11. Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
Reaper
The steam still clings to my skin as I step out of the bathroom, dragging a towel over my hair.
Wrenley’s still in there, humming softly under the hot spray, rinsing away what the day carved into her bones.
I barely get a few feet into the bedroom before Torque walks in, a manila folder clutched in one hand and a haunted look etched across his face.
“Liam,” Fuck, he never calls me that, this is bad. “You’re going to want to see this.”
Before I can answer, Wrenley steps into the room completely naked, running a towel through her hair, completely unfazed that were not alone. Torque’s head jerks up instantly, gaze fixed on the ceiling like it personally offended him. “Shit—sorry.”
Wrenley doesn’t flinch. Just grabs one of my shirts from the dresser and shrugs it on, giving him a crooked smile. “It’s fine. We’re a little past modesty around here, aren’t we?”
The mood has shifted. Whatever’s in that folder, it’s heavy. Wrenley sees it too. She pads across the room barefoot, standing next to me. Torque sets the folder down on the bed like it might explode.
“It’s worse than we thought,” he says.
Wrenley sits, legs tucked beneath her, already flipping the cover open. Elias has been digging. Everything he could find on Sebastian, every scrap, record, detail they’d tried to bury.
Vivian had him locked away for most of his life. A private mental hospital, padded with bribes. A high-functioning sociopath, diagnosed early, Anti-social personality disorder, in black-and-white across the top of the psychiatric evaluation. Cold. Calculated. Charming. Dangerous.
It’s the notes that make my skin crawl. From therapists and doctors. One report dated the year Wrenley turned five, warning that Sebastian had developed “an obsessive, unhealthy fixation on his younger sister,” and that “under no circumstances should he be allowed unsupervised access to her.”
Wrenley’s fingers tremble as she turns the page.
The next documents are payment records. Quarterly deposits from Vivian Ashford’s private accounts to the hospital. Until about a year ago. When Wrenley put a bullet in her mother.
“He was released the same week,” Torque says. His voice is hollow. “Quiet. No fanfare. No family retrieval. Just… walked out.”
My jaw tightens.
“The planning, the packages, the notes, the greenhouse.” Wrenley says quietly looking at me. At Torque. Her eyes harden.
“He’s been fascinated with me since before we knew he existed. My entire life.”
I nod once, chest tight. “We need to lock this down tighter than ever.”
Torque steps forward, expression unreadable. “You’re not just a target to him. You’re the obsession.”
Wrenley’s voice is quiet, but steel-edged. “Then let him obsess. When he steps close enough… we end it.”
It’s been a week since the greenhouse. A week since the name Sebastian Montclair detonated like shrapnel inside our world and embedded itself in Wrenley’s blood.
There’s been no letters. No sightings. Not even a whisper of his name.
Nothing. He’s a ghost, worse than that, he’s a patient one.
The kind that waits in silence just to make you flinch first.
We’re posted up in the club apartment, after closing time. Torque and Wrecker are helping me comb through the weapons cache behind the false panel under the built-ins. Routine, but not really. There’s nothing routine about this anymore.
The Serpents posted at the mansion are checking in.
Quiet all night, they say. But their voices carry that edge.
Everyone’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Max went to Doc’s place, trying to dig through Sebastian's psych profile, searching for something that might tell us what’s coming.
The air is still, like the moments right before a storm.
Torque slams a magazine into place and gives me a sidelong glance. “Oh god, please stop looking at me and just ask.”
I arch a brow. “Ask what?”
Wrecker snorts from where he’s leaning on the edge of the kitchen counter, sipping a bottle of water like he’s not eavesdropping.
“Don’t play dumb, I know Wrenley told you already.”
I look between them. Torque’s expression is a mixture of resignation and defiance.
“Doc and I… have been seeing each other for a couple of months now.”
I blink, then let out a low laugh. “Seriously?”
Torque shrugs. “Yeah. It's not… complicated.”
“Good for you, brother,” I say, clapping him on the shoulder. “She’s solid.”
“She’s been trying to get me to tell everyone,” Torque mutters. “Wrenley found out when she showed up at the house." He shoots a look at Wrecker. "I was… in a towel.”
Wrecker throws his hands like he’s been absolved. “Hey. Don’t look at me like that. She made me take her. If I didn’t I was scared she’d kill me and hide the body in that rose garden she’s always ranting about.”
Torque narrows his eyes at him. “You’re a rat.”
Wrecker just grins.
I’m about to needle Torque again when my phone buzzes in my back pocket. I pull it out, already keyed up.
Little Warrior
“Yeah, baby?” I answer.
“All of you. Office. Now.”
The line goes dead.
I’m up with no hesitation. “Move.”
We’re down the back hallway in seconds. Wrecker already slipped a pistol into his waistband, and Torque’s gripping a short-barrel rifle like he’s praying for someone to give him a reason to use it.
The door swings open, and she’s in there, commanding the room with that deadly calm she’s mastered over the years.
“…put them at the table in the center of the club,” she’s saying to Hunter, who’s tapping rapidly on a tablet. “I want serpents posted throughout the floor. Clear out all the other employees. I don’t want anyone caught in the crossfire if this goes south.”
“What’s going on?” I ask, stepping in.
She doesn’t flinch when she looks at me.
“Sebastian’s here. With two others. Says he has something of ours. Requested to meet the owners.”
I glance at Hunter, who gives a grim nod.
Torque racks his rifle with a low click. “You’re not going down there alone.”
Wrenley nods once. “I know.”
She doesn’t look scared. She looks carved from fire. And God help the bastard who tries to burn her first. I pull an earpiece from my pocket. “Then let’s get this over with.”
Torque and Wrecker head down first, guns ready and eyes sharp. Wrenley turns toward the door, Hugo already at her heel, but I stop her. “Wait.”
She looks back, brows drawn in that way that always hits me somewhere beneath my ribs.
I cross to the desk, reach under the drawer where I stashed it. “I had this made for you,” I say, heart suddenly thudding harder than any gunfight I’ve ever walked into. “Planned to give it to you differently, but… I think you need it now.”
She tilts her head, curious, but her eyes widen slightly when I drop to one knee.
Her sharp inhale punches straight through me.
I chuckle, low. “Not a ring. Relax.”
She laughs, barely, and mutters, “I don’t think that’s any better.”
“This,” I say, reaching for her foot and gently guiding it onto my leg, “Is between you and me.”
I wrap the thigh sheath around her leg, the leather molding perfectly to her like it’s always belonged there. Then I slip the dagger from its sheath and hold it up between us.
“It’s a replica of the one I placed around your neck that night we made you our Queen.”
Her breath catches. Hey eyes—fuck, her eyes go molten as she takes it from me, turning the blade over in her hands.
“I remember that night,” she whispers. “You were the one who knelt first.”
I nod. “I still would.”
She slides the dagger back into the sheath and then grabs my shirt in both fists, dragging me to her with a force that tastes like desperation and promise all at once. Our mouths crash together, fierce, breathless, mine already burning for her.
When she pulls back, she whispers against my lips, “I love it. And I love you.”
It hits differently, hearing it now, like the final puzzle piece sliding into place in the middle of a warzone.
She smooths her fingers over my chest and turns toward the door. Just as her hand touches the knob, she pauses, glancing over her shoulder.
“Was that a proposal?”
I smirk. “Yeah. I guess it was.”
She mutters under her breath, “The men in my life have such strange timing with those,” and shakes her head, soft curls swinging around her as she pushes open the door.
She doesn’t give me an answer. But I already know it. I fall into step beside her, hand brushing her lower back. The leather of the sheath’s edge peeks out from beneath the hem of her shirt, and something primal settles in my chest.
Whatever this night brings, hell or high water, I’ll face it with her at my side. Because now? She’s mine, too. And we’re going to meet the bastard who thinks he can take her from us.
I pull out the chair for her, and she sits owning the entire goddamn room.
I don’t take a seat beside her. No, I stand behind her shoulder, just to the left, where I can see everything.
Where can I be between her and them if I have to.
Hugo plants himself to her right. A statue made of pure muscle and teeth.
Across the dance floor, twelve Serpents blend into the shadows, lining the edges of the club like the devil’s version of stained glass. Nothing flashy. Just steel in their eyes and weapons at their hips. They don’t need to say a word; our presence alone is a message.
Torque and Wrecker take up position behind the three who walked in. Sebastian, a dark-haired man with too many nervous tics, and a woman who looks bored and wants to be anywhere else.
He’s calm. Eyes sharp and wrong, scanning the room. He sees me, then Wrenley, then the Serpents. Clocking every detail like he’s mentally drawing blood in advance.
He’s got the kind of smile that belongs in padded rooms and locked wards. The kind that makes your stomach twist even before he speaks.
But Wrenley… she’s ice. She leans back, eyes cool, expression unreadable. Doesn’t say a word. It’s her favorite tactic, silence. Let them stew in it. Let them hang themselves. She’s so fucking good at it.
Finally, Sebastian chuckles, low and smug. “Well. I guess by now, if you were smart enough… you’ve figured out who I am.”
Wrenley doesn’t blink. She just lifts her hand, calm and controlled, and pulls the dagger from her thigh. The one that means she’s never alone anymore.
She starts spinning it on the table between them, slow at first, then faster.
It catches the overhead lights in silver flashes as it spins.
The other man flinches. The woman goes stiff.
Sebastian watches it, still smiling, but I see the twitch in his jaw.
A flicker in his eye. He doesn’t like not being the one in control.
With precision that makes me proud and my dick twitch, Wrenley slams her hand down and stops the blade. The dagger stands still, it’s tip pointed directly at him. His smile falters. I know this meeting is going to cost us something.
Wrenley’s voice is velvet-wrapped. “Oh, I was smart enough.”