Chapter 18 Van
VAN
"I'm so scared. I'm so scared."
I clenched my jaw, making damn sure my eye roll was hidden.
She wasn’t Aniyah—few people were. Most people screamed and froze.
Aniyah moved. Bold. Fearless. Complicated as hell but carved from something real.
Grit and magic and pure fire. She wasn’t whimpering in a hallway; she was out there confronting the threat head-on, probably with a smile that dared the bastards to try her.
Natalie’s long nails dug into my arm like talons as I tugged her along, her sobs hiccuping between breathless murmurs about the “bad men.” All I could think about was Aniyah, outnumbered but unshaken, with only two guards flanking her and a plan too wild not to work.
Still… what if?
The thought needled its way through the cracks in my focus. What if she overestimates the situation? What if one of them gets to her before she can react? What if those two aren't enough? What if they take her?
I shook off the thought with force. No. Her plan was solid, strategic. She’d accounted for everyone’s strengths. She was three steps ahead, as always, and we all had our roles to play. Mine, unfortunately, was this.
What if your flame dies before you ever tell her the truth? Before she knows what she is to you? Will you be able to live with that?
Natalie stumbled, nearly dragging me down with her dead weight. I caught her reflexively, but everything in me wanted to drop her on the floor and bolt. I could already hear Aniyah’s voice, irritated, clipped, with that look that made me feel two inches tall.
“Protect the talent,” she’d say. “They’re the lifeblood of this place. That’s what we’re built on.”
Grinding my teeth, I yanked Natalie upright again, every thought slingshotting back to her.
“Ouch! That hurts.”
Making sure she was on stable ground, I let go and looked away, eyes hard, as I bit back the thousand things I wanted to say. I didn’t have the patience for this.
“Come on,” I said instead, curt and dismissive. “Let’s get you out this way.”
“B-but… that’s the f-front—where the g-gunmen came from…. D-don’t you think there’s m-more?”
Her voice was all stutter and shake, and gods, she was clinging again.
My fists clenched at my sides. It wasn’t her fault, not really.
Not everyone could be like her, have the strength for real courage.
Imagining Aniyah’s voice barking orders, eyes wild with purpose, blood on her clothes like war paint, I wanted to bask in her dangerously seductive glow.
I took a breath that stretched my body tight, holding myself still like a wire about to snap. Then I forced a smile and looked down at Natalie.
“Aniyah’s taking care of everything,” I said smoothly, running a thumb along her jaw in a gesture meant to calm, to distract. “Soon, there won’t be any threats left.”
“Really?!” Her arms flew around my neck, clinging to me like I was a lifeline and not a man barely containing his frustration. “I’m so glad we have such an amazing boss.”
Boss. She didn’t even know. She had no idea Aniyah was more than that to me. My flame. My anchor. My reason for… everything.
I stayed silent. I couldn’t let it slip. Couldn’t give anything away. Gently, carefully, I pried her arms off me, resisting the visceral urge to push her off and run.
“Let’s get you out of here first. Aniyah wouldn’t want our newest employee so traumatized she can’t come back to work, right?”
She nodded, finally keeping pace, and I ushered her into the staff stairwell, my eyes scanning every corner, every shadow. Still on high alert. Still wanting, needing, to be somewhere else.
“Keep your phone on you,” I said once I opened the door to the alley. “We’ll contact you when it’s safe to return.”
“Thank you,” she called back as she fled around the corner.
I didn’t answer, just closed the door and bolted to the main floor. I didn’t stop until I saw them. All of them. Surrounding her.
That tension I’d been carrying, that suffocating grip of unspoken fear, I felt it unfurl. Release. She was still standing. Still fierce. Still mine… even if she didn’t know it yet.
As I got closer, the chaos of the club blurred into background noise. People were leaving, and shattered glass and bloodied bodies littered the floor, but it all disappeared. All I could see was her.
Aniyah.
She was drenched in blood, so completely soaked you’d think it had rained from the ceiling, but she was standing tall.
Ash-white hair gleaming under broken lights, skin kissed with crimson, silk robe clinging to her because she hadn’t bothered to change before charging into battle. Like a boss. Like her.
And for a moment, just a second, I breathed.
Then her eyes fluttered and closed, her body slumped into the wolf’s arms, and the breath I’d just found was ripped out of my lungs.
Alic’s voice pierced the haze. “What’s happening to her?!”
I was already running.
What the hell is going on?
They closed in on her, shielding her, a wall of muscle and magic and panic, and I couldn’t see her anymore. The second I lost sight of her, my chest cinched tight like a wire pulled too far.
The demon’s voice came low, tense. “She’s burning up.” My stomach plummeted.
No. No, this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. She was supposed to be yelling at us, bossing us around, flinging blood off her robe and grinning like a lunatic. She was supposed to win. That was what she always did.
“Shit. Now she’s shaking. Give her to me!”
Growls echoed in the air, rumbling and low and dangerous. Tension spiked, magic charging the space between them, and that was the moment I realized they weren’t just scared. They were about to turn on each other, and she was still in the middle of it all.
Get it together. That voice inside of me, Aniyah’s voice, cut through the panic. She’d expect more from me. She’d want someone to lead, someone to shut it down and handle it. She didn’t need five men unraveling over her unconscious body. She needed someone steady. Someone who could hold the line.
Even if I was falling apart inside.
I took a breath deep enough to hurt. My heart was still hammering, my instincts screaming to take her from them and run, but I buried it. I shoved it all down so deep it scraped bone.
“Both of you, shut up.” My voice came out like the crack of a whip.
They froze, eyes snapping to me. I didn’t meet any of their stares. Mine stayed on her.
My flame.
The one thing in this world that meant more to me than my own life. The one person my magic couldn’t touch.
We needed to move. Fast.
I shoved my hands into my pockets, fingers shaking until they curled around cold metal.
My key ring, the one that had her spare key on it.
She’d given it to me half-jokingly, half-serious, a lifetime ago.
“Here. Just in case of emergency. I trust you and stuff.” I hadn’t laughed then. I definitely wasn’t laughing now.
“I have the key to her place,” I said, voice tight. “Let’s take her there. Fast.”
Alic moved first, scooping her up before the wolf could protest, and bolted. The others followed. I lingered behind, pulling my composure around me like armor and heading for the front desk.
That was when I saw Randy slumped on the floor in a pool of blood.
Fuck. Aniyah will be heartbroken if he’s dead.
I dropped beside him, hand to his chest. My earth-based magic flowed out of me instinctively, a piece of me that still worked when everything else felt broken. No bullet. Heart still beating. He’d live.
I grabbed a healing rune stone from my back pocket, pressed it to his chest, and pushed power into it. It glowed a faint orange hue, doing what it was meant to do. Within thirty minutes, he’d wake up.
I was still useful. To someone.
A shadow stretched over me, and I whirled around to see Lucus. His eyes locked on the glowing rune stone, then flicked to me. Cold. Calculating. Angry.
“Why didn’t you do that for Aniyah?”
My hand clenched, teeth grinding together. Rage, shame, and helplessness twisted inside me until my body was coiled tight enough to snap.
“I can’t,” I said tightly, my lips barely able to move.
Getting up, I tried to walk past him, tried to leave before it came spilling out of me, but he grabbed my arm, his steely vampire strength clenched around my bicep hard enough to bruise.
“Why?” he growled.
All that British charm had been stripped away. What remained was the monster underneath, and although he was two seconds from tearing me apart, I wasn’t afraid.
I didn’t answer for him. I answered because it was killing me not to.
“She’s my flame,” I said quietly. “My magic won’t work on her.” The words tasted like poisonous defeat.
Lucus exhaled a slow breath as he looked toward the door, then back at me. His grip slackened. His bruising grip fell away, his fangs sliding back into place as if this conversation had drained something from him, too.
“I understand,” he said, his voice infuriatingly composed, and that calm… it gutted me because I wasn’t calm. I was drowning, and somehow, his quiet acceptance cut deeper than his earlier accusation.
I stood there, frozen, as the weight of what I’d just said sank in. What it meant. What it cost.
That bond, that sacred, once-in-a-lifetime connection, came with a cruel twist. My magic, the very thing I’d trained and bled to master, the same thing that brought me to her, refused to treat her.
Refused to recognize her as a separate entity from myself.
Just like I couldn't hurt myself with my magic, I couldn’t affect her either.
She was the only one in the world immune to me.
The silence between us stretched until the dam inside me cracked open. Every failure. Every second too late. Every scream I hadn’t been there to hear. It all flooded me.
She needed me, and I had nothing to give.
Looking down at my hands, they were shaking now, useless tremors that betrayed the storm I was barely keeping beneath the surface.