, relaxed but watching us both. "Be nice not to tiptoe around the giant elephant."
"Is it an elephant?" I held his gaze, teasing. "Or more of a giant bat keeping the tension up?"
Kearan huffed a laugh and shook his head.
"Okay, okay, maybe you're onto something." Grayson eased back, clearly enjoying himself. "But seriously. I'll allow certain distractions… The dagger, the wards, all these revelations, those are all acceptable since none of it's going to handle itself. But don't hyper-focus too much."
Kearan rolled his eyes, and Grayson waved as he left the room.