11. Loose Ends
Chapter 11
Loose Ends
B rinley was barely awake, and highly confused, but she hadn’t quite registered the sense of fear until she felt a rush of cold dread wash over her from the other side of the mate bond. Lennox was afraid—of the strange male figure who didn’t belong in the room, of his presence in the room, or something else perhaps, but it was all the same. The realization made her pull the comforter up to her chin as she put her back to the headboard. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.
“’s what the file’s for,” Hiryū replied, as calmly as if she’d asked about the weather.
Lennox grunted and stretched forward, gathering up a plain manila file folder that seemed to have been tossed onto their bed. She hadn’t even seen it there. “If this is some intimidation tactic to get me to pay you to not kill us—”
Hiryū barked out a loud, grating laugh. His head tipped back, his shoulders shook, and he finally stopped twirling the dagger over his thigh.
Brinley felt her stomach roll. Kill us?
“That’s not how I work,” Hiryū said before he’d finished catching his breath. He let his head fall slightly to one side, grinning at them. “I don’t offer my targets the chance to outbid the contracts on their heads. Bad for business.”
Brinley was still struggling to process the words in conjunction with the too-casual tone when Lennox let out the kind of growl that wasn’t sexy at all. It was angry.
“But you are here to kill me,” Lennox said. He raised his narrowed stare across the room and simultaneously passed the opened folder to her, seeming to instinctively know she would want to see what had upset him.
Which she did. She needed something she might be able to latch onto, to focus on for more than one single second. So Brinley adjusted her grip of the blanket keeping her debatably decent and accepted the precariously balanced file before it could tip and spill again. And her heart lodged in her throat.
There was a printed photo, zoomed in and faintly blurry, of Lennox and her. She recognized it immediately. It could only have been taken the previous day, outside her former employer’s building. The building itself was too cut off to be distinguishable unless someone knew what to look for. She and Lennox stood face-to-face, his car behind them, their hands pressed onto each other’s bodies in some way.
She remembered that conversation as almost desperate. To the camera, it looked intimate.
“I was,” Hiryū said, his voice a backdrop in Brinley’s ears.
Someone was stalking us?
She remembered, after a second, having felt like someone was watching her—watching them. It was highly disconcerting to realize she had been right, in a much worse way than she’d considered.
Lennox and Hiryū continued to speak, but she tuned them out as her gaze shifted to the letter beside the photo. Her vision unfocused, her brain immediately failing to properly comprehend the meaning of the words.
When they’re together.
Stab him. Slit his throat.
Make it bloody.
Leave her alive.
Brinley didn’t realize she’d broken into a sweat or that she was breathing too hard, not until the first of her tears dripped onto the paper and smudged the ink. Instructions. A request. The letter—if she could call it that—was a bitter, hate-filled request with disgustingly specific instructions on how to fulfill the murderous desire of the person who’d penned it. More than likely the same person who’d taken the picture.
“Well, now you know.” The abrupt change in the pitch of Hiryū’s voice jerked Brinley out of her deepening despair and she snapped her head up in time to see him standing and stretching as if he’d been sitting a while. Which was an uncomfortable thought. “I’ve got things to do.”
He was leaving? Was he trying to lull them into a false sense of security?
Lennox growled low. “So, someone bigger and scarier chases you off a scent, you go running like it’s no big deal, and in the meantime, we’re left to look over our shoulders for however long it takes to handle this fucking mess?”
Hiryū took a single step forward, his pale brows furrowed, and held up two fingers. Brinley highly doubted he was offering them the peace sign. “I don’t leave loose ends. Ever. So there’s no looking over your shoulders, little alpha. And I think we both know your mate would prefer I don’t get more specific than that.” He lowered to one finger. “I lost respect for Fates and their plans a long fucking time ago, so you’re just gonna have to take my word for it when I say that having one of the newbies stomping her foot in your favor does diddly squat with me. She’s not what spared you this morning. I don’t kill one half of a fully bonded pair, so congratu-fucking-lations, you saved yourselves.”
He vanished from sight as soon as the words left his lips, a faint rush of air and the folder still in Brinley’s lap the only indicators he’d been there at all.
Brinley’s lungs deflated and she sank against the headboard, relief and confusion and things she couldn’t even describe bringing more tears to her eyes. “What the hell … just happened?”
Lennox sighed and pulled the file from her lap. “How much did you pay attention to?”
Brinley swallowed hard, suddenly struggling to form words. “I … I think I was being left to … take the blame. I was supposed to be framed for your m-murder….” Her heart constricted with the words as her mind replayed the letter she’d struggled to read. She would have been forced to endure him ripped from her literal arms, to have to watch him be slaughtered, and in some way to then be left so it looked like she was the one who’d done the deed. Perhaps she’d have woken to the scene.
Lennox pulled her into his chest and tucked her beneath his chin, his arms folding around her. “Not that, baby,” he said gently. “I meant were you listening ?”
Brinley dug her fingers into his skin. “When the killer-for-hire lectured us on understanding how merciful he was being to let you live? Yeah.”
“Before that.” Lennox kissed the crown of her hair. “Let’s start at the top. Are you aware of demons?”
The question threw her for a momentary loop. “Am I what?”
“Aware of the existence of demons, in our world.”
She drew a breath. Had she been? She couldn’t say for sure she had, but she also couldn’t say she was stunned by the idea. “Not … consciously?”
He rumbled in acknowledgment. “Hiryū is a demon, and rumored to be the most capable assassin of our time. I’ve heard his name and reputation, but no, I’ve never inquired for his services before.”
She supposed that was a relief, though it hadn’t yet occurred to her to ask. Still, she gave herself a moment to try and process. So demons were for sure real. That wasn’t much more dramatic than knowing other non-humans existed, considering she herself was technically non-human. It sounded like something to freak out about. Part of her wanted to. But she felt too comfy in Lennox’s arms to fall into that trap, so she breathed through it and nodded lightly. “Okay. I guess.” She immediately frowned at her word choice. “Well, not okay, but—”
Lennox chuckled, just for a second. This time, he bent enough to kiss her shoulder before speaking. “It was Matilda who hired him.”
Brinley stiffened and her voice came out in an unfamiliar growl. “What?”
“Matilda was watching us yesterday, outside your old office,” he said, the faintest note of guilt in his tone. “I tried to ignore her and meant to follow up with my attorney later, but the day … got away from me.”
Brinley pushed upright enough to see his face. “Matilda? Your ex-fiancée Matilda? How are you so sure she’s the one who—” She cut off her questioning, the photo and specific details of the request slamming back into her. It was a revenge killing. A petty, jealous, revenge killing. Anger surged through her and Brinley twisted, shoving at the comforter somehow tangled around her legs. “That bitch! I don’t need a lawyer. She needs a lawyer. And a fucking bodyguard!”
She got all of one foot from the bed before Lennox pulled her back against his chest again. And the asshole sounded like he was trying not to laugh. “I’m sure you would win that fight, baby,” he murmured beside her ear, “but I think it’s too late for that.” He kissed the skin at the back of her jaw. “All we can do now is put it behind us.”
She tried to hold on to her anger. She really did.
Her mate was a cheater.
Her anger, her fear, her confusion, and pretty much all the rest of her exploded on his tongue while he pinned her to the tiled wall of his obscenely wonderful shower.
They made it all the way to the same comfy sitting room where they’d spent so many hours the previous day, having opted to take their breakfast to the sofa, before Brinley remembered one of her lingering questions. She chased her latest bite with a quick, grateful sip of coffee and tilted her head up to better see him. “I’m still confused why he didn’t go through with it. He said he doesn’t kill ‘one half’ of a bonded pair, which I guess is nice of him in a messed-up way, but you seemed to think someone else had told him off?”
Lennox set his plate on the coffee table and leaned back, moving to stretch an arm behind her shoulders. “That was part of what he mentioned while you were looking at the papers,” he said. “He claimed he was ‘interrupted’ by a current-generation Moirai named Ella who demanded he not only not kill us, but also stay and tell us how we’d been spared from assassination.” He spoke with so much displeasure as he answered her that it curled his lips and trickled through their bond. He drew a deep breath that didn’t feel as cleansing as it was probably supposed to be. “You heard his opinion on that.”
Brinley nodded slowly, remembering the demon having said something that tied in to that. Moirai was a way to refer to the Grecian Fates, if she remembered her mythology correctly. Still… “That’s crazy.” A demon assassin was wild enough, but Fate? Actual, personified Fate? It was hard to wrap her mind around.
“You might be surprised how crazy this world is if you look too deep,” Lennox said.
Brinley frowned before taking another long gulp of coffee. Awareness dawned on her like a smack to the face and she choked as the coffee rolled down her throat.
Lennox had the plate and coffee from her hands and was rubbing her back in a matter of seconds. “Easy, baby.”
Brinley sucked in a raspy breath. “Ella? You said Ella?”
He frowned. “I did.”
Holy shit. There was no way… She swallowed again. “I recently met … a very weird woman with that name.” Her mind spun as she reflected on their interaction on that bus. On the strange thing Ella had said about her having an uncomfortable few days ahead that would ‘be worth it.’ Brinley felt her mouth drop open and stared, dumbfounded, up at Lennox, as if he might have a more sensible explanation.
“Brinley?”
She had to wet her mouth to find her voice. “I felt totally, completely normal on the way to work that morning. She badgered me on the bus, even jabbed me like she was pushing something on me, then disappeared. And then … a few hours later, my heat hit.” That had to be impossible. Brinley swallowed again, harder. “She—that woman—was a Fate ?”
Lennox’s frown faded until his lips had twitched in the upward direction. He rubbed his thumb over the side of her neck. “Congratulations, baby. Not many people can say they’ve met a living goddess.”
Brinley groaned and slumped against him. “I’m going back to bed. Wake me when life gets normal again.”
Lennox chuckled. “Nope. We have a lot to do today, and if Fate herself is on our side, there’s no reason not to move forward.”
Brinley let her fingers curl into his shirt. “Shouldn’t we be worried about Matilda?” All the crazy stuff aside, she still wanted to throttle the bitch.
A low hum vibrated his chest and Lennox gave her a brief, comforting squeeze. “I don’t think so, no. I have the distinct impression she’ll be losing interest in us today.”
She didn’t comment on that, because she suspected she understood his meaning. The angry part of her was downright happy about it, but she knew that would fade. She knew some type of guilt would follow. So she allowed herself a moment, while she could acknowledge the feeling, to remind herself the guilt wasn’t hers, either. She hadn’t made Matilda do any of the stupid things Matilda had done and she wasn’t responsible for the consequences of those actions.
She snuggled closer to Lennox’s side, breathing him in. Ultimately, she would always choose to keep him with her, and living.
Lennox rubbed his hand over her side. “We should get started,” he said. “I want to set you up on all of my accounts, we need to get you out of that apartment, we need to talk about what you want to do for a public marriage, and in the next day or two you’re going to have to meet my family. Before all of that, I have to teach you the security system.”
She caught herself gaping up at him again. He was running full-steam ahead. She supposed she wasn’t actually surprised by that, but she’d been too distracted to think about any of it, either. Finally, she dragged in a breath, rested her hand on his chest, and said, “What we want to do for our marriage ceremony, you mean.”
He smiled warmly. “I’ll be there every step of the way.”