Chapter 3
Ididn't go to the archives.
Grayson's text sat unanswered in my pocket, the dagger a familiar weight at my hip, and instead of turning toward answers, I let my feet drag me the other way. Toward the living quarters. Toward the one room I'd been avoiding all day without admitting I was avoiding anything.
The kitchen smelled like garlic, rosemary, and something sweet underneath, caramel or honey, that hit me before I'd even cleared the doorway.
Kearan stood at the stove with his back to me, one hand making slow circles in a pot, the other reaching for a spice jar without looking.
He'd been at this for a while. The wreckage on the counter said so, chopped vegetables in tidy piles, herbs stripped and measured, a bowl of something dark and glossy I couldn't identify.
He'd dimmed the kitchen lights low, and he hummed to himself.
He didn't turn around. Didn't say hi. Just kept stirring, his shoulders loose in a way I almost never got to see.
I leaned on the counter and watched him work. His hands knew exactly what they were doing. A precise little flick of the wrist when he salted. Years of practice.
My stomach tightened, and not because I was hungry.
He'd been making all our meals ever since we'd arrived at this compound.
It was so obvious now that I was looking at it.
The stew after the demon expulsion, garlicky and soft enough to eat when I was too wrecked to chew.
Eggs this morning, scrambled loose with green onion, because he'd somehow noticed I picked at anything tougher when stress had my jaw clamped.
Berries on the side of the plate. Toast cut into triangles because I'd mentioned once, days ago, in some throwaway second I couldn't even remember, that triangles of bread tasted better than squares.
And I'd eaten all of it without ever once asking why. There was a cafeteria here. Or I assumed there was since the last compound did before I accidentally turned it into a flaming wreckage.
He lifted the spoon, tasted, and added two grinds of pepper, then stirred again. His shirt had ridden up at the back, and I caught the edge of the burn scar above his waistband. A reminder to be careful.
Except he wasn't being careful with me. Precise, sure. Careful, no. Careful keeps its distance, and there was no distance in feeding someone exactly what their body wanted before their brain caught up to wanting it.
This was how Kearan talked. Not declarations of love and grandiose gestures. Food and acts of service.
The bond hummed behind my sternum, right next to where the others were. And I knew, standing there watching a man season whatever he was cooking, that finishing this bond would mean letting him do this forever and letting myself just take it. Like air. No thank-you, no ceremony, no fuss.
I didn't know how to do that. Saying thank you was default for me, built out of years of getting nothing and learning not to expect it. Letting his care be a given would mean tearing that out, and I had no idea what was left standing afterward.
He killed the burner and lifted the pot onto a trivet. Still hadn't looked at me. He reached for a bowl, and ladled it full without spilling a drop. He set it on the counter next to me with a spoon and a napkin folded into a perfect triangle, because of course he'd known I was watching him.
Then he finally turned, and his eyes met mine across the kitchen, and whatever was in that look wrapped around my ribs and squeezed.
He nudged the bowl an inch toward me. "Eat."
"Wow. The poetry. Stop, I'm blushing."
His mouth didn't move, but something in his eyes did.
I picked up the spoon. The broth was the exact right temperature, hot enough to steam, not hot enough to hurt me, and I closed my eyes without meaning to. The flavor came in layers, more than soup had any right to.
When I opened my eyes, he was watching my throat. Reading whatever my expressions told him.
I set the spoon down and put my hand on his wrist, fingers circling the burn scar before I'd decided to. He went still.
"Thank you." Not for the soup.
He nodded once, sharp, and turned back to the stove. But his wrist stayed under my hand a few seconds before he moved, and in those seconds the bond shifted. Not all the way. Just enough that I felt it.
I ate the soup while he cleaned the kitchen and served bowls for the rest of the team.
My phone went off when I was halfway through the bowl, spoon stalled in the air. Zandia's name lit the screen. I still wasn't used to having a work cell phone… or answering directly to Zandia and her personality disorder.
I answered.
"Parker." Zandia's voice.
It was the tone, flat and careful in a way that made my neck prickle, because Zandia was never neutral.
She commanded, she threatened, she sized you up like a predator deciding which one of the herd to eat.
This even, measured cadence, each word set down like she was placing charges, was brand new. And worse.
Behind me, Kearan went still. Not the fake stillness of someone pretending not to listen, the full-body kind, every part of him swiveling toward the phone, then froze for whatever might come out of it.
I set the spoon down. "Tell me."
A pause. Long enough to hear her breathing.
"There is a threat embedded in your life." Each syllable had its own sentence. "One that predates your awareness of what you are. One that has been there, in some form, since before you were born."
The kitchen pulled back to a single point.
"Who." My voice came out wrong. Everything around me felt distant and somehow suffocatingly close.
"I won't say more." Statement, not refusal. "There are constraints on what I can tell you that have nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with survival. Yours and mine."
My hand tightened on the phone. "How long have you known?"
Another pause. This one was heavier.
"Long enough to take precautions. Your mother's grimoire, the dagger, the ring… none of them reached you by accident, Parker."
There it was, cold and specific. She'd known. About Ro, about the echo in the photo, about whatever double game had been running under my whole life, and she'd set the board accordingly. She'd been steering me toward this fight since before I knew there was a fight.
"What do they want?" The question scraped my throat raw.
"What they've always wanted." Her voice finally hardened, the neutral mask cracking. "Power. Leverage. The same thing I want."
The line went quiet, Zandia having said exactly as much as she'd planned to, no more.
Then, finally: "Keep your mates close and finish the Tsigo bond, Parker. What's coming will take more than any one of you can stand alone. Oh, and put that damned ring back on."
The call ended. No goodbye, just the click and then dead air against my ear until I lowered the phone and set it next to my half-eaten soup.
Kearan had turned. Not all the way, one hand still braced on the counter, but enough that his profile showed the sharp line of his jaw, his eyes fixed on the middle distance between the window and wall. He'd heard every word. Of course he had. The kitchen was small and Kearan never missed anything.
I put a hand flat on the counter and tried to breathe through the weight on my sternum.
The fear had already burned off and left the cold, clear shape of fury.
I wasn't a fucking pawn in other's games.
I was sick and tired of being the only one out of the loop.
Fuck Zandia, the division, and whatever damned entity controlling Ro. And fuck Ro.
I was done with all of it.
They could bend to my will.
Kearan finally moved, opened the fridge and pulled out milk.
Then he set it on the counter while retrieving a tall glass.
Next came ice, each cube dropping with a little clink.
Coffee from a carafe I hadn't noticed him brew, dark over the ice.
First milk, then caramel, the real stuff, thick and amber, in a pour that turned the whole glass sweeter.
He set it at my elbow without a word.
I picked it up. Cold enough to cut through the panic still buzzing in my veins. Sweet balanced against bitter without hiding it. I hadn't asked for it. Hadn't said one word about wanting coffee, or wanting it iced, or the exact ratio that made my shoulders come down from my ears.
He just knew, the same way he'd known about the eggs, the berries, and the soup steaming next to a phone that had just confirmed every bad thing we were afraid of.
I wrapped both hands around the glass. "You realize 'the world wants you dead' goes down a lot easier with caramel iced coffee. That's manipulation."
"Drink your coffee." He went back to the sink.
I drank the coffee.