Chapter 6 | Anna
I left my mother to her gardening and returned inside through the kitchen. It was empty.
I paused there for a long moment, listening to the familiar sounds. The hum of expensive appliances, the faint creak of the walls when the wind pressed against the manor.
As I stood there, a feeling of dread lodged deep in my chest, sharp and unwelcome, as Ophelia’s words surfaced unbidden.
They won’t knock on the front door this time. They’ll come when you least expect it.
The last time Sebastian showed up, he had knocked. I doubted he’d repeat the courtesy. Or come himself. He preferred distance. Delegation.
Would he send someone instead? An enforcer to do his bidding?
He was a coward like that.
The only person I could talk to about planning the next move was Kincade, and I had a feeling he wasn’t going to be in a chatty mood.
Talk about a buzzkill of a morning.
In less than an hour, my day had gone from sexy times to hell in a hand basket, as Grace would say.
My stomach growled. Survival first. I raided the refrigerator and found leftover fried chicken from Sunday dinner. Grace’s idea.
You could take the woman out of Texas, but you could never take Texas, or Sunday traditions, out of the woman.
I grabbed a leg, slammed the zero-degree fridge closed—and yelped.
Kincade stood on the other side of the room.
I never heard him enter.
“You scared me,” I said, my voice edging accusatory as my pulse caught up with me.
“I’m going to work out.”
He moved past me without slowing, without meeting my eyes. The space he left behind felt colder.
That wasn’t a good sign.
“Don’t you think we should—”
“No.”
The word landed like a door slamming. Which it was.
Okay, then. That answered that.
He wasn’t angry. He was controlled. And that worried me more.
Let Ophelia deal with him.
I finished the chicken leg and tossed the bone in the trash on my way out. The best place for me to plan was the library where I’d had so many interactions with my uncle. So, I headed there.
First things first. I needed the notebook I’d written the notes for the wards. Edward always took care of that, but after he passed, I’d found his journal stuffed in the back of his desk.
Small miracles.
In the library, I noticed the glass with the whiskey still in it. Poured. Untouched.
Kincade’s scent lingered there. He’d been here. He’d poured a drink. Didn’t drink it.
Shared whiskey was our favorite thing to do. If he was doing it without me—
That thought did not sit well with me.
I headed to the desk and pulled open the top drawer. The small leather-bound journal was right on top. I quickly scanned the notes. There were wards under every window and over every exterior doorway.
But as I read through the notes, something occurred to me.
Would demon wards keep out Watchers?
I flung down the journal with a huff. This wasn’t going to work. This was… useless.
Still, I had to do something, or I’d go mad. I made my way through the house. The library was housed on the second level with the rest of the bedrooms. I know. I thought that was weird, too. But I wasn’t the architect.
My mother’s bedroom door was open. Her room was tidy. Perfection. Nothing out of place. Grace’s—same thing. Ophelia. Well, she could use some help. Clothes were strewn across the floor. The bed was rumpled and unmade. Shoes discarded in the doorway as if she’d stepped out of them mid-walk.
I guess I couldn’t blame her. Now that Darius was off being warrior angel extraordinaire, she didn’t see fit to keep her room neat and organized.
I stood in the hallway, my hands on my hips. Even if the wards didn’t work, there was no way they’d get inside this place. It was a fortress. We’d survived a demon horde attack. We could survive anything.
I hoped.
Later that afternoon, I found him in the library. He’d been missing in action all day. I’d been entertaining myself with the wards despite my thought they were not going to work against the Brotherhood.
He sat at my uncle’s desk—still couldn’t think of it as mine—looking like he was ready to rip someone’s head off.
Murderous intent never boded well.
When I entered the room, his gaze flickered up to me. Then changed from hardened warrior to something softer.
His shirt was still dark with sweat along his chest. Like he’d walked away from the workout room, came here, and plopped down in the leather executive chair.
I halted there, trying to decide what I should say.
“About before—”
“It’s fine,” he interrupted.
I hated when he interrupted me. “I’m not trying to pick a fight, you know.”
“I know.”
“Then what is it?” I demanded, folding my arms across my chest. Staring him down like I was trying to win a staring contest. And he wasn’t playing.
He said nothing. I sighed.
“Ophelia thinks they’re going to change tactics this time.” This was like poking the bear with a stick. I was holding my life in my hands.
“I’m aware.”
That was it. It was like talking to a fencepost. “Aware how?”
I was pushing it. I knew it. He knew it.
His gaze flicked up to me. “Anna.”
My name as a warning shot.
But I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I exhaled. That word visible kept echoing in my head. And then what he was doing hit me.
“You don’t have to do this alone.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why does it feel like you’re shutting me out?”
Because he was. I dropped my arms. My hands fisted.
“I’m protecting you.” His gaze sharpened.
An old argument. Protecting me. After everything I’d—we’d—been through. Silence stretched between us. There were times in the past where I’d let him take the lead, make the decisions. But not this time. This time it was personal.
“I don’t want you making decisions without me.” About me, I wanted to say.
“Like the decision you made without me when you climbed that mountain?”
Oh, fuck. He had to bring that up. “That’s different.”
“It’s no different,” he said. “You decided you’d rather die than let us fall.”
Die. There it was.
I’d thought about that climb. Breaking every fingernail in the process to get to the top knowing I wouldn’t make it back down. I hadn’t thought about the aftermath, about him standing where he was now, carrying the part I’d left behind.
“I didn’t decide to die,” I said, my voice tight. “I decided you were worth it.”
Now, here we were. Same argument. Different day. In my mind, the Brotherhood was no more dangerous than the Hellscape I faced.
“I won’t let them touch you,” he said, his voice careful. Low.
Like he was the only thing standing between me and what was coming. He was. But I was a big girl now. I knew how to fight.
“I mean that,” he added. As if he heard my thoughts.
He always did.
I searched his face. Looking for anger. Fear. Anything. All I saw was resolve so rigid it scared me. I wasn’t getting anywhere with him right now. He was too stubborn.
“I’m going to reinforce the wards,” I said.
“Fine.”
No argument. No objection. Which was unsettling.
I stepped back toward the door. But he made no move to follow me. Didn’t move from the chair. As I left, I had the strangest, sickest thought—
That whatever was coming, we were already fighting it from opposite sides.
Night came. We’d managed to avoid each other the rest of the day. When it was time to turn in, I half expected him to hide out in his old room. Brooding and alone.
I sat on the edge of the bed, pulled off my boots and dropped them with a thud on the floor, frowning. I changed into my favorite nightshirt and, as I was climbing into bed, the door opened. There he was, filling the doorway like there wasn’t room for anything else.
We stared at each other.
God, I hated this.
He shut the door. I snapped off the light, plunging us into near total darkness. Moonlight pressed through the curtains illuminating the room in a soft blue-white glow.
He shucked his clothes. The mattress sighed with his weight.
No words. No nothing. There was a cold silence between us.
And I lay there thinking if everything ended tomorrow, we’d parted on less-than-ideal terms. I didn’t want that. But I didn’t know how to fix it. I turned to my side, closed my eyes and tried to sleep.
Knowing it would never come.
Then…
His hand. Brushing the hair off my neck. Slipping down the length of my arm leaving a tingling sensation in his wake. Curling in the edge of my shirt. Sliding under the material. His warm hand resting on the flat plane of my abdomen.
He shifted closer, his chest pressing into my back, tucking my head underneath his chin. His arm tightened around my waist, possessive in a way that made me ache. Guarding.
And then I realized I hadn’t seen Silas all day. I’d found Kincade in the library looking furious.
My chest tightened.
He’d decided something, and he hadn’t told me. Wouldn’t tell me. And this was… this was him grounding himself. Keeping me close while still putting distance between us.
If everything changed tomorrow, I couldn’t let tonight’s hush be our death.
“I don’t like this silence between us.” My voice was a roughened whisper.
I waited.
Finally, “I know.”
He said nothing else. I don’t know what I expected. He wasn’t a guy who freely shared feelings or flowery expressions. He was a man of action. I understood that.
I shifted to my back, still nestled against him. He knew what I was thinking. He always knew. His mouth came down on mine. Slow at first. Then deepening. I needed to feel him here. Present.
His hand moved up over my ribs, sliding to my breast where he paused there for a moment.
Only a moment. Long enough to make the heat pound through my head.
Long enough to make me realize he was memorizing every curve.
He swept back down and then pushed away the material separating us, brushing over my hip, sliding between my legs.
Into the slick heat that was there before he was.
I tugged the nightshirt away, tossed it off the side of the bed.
He moved on top of me, holding himself enough to keep some of his weight off.
This was measured. Slow. Deliberate. Not like this morning’s frenzy when we were pressed for time. My hands rested on his scarred back while he moved against me.
He pressed a kiss to my temple. Reverent.
Like I might vanish beneath him. Then his mouth was on mine again, swallowing any sound I might have made.
As if he didn’t want the rest of the world to know.
As if he wanted this all for himself. As if waiting for me to come.
And when I did, only then did he allow his own release.
He held me like that long after our breathing slowed, like if he loosened his grip even an inch, something terrible would slip through the cracks.
I lay awake in the dark, counting the steady rise and fall of his chest, knowing with a certainty that chilled me to the bone that this wasn’t comfort.
It was preparation. And whatever he was bracing for, he had already decided I wouldn’t be allowed to stop it.