Chapter Twenty-Seven
THE DEAD BIRDS wouldn’t leave me alone. They sat heavy in my head, eyes sharp like they knew me, like they blamed me. Beaks clenched tight, like they’d tried to sing and got choked quiet. Once alive. Now nothing but stillness, and it dug at me until the ache answered back.
I sat on Ashen’s bed, the dip of the mattress still holding him, clutching the glass bird he’d given me.
It fit in my palm like a promise I didn’t trust, one wrong move and it’d shatter.
The lamp caught on its edges and threw a shaky feather of light across the ceiling. I told myself it was warm. It wasn’t.
When Ashen said he’d almost been killed, it broke something in me. I thought my silence kept me safe, kept the worst locked out. I was wrong. The danger wasn’t just mine. It followed him too, step for step.
Bones. Just saying his name in my head felt like dragging barbed wire through my throat.
Venom’s right hand. The man who’d looked at me like I was nothing more than a secret to bleed out of me.
My chest tightened, air stuck in my lungs.
He won’t stop until I’m gone. And the dead birds seemed to nod.
There was a time I begged for it to end. I’d whispered to Venom in the dark, begged him to just finish me, let the pain stop. Back then, death had sounded like peace. Now it sounded like theft. Because for the first time in years, I wanted something.
If I died tomorrow, I’d regret one thing.
Not letting myself absorb everything Ashen made me feel.
The thought was clean, raw. Not revenge. Not freedom. Not even safety. Just him. The way his jaw locked when he stood close, the grip of his hands—on the bars of his bike, on anyone dumb enough to cross him. The way he said my name like it meant something.
I turned the glass bird in my hand until it pressed cool into my skin, then held it to my chest like it might keep me steady. My voice was small, but it came anyway, shaky in the dark.
“I want to be with you,” I whispered, like the shadows could carry it to him. “All of you. To feel it. To want you. To not be scared of asking.”
My hands shook, and I let them. Saying it was like stepping off a curb not knowing if the road was there.
If he turned away, I’d live with the shame, carry it like a stone in my pocket.
But if he didn’t? If he took me, wanted me the same way?
Then maybe I could breathe without fear.
Maybe I could sleep without waiting for walls to close in.
I pushed up off the bed, the mattress sighing behind me. The glass bird had warmed against my palm; I slid it into my pocket like it was sacred and crossed to the door.
The hallway light cut across my face as I opened it. Voices carried from the common room, rough and alive. I thought of Bones having someone inside this clubhouse, the way time suddenly felt thin, running out.
I wasn’t waiting anymore.
Tonight, I was going to tell Ashen how I felt.
***
ASHEN’S DOOR CLICKED shut behind us, the muffled noise from the common room fading until it was just us.
His presence filled the space, steady and overwhelming all at once.
His cut landed on the chair in its usual place, boots left in a careless pile against the wall.
He didn’t waste words, he never did this late, just steered me toward the bed with that quiet patience I’d come to lean on.
He stretched out the way he always did—long, broad, unmovable. His arm came around me, pulling me in until my back was against his chest, his hand heavy at my waist. Heat rolled off him, soaking through the thin barrier of my shirt.
This was our ritual. His breathing drowned out the ghosts, his strength built a wall nothing in the dark could climb.
But tonight, the nightmares weren’t the loudest thing in my head.
I lay awake, heart thudding, eyes fixed on the shadows stretching across the ceiling. The glass bird on the nightstand caught the moonlight, silent, fragile, reminding me of the choice I’d made. If I died tomorrow, I’d regret not doing this.
“Ashen.” My voice cracked on his name.
He made a low sound, almost asleep, but his arm tightened, like he was reminding me I wasn’t leaving.
“I don’t want to just sleep tonight.”
That cut through him. His body went still, muscles locked, breath pulled slow and careful.
“What are you saying, Wren?” His voice was gravel in the dark, gruff, like he wasn’t sure he’d heard me right.
I turned, inch by inch, until I was facing him. The scar at his temple caught the silver light, the hard line of his jaw inches from mine. My hands shook, but I pressed them to his chest anyway, felt his heartbeat hammering under my palms.
“I want you,” I said. The words were raw, scraped from somewhere deep. “Not just to hold off the nightmares. I want all of it. To feel you. To feel… us.”
His hand slid up my back, slow and deliberate, as if he was holding back everything else inside him. His eyes locked on mine, dark and fierce, making sure I understood.
“You sure about that?” His voice was rough now, stripped of sleep, heavy with control. “Because I won’t lay a hand on you unless you are.”
“I’m sure.” My throat closed but I forced it through. “I don’t want to be afraid of this anymore. I don’t want to be afraid of being with you.”
Something shifted in his face then—raw, hungry, breaking loose. He dragged me in close, forehead pressed to mine, his breath unsteady between us.
“You’ll never be afraid of me,” he promised, his voice cut from iron. “I’d tear myself apart before I let that happen.”
And I believed him.