Chapter 32
Kiara
“What the hell? Why wasn’t I invited to this slumber party?” Devlin asks, frowning.
“Because… it’s not one?” I look between Stryker and Zayd, currently relaxing on the mattresses they dragged into the exam room we converted to a bedroom, watching a show on Stryker’s laptop.
“Pajamas, TV, snacks… looks like a slumber party to me,” Dev declares adamantly, hurt threading his voice as he sets two hefty bags on the exam table.
Aaaaaand now I feel like shit, even though I didn’t do anything wrong.
“I told you I was staying here for a while, remember?”
He frowns. “Did not.”
“Did too! When you came over to stay with Z while I went with my brother to the fundraiser.”
Recognition lights up his face. “Yeah, that tracks. I was zeroed in on memorizing your instructions to keep your pet alive and reorganizing your closet. When I hyperfixate, other things don’t stick in my brain well.
My bad.” Snagging a few fries, he passes me one in apology.
“So! Remind me why we’re camping out here instead of your place? ”
Z steals a fry out of the bag. “This is Kiara’s place now. She’s selling the house.”
I’ve never seen Devlin so unabashedly excited before.
“You’re homeless?” Face alight, he shoves the bags of dinner at Z and throws me over his shoulder. “Perfect!”
Glancing at Zayd, he whistles and pats his thigh. “Come on boy.”
Snapping his teeth at him, Z snatches up the food and slips his shoes on. “Not a fucking dog.” But he still follows.
Stryker snorts and nudges Zayd’s shoulder. “Why don’t you tell him to fuck off?”
Zayd rolls his eyes. “Because he’d do it. Word of warning? That demon doesn’t understand sarcasm, and is crazy enough to actually take a long walk off a short pier if you tell him to, just to see if it’s possible.”
Chest tight, I soak up the moment and commit it to memory. It’s rare that all three of them have been around at the same time, and to see them interact with each other like this? It’s everything I never thought I’d have. If any of them were to walk away? They’d take a piece of me with them.
“I’ve never done this with more than one person before, so hold on tight. Otherwise you might get left behind to suffocate in a wall or something,” Devlin says, adjusting his hold to tightly band his arm across the back of my thighs.
“Wait, no,” I panic, fisting the back of his shirt. “Let’s take Stryker’s truck-” but my protests are cut off with a strangled yelp as he steps straight into the clinic wall, Stryker and Zayd lunging to grab the back of his shirt before he disappears and leaves them behind.
I thought misting with Havoc sucked, but whatever the hell it’s called that Devlin does takes the cake.
I simultaneously want to throw up, can’t breathe, and feel like I’m on the world’s fastest, wildest roller coaster.
By the time we land, I’ve already prayed to any and every higher being for the sweet mercy of death.
Sucking down ragged gasps, I smack his back. “Put,” I pant, “me,” I gasp, “down.”
Reluctantly, he slowly swings me upright and slides me to my feet. Instantly, my knees give out, but he’s there to keep me from collapsing with a sheepish, guilty look on his face. “Was it that bad?”
I glance over his shoulder to see Stryker throwing up in some bushes and Z sprawled out on the grass, chest heaving.
As awful as it makes me sound, I’m glad it’s not only me suffering, and a little smug that I fared better than Stryker.
For a while, I thought I had an especially weak stomach for magical modes of transportation, because Havoc, Arson, and Devlin make it look as easy as breathing.
But nope. Turns out psychopaths are just built differently.
“Being upside down probably didn’t help,” I concede, and he grimaces, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Sorry about that, I was excited.”
As soon as I’ve caught my breath and am confident that my legs aren’t going to give out, my stomach has settled and I’m feeling mostly like myself again. “Excited about what, exactly? You didn’t really explain before you brought us here.”
“To bring you home,” he says, practically bouncing on his toes.
Butterflies explode in my stomach. “You want me to move in with you?”
Confusion has him cocking his head, searching my face. “Of course I do, you’re mine. I’d have brought you here sooner, but I wanted it to be perfect first.”
“Perfect?”
“Well yeah, you’re my mate. I needed to make sure once you stepped foot inside, you’d never leave,” he says.
Stryker scratches his jaw. “That sounds pretty creepy when you phrase it like that.”
Devlin shrugs, not even attempting to reword his sentiment. “Shall we?”
Zayd and Stryker share a loaded look, but pick up the bags and follow us up the rickety wooden steps to the door of a dilapidated cabin.
Admittedly, I pause in surprise when he uses his thumb to move a discreet panel beside the handle and inputs a code.
It beeps twice before the sound of a series of locks slide back and he pushes the door open.
As I get a good look around, I match the grimace on Stryker’s face. It’s… bad. Like bad, bad. Barely big enough for one person, let alone four. I’d be impressed if the toilet actually flushes, let alone if the wiring won’t burn the place down if I plug something in.
“You know, the clinic really isn’t that bad,” Stryker says slowly, backpedalling while trying to spare Devlin’s feelings. ”Plenty of room for all of us, and we’d hate to impose…”
Devlin waves him off. “As if I’d let my mate sleep in her office when I have a perfectly good home waiting for us.”
As uneasy as I am looking at the place, my heart warms. Devlin may be chaotic, but he’s always shamelessly himself, no matter what anyone says.
And I think that’s a big part of his appeal.
He doesn’t think about consequences or what people expect of him, he simply does what feels right in the heat of the moment.
What would the world look like if more people didn’t care about what other people thought about them?
Shaking off my thoughts, I catch sight of his wrist, a small smile curling my lips.
I cleared up the infection from his homemade tattoo, and sure, that got rid of the ink, but he hasn’t let that deter him.
Every day he has a new replica of the mark on my wrist drawn on his own.
Sometimes slightly smudged, but it’s always freshly touched up the next morning.
“I’ve never let anyone into one of my home bases before,” Devlin says, avoiding eye contact. “But then again, I’ve never let anyone close enough to want them in my space.”
Well, it definitely has that ‘fuck off, I live alone,’ vibe.
Rusty nails, drafty windows, and this shack was clearly built for one person.
If we dragged a couple of mattresses in here, it’d cover the entire main room and we could cook dinner without getting out of bed.
It’s obnoxiously cold to boot, but the thought of starting a fire in the fireplace feels like a death sentence.
Zayd grimaces. “And I thought I was used to roughing it. Fuck, dude, we can’t make Kiara sleep here. That’s cruel and unusual punishment.”
Devlin stares at him for a long, drawn out moment before turning to me in confusion. “He talks?
Zayd glowers. “I’ve always known how to speak, jackass.”
“Well that makes things more convenient,” Dev chirps.
Stryker shakes his head in disbelief. “He spoke before we got here. You were there.”
Devlin shrugs. “Must not have been anything interesting, because I didn’t hear him.”
Zayd looks about two seconds away from punching him in the throat, so I try to diffuse things.
“Soooooooo. This place is… cute.”
Devlin snorts. “As much as I would’ve killed for a place like this growing up, I’m in a much better position now.”
Crossing the room to the fireplace, he puts his thumb to one of the bricks and there’s a soft click before it flips open, revealing a secret panel.
He puts in a code and snaps it back into place, and I watch in stunned silence as a section of the floor in front of the fireplace slides away, revealing a dimly lit staircase.
It was such a seamless transition, blending perfectly with the rest of the floor, that there’s not so much as a discolored scuff to tip someone off about the hidden entrance.
“Hurry up, it only stays open for ten seconds before shutting as a security feature in case someone’s breaking in,” Devlin says. “Unless you want me to bring you down the easy way.”
That has the three of us hauling ass.
We follow him down the winding staircase, my heart lodging in my throat with every step into the dark depths, the walls closing in around me.
I’m not going to be trapped underground. Devlin would never keep me here against my will unless there were people above that wanted to murder me, and even then, he’d get us the heck out of here without breaking a sweat. It’s fine, I’m fine. I can leave whenever I want.
The staircase ends at a heavy steel door that requires another code, and Stryker looks at him in a new light. “Who the fuck are you?”
Devlin beams like he gave him the biggest compliment. “The guy that used to live here was on the FBI’s most wanted list for a decade, so the place is a damn fortress.”
“What happened to him?”
“A fortress isn’t enough to keep someone like me out.” He types in the code and opens the door, glancing over his shoulder. “Coming?”
I share a look with the others. Devlin has never really given me a straight answer about what he does, and always changes the subject when asked.
It’s not like killing people for a living would scare me off; not with who my other mates are.
I’m not sure if he doesn’t understand that, or if something else has him holding back from opening up.
“Devlin, what exactly is it that you do for a living?”
“Whatever I have to,” he replies automatically, and I shake my head, not letting it go this time.
“No, I mean specifically. What do you do to make money?”