Chapter 10
Oisín
He leaves less than an hour later. Watching from the window, I catch a glimpse of his bike speeding down the path, the anger welling up in my chest from this afternoon building until it snaps.
I make it two hours before getting too antsy, needing something to take my mind off of whatever is growing between Saint and myself.
My phone buzzes and I pull it out of my pocket, surprised to see something from my sister. We haven’t ever really talked so I never expected her to message me when I was all but sold off to Obsidian.
Café at the corner. Twenty minutes. Alone.
No greeting. No apology. No explanation. Just a command dressed in fewer words than Canon would’ve used.
My first instinct is to ignore it. My second is to ask Saint, and that makes me so angry at myself that I’m already reaching for my shoes. I tell the prospect near the back hall that I’m getting air and let him assume someone important knows. It isn’t a good lie, but it’s quiet enough to pass.
The coffee shop sits six blocks away, wedged between a closed bookstore and a laundromat with half its lights burned out.
Varina is already in the back booth when I arrive, black coffee untouched in front of her, leather jacket zipped to her throat.
She looks tired in a way she’d never allow at the Rogues’ clubhouse.
She gestures to the seat across from her with it’s own black coffee.
Her eyes move over me once and stop at the fading mark beneath my jaw. “Jesus, Oisín.”
I sit across from her. “That’s what you wanted to say?”
She looks away first, and for one second I see my sister instead of Canon’s heir.
The girl who used to crawl into my bed after Mom died.
The girl who once stood between me and rooms too loud for me to survive alone.
Then her face hardens, and I know before she speaks that whatever tenderness brought me here is already lost.
“You need to remember where you come from,” she growls.
I wrap both hands around my mug. “I know where I come from.”
“Do you?” Her gaze flicks to my throat again. “Because from where I’m sitting, Saint didn’t need much time to make you comfortable.”
The words cut because she knows exactly where to aim them. I let the first hit pass, breathing through it the way I used to breathe through Canon’s disappointment. “If you asked me here to insult me, you could’ve texted.”
Her jaw tightens. “I asked you here because this alliance was supposed to put me inside Obsidian.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” She leans closer, keeping her voice low enough that the barista can’t hear.
“Canon didn’t want me there just because I’m heir or because the optics looked good.
He wanted me close enough to Saint to learn the structure.
People. Pressure points. XR3 made Obsidian strong, but anything that concentrated has seams.”
The coffee shop noise fades beneath the rush of blood in my ears. “A takeover.”
Varina doesn’t answer quickly enough.
I sit back slowly, the pieces arranging themselves with a clarity that makes me feel sick. “That’s why he wanted you married to Saint.”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen fast.”
“And now that job is mine?” I ask.
She clicks her tongue and sighs, leaning back against the cushion of the booth.
“You don’t have to steal formulas or put yourself in front of a bullet,” she says.
“You just have to pay attention. You’re good at that.
Routes, names, who Saint trusts, where Moth keeps records, which doors stay locked.
Enough to keep the Rogues from getting swallowed whole. ”
“The Rogues signed an alliance.”
“Don’t be na?ve, big brother. Did you really think that’s all this was? Canon would never fucking let Obsidian take us over.”
I almost laugh. “That’s new. Usually I’m useless.”
Her face shifts. “You were never useless.”
“Don’t rewrite it now because you need something from me.”
The tenderness immediately dies in her expression. “Fine. Saint didn’t pick you because he loves you. He picked you because you were available and because he likes how you look when he has a hand on your neck. Don’t confuse getting your dick wet with being valued.”
The words land exactly where she means them to, splitting through everything I’ve been trying not to ask myself. Saint’s bed. Saint’s praise. Saint leaving before morning. Saint calling me good and then walking out for the night like I was something he’d put back on a shelf.
Varina regrets it almost immediately. I can see that, but regret doesn’t pull the blade out. “Do your job for your family,” she says, softer now.
I stand before she can turn the command into a plea. “You don’t get to say family when you mean Canon. You don’t get to use Mom without saying her name. And you don’t get to tell me Saint is using me like that makes what you’re asking cleaner.”
“Oisín—”
“You were angry because Saint took me instead of you. I thought it was because you were worried about me. Maybe some of it was. But you were also angry because he ruined the plan.”
She opens her mouth and then closes it as I place both hands on the table, flattening them inches from her.
“Little sis,” I spit out. “He chose me because he wanted to fuck with the system. If you haven’t already figured it out, Saint likes to be in control and an alliance wasn’t in the cards for him. He probably saw through your bullshit plan and chose me because I seemed safer.”
A hearty laugh pulls from her as her eyes flash with a hint of deviance. “You’re not safe, Oisín. You’re just a different vessel.”
I ignore that. I haven’t chosen what I’m going to do but it’s definitely not going to happen at the behest of my sister. “Next time you call, make sure it’s because you want to tell me that you miss me. Or maybe... just don’t call at all.”
The walk back to Obsidian feels longer than six blocks.
By the time the clubhouse comes into view, I’ve replayed every word so many times that the meaning has thinned into pressure.
Bricks is outside near the side entrance with a cigarette between two fingers and the expression of a man watching trouble return on its own feet.
“You know,” he muses, exhaling smoke, “when Saint says stay put, he tends to mean the words in order.”
I stop a few feet away. “Are you going to tell him?”
Bricks looks at me like I’ve disappointed him on behalf of common sense. “Already did.”
My stomach drops.
“You’re not sneaky,” he adds, pushing away from the wall. “You’re quiet. There’s a difference.”
Saint’s room is empty when I get upstairs.
For one wild second, I think maybe Bricks only left a message, maybe Saint won’t know until morning, maybe I have time to decide which version of the truth will hurt least. Then the door opens behind me, and Saint steps inside, still wearing his cut, expression calm enough to make my skin go cold.
He shuts the door and turns the lock. I’m standing near the bed with my shoes still on and damp at the cuffs of my jeans, the lie already waiting in my mouth because the truth has Varina’s fingerprints all over it.
Saint takes in my appearance and the way I’m holding my arms too close to my body.
He doesn’t ask where I was immediately, which is worse.
He lets the room make the accusation first.
“Bricks said you left.”
“I needed air.”
His gaze drops to my shoes again. “Six blocks’ worth?”
I don’t answer quickly enough.
His mouth moves, almost a smile, and nowhere near one. “Try again, Sín.”
I could say Varina wanted information, that Canon intended the alliance as a takeover, that I might be the wrong Ward for the marriage, but not necessarily the wrong Ward for the plan.
But saying it out loud means admitting my sister looked me in the face and asked me to become exactly what Saint already suspects I am.
So I give him the only truth I can survive. “I missed her.”
Saint studies me for another second, then crosses the room slowly. He leaves a few inches between us, not touching me at all. “You’re a terrible liar,” he chuckles.
“Then stop asking questions you already know the answers to.”
His hand finally lifts, catching the hem of my shirt.
He pulls it up slowly, not with the hunger he usually brings to bed and not with enough gentleness for me to mistake it for kindness.
The patience is the punishment. I let him strip it off because my body learned the shape of his orders too quickly, and because some ruined part of me wants the argument to end in a language I understand.
Saint’s gaze moves over every mark he left, every bruise blooming dark along my ribs, the fading bite on my collarbone, and the fingerprint-shaped shadows on my hips. He reaches down and palms my cock through my jeans, squeezing once, hard enough that my breath catches.
“Already getting hard for me,” he muses, a dark chuckle following. “Even when you’re pissed off and lying through your teeth.”
My cock thickens under his hand, straining against the denim, and a helpless sound slips out of me before I can swallow it. Saint rubs his thumb over the head through the fabric, my hips jerking forward without permission.
“Saint—”
“Quiet.” He pops the button, drags the zipper down, and shoves my jeans and underwear to my thighs in one rough motion. My cock springs free, flushed and leaking at the tip. He wraps his hand around me, offering a punishing stroke that makes my knees buckle.
My breathing quickens as he picks up his pace, alternating squeezes and strokes while I try to stay upright. Pre-come slicks his palm and he uses it, twisting at the head on every upstroke until my thighs start to shake.
“Look at you,” he murmurs, his eyes on my face instead of my cock. “Panting like a whore after one touch. You hate how much you need this, don’t you?”
My lips fall open, a small moan filtering through. My cock throbs in his fist, harder than it has any right to be when I’m still so angry. He strokes faster, thumb pressing right under the head on every pass, and my head falls back against the wall with a dull thud.
“Saint… please—”
Saint’s gaze moves over every mark he left, every reaction I fail to bury. “I don’t feel like fucking a liar.”
A devastating smirk spreads across his face as he releases me. He steps back and points to the bed. “Get in.”
I open my mouth to fight him, Saint’s expression only darkening further. I give in and obey, about to say something else when Saint turns off the light, effectively killing the conversation.