Lesser Wolves (Storm’s Duet #1)

Before

CASSIA

We meet under the cover of night, between two clubs, brick walls blanketing us on either side beneath the stars.

His gray eyes find mine and the whites of them are red.

He’s jittery in his motions, wiping the back of his hand along the underside of his nose. I know what he’s done, he knows I know, but he’ll pretend for one more night he’s gotten it under control.

I delivered the news over the phone, before he requested to meet, and blow can be that way. Calling out to you in your grief. It’s the friend who lifts you up, gives you back a smile.

He isn’t smiling now, though.

I tilt my head and do it for him, curving my lips high, hands pushed into the deep pockets of my black wool trench.

There is a gun between my fingers, but he’s unaware.

He should suspect me, though. But I guess after we’ve carried a secret as big as ours for as long as we have, he thinks there’s some sort of parameter around what I will and won’t do to him.

He messed up that line years ago.

When I think of it now, my finger grazes the trigger and I wonder if it would be worth the wreckage to get rid of him tonight.

My heart would ease.

But it wouldn’t stop what happened to my son, and it would threaten the other.

There is no erasing the former. The only way I can live with it is knowing he doesn’t remember.

I can only bear to be apart from the other one by holding onto the knowledge that if I don’t cross a line, this man in front of me won’t either.

If I do, he has ensured his death.

I think I could manage the threats. But it’s the uncertainty that keeps me under his thumb.

It’s why Hawthorn and I are leaving.

That, and the girl’s mother Lynx recklessly murdered when my own son was too fucking close. I tried to do the right thing, letting him stay with the man before me.

It’s all he would allow.

But what he did is a reminder of why I’m making the right decision.

“You’re making a mistake,” he says with fucking audacity, sniffing as he does, the back of his hand under his nose again. He glances down the alleyway and a burst of cold winter air races toward us.

I refuse to shiver.

After today, after the past decade, I think I’ve gone numb.

Nine months full of lies will do that to a woman. Now imagine over nine years.

A secret kept in ways you can’t imagine will break anyone’s soul.

“You are fucking up, Cas.” He repeats it.

“I can’t bear to stay here another minute.” The simplest truth of it.

He drops his hand and turns to stare at me. We each have our back to opposite building walls but it would be so easy for him to lunge toward me and wrap his fingers around my throat.

Isn’t that why I liked him?

Where my husband had a stopping point, an emergency brake, this man before me had none. And there was something primal in it, the way he nearly killed me to own me.

And he did. For nine months after we met on a parallel job.

When he realized I wouldn’t abandon my family to make one with him, he took responsibility.

It claws at me.

I can barely look at him when I think of it, but the mistake was all mine.

“It could be different. Rather than pushing at the lines, bleeding through territories, you could own what you’ve done.” His voice has a frantic edge.

But we both know he’s full of shit. He is the reason I haven’t owned it. If he had to see me with Hawthorn while we passed off custody every other weekend, we’d all die much sooner.

Lynx Flynn is the most dangerous man I have ever met, and my husband murders people for a living.

And so I say what I agreed to see him for and ignore the rest: “Now we have a truce. And I’m taking you at your word.”

His lips press together and for the first time in the ten minutes we’ve been speaking, he is perfectly still.

Neither of us want a truce. It’s against our nature.

We want to push and pull and break. But there are people I need safe and now I will not be close enough to all of them to ensure it is so.

I know he feels the same.

The little girl.

I could kill her if I had to. If it meant keeping my own children safe.

He knows that about me by now.

“A truce.” The words sound diseased from his lips.

“If not,” I keep my tone light, “she’s gone.” I threaten where I can. His loyalty has never been to his most direct descendant. Because he is a part of me, and as much as Lynx loves me, he hates the fact he does.

His face is blank. He wonders how he fucked a monster. He marvels at it, too. It turns him on. Exactly why we’re here.

He doesn’t bother saying nonsense about how I “wouldn’t do that.”

We both know I would.

“This is it,” I say. “No more.”

“Is he really nothing to you?”

I want to murder him for the question alone. But what good would it do? No doubt Lynx has contingency plans for his own death. He’s reminded me of them many times.

“If you harm him…” I let the unspoken threat hover between us.

He waves a shaky hand, brushing my words off. “I know, I know.”

I echo myself. “No more.”

He says nothing, but I see the smile on his face. He always wanted to hurt me more than I ever cared about him.

Today, he’s done it.