Chapter 43 #2
Rook focuses on me. “Wraith.”
I straighten. “Yeah.”
“You’re her shadow until I say otherwise,” he says. “You don’t sleep unless she’s asleep and in your arms. You don’t leave a room she’s in unless someone I trust is already there. You don’t take a bullet for her unless you have to — you don’t be a martyr, you be a wall. You understand me?”
My jaw flexes. “I already decided that without asking you.”
Rook’s mouth twitches, just once. A flash of almost-pride. “Good.”
Saint lifts the whiskey, takes a swallow straight from the bottle. “So, to summarize… We’re anchoring in place, we’re circling our queen, we’re prepping international exit, and we’re about to start a holy war.”
“Basically,” Vale says cheerfully.
Ash rubs a hand over his face. He looks exhausted. He also looks wired in that way he gets when he’s already four moves ahead. “We need to consider an internal leak,” he says.
Rook’s eyes narrow. “Go on.”
“If Damien can move Syndicate resources this cleanly,” Ash says, “he either owns someone high enough to smooth it, or someone old enough to make people look the other way. Either way, his reach is inside our networks.”
Saint’s jaw ticks. “Inside ours?”
Ash’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Maybe. Our extensions. Our contractors. Auxiliary. Anyone we’ve outsourced to in the last year.
Anyone we’ve paid to look the other way.
Anyone on our payroll who still takes money on the side.
He shouldn’t have been able to put a meet in that building without us getting wind sooner. He did. That’s an issue.”
Rook goes cold. I can feel it in the room, like the temperature just dropped three degrees. “Find it,” he says. “Now.”
“I’m already pulling logs,” Ash says. “But listen to me, all of you.”
We all do.
Ash looks at each of us in turn. When his gaze hits mine, I feel the weight of it.
“From here on out,” he says softly, “no one talks about her off-channel. No names in text. No names in calls. No names in rooms that aren’t ours.
If you have to refer to her, you refer to her as ‘the asset.’ If anyone outside this room hears ‘Ember,’ I want to know who said it and why, and then I want their teeth. ”
Vale lets out a low groan. “God, I love when you get feral.”
“Shut up,” Ash mutters.
Saint licks his lips. “So dramatic. So possessive. It’s almost sweet.”
“It’s not possessive,” Ash snaps.
“It is,” Saint, I, and Rook say at the same time.
Ash glares at us. Vale laughs out loud.
Rook waits until the noise dies. Then his voice goes low, serious, king-tight again.
“I want every emergency identity she’ll ever need packed and accessible,” he says.
“Wraith, you’ll keep one set on you whenever you leave the manor with her.
One of mine, one of yours, one of hers. Enough cash for forty-eight hours off-grid.
Enough medical to keep her breathing if she’s hit.
I don’t care if it’s uncomfortable. Carry it. ”
“Done,” I say.
“Saint,” Rook continues. “I want transport on standby. We might need to move fast. Private, not traceable. Something that can be in the air on my word and doesn’t file a flight plan until we’re above cloud line.”
Saint nods, expression going cold and focused. “I’ve got a contact in Biggin Hill who owes me a favor and doesn’t ask questions. I’ll make the call.”
“Vale,” Rook says, turning. “I want Syndicate to start feeling heat tonight. I want them paranoid. I want them wasting resources on ghosts we plant. I want them so busy putting out fake fires they miss the real one when it hits. But I don’t want blowback at our door. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Vale’s smile is slow and cruel. “You want their attention scattered. You want their leadership rattled. You want their grunts exhausted. You want Damien looking over his shoulder and finding nothing but shadows.”
“Yes,” Rook says without hesitation.
“My favorite kind of foreplay,” Vale murmurs.
Saint lifts the whiskey bottle in a mock toast. “To foreplay.”
Rook drags a hand over his jaw. “This isn’t a joke.”
“I’m not joking,” Vale says, voice going flat for the first time all night. “I’ll handle it.”
Good. Because Vale joking is entertaining. Vale deciding to handle something is biblical.
Ash moves back to the table and starts typing, fingers fast, eyes glass-bright.
Saint slips out into the hall to start calling his transport contact and locking down the estate like a man warding a cathedral.
Vale leans back again, tilts his head, and mutters to himself in Spanish — names, maybe.
Targets. Rook starts stacking the passports into separate bundles. One for me, one for Ember, one for him.
I stay where I am.
Rook looks up at me after a long, quiet moment. “You’re not leaving her tonight,” he says. “She’ll probably fight you on it.”
“I know,” I answer.
“Stay with her anyway,” he says.
There’s something in his voice when he says it. Not command. Not quite plea. Something like trust with teeth in it.
I nod once. “Always.”
His jaw loosens a fraction. He leans back in his chair and drags a hand through his hair, the first sign all night that he’s tired. Ash doesn’t look up from his screen when he says, almost absently, “You should tell her. Now.”
My head snaps toward him. “Now?”
Ash keeps typing. “Yes, now. That she’s not going anywhere alone. That we’re locking down. That she’s on watch. You should tell her before she figures it out and decides to test the perimeter just to prove she can.”
Saint’s voice drifts in from down the hall. “He’s right, wolf. She’ll turn it into a game if you don’t frame it like a vow.”
Vale laughs, low. “And you know how much our girl loves a game.”
Caelum gives me one last look — this one almost amused under the frost. “Go,” he says. “Before she decides she can’t sleep and comes back down here.”
I grunt, and turn to leave.
The hallway is long and quiet and warm. The rain outside is steady enough now that you can hear it pattering against the tall old windows.
The manor at night always feels like the bones of something older than us, older than London, older than the Syndicate or Damien or whatever other bastard thinks they can take what’s ours.
I climb the stairs, and head straight to her room. I already know how she sleeps. Curled on her side. Shoulders tense at first. Loosening in stages only if there’s weight at her back.
Mine.
The thought comes unbidden. I move through the corridor and stop outside her door.
I knock once. Her voice comes, soft, immediate. “Ronan?”
My throat goes tight. “Yeah,” I say quietly.
“Come in.”
I open the door and slip inside. The room’s dark.
The only light leaks in from the hall, throwing a faint wash of gold over her bed, over the spill of her hair across the pillow.
She’s clean, damp hair curling at the ends, one of my shirts hanging off one shoulder.
My holster’s on the nightstand within easy grab range.
My mic patch, Ash’s patch, still sits faint under her jaw.
Good girl.
Her eyes find mine in the half-dark. She looks steady, but also wrecked. Both can be true.
“You okay?” she whispers.
That simple question almost cracks something in me. She almost died today. Yet… She’s the one asking if I’m okay.
I cross the room, and sit on the edge of the bed, close enough to reach her but not touching yet. “We need to talk,” I say.
Her head tilts. “That sounds… bad.”
“It is,” I say, because I made a promise—respect while I cage her.
Her brows lift. She pushes herself up to sit, blanket sliding down to her lap. Bare legs bend, knees brushing my thigh. “Okay,” she says slowly. “Talk.”
I take a breath.
“From now on,” I say, voice low, steady, “you don’t go anywhere alone.”
Her eyes flick over my face. “Wraith—”
“I’m not done.”
She goes quiet.
“You don’t leave this manor without me or Rook,” I continue.
“If you’re in the garden, I’m in the garden.
If you’re in the kitchen, I’m in the kitchen.
If you’re in the shower, I’m outside the door.
You don’t open a door that isn’t one of us.
You don’t answer a phone that isn’t ours.
You don’t go anywhere near a window without telling me first. You don’t breathe outside fresh air unless I can touch you. ”
Her eyes search mine. I let her.
“It’s not because I don’t think you can fight,” I say quietly. “You can. You proved it. It’s not because I think you’re going to run. You’re not. Not anymore.”
Something flickers in her at that. Pride. Warmth. Possession. Good.
“It’s because Damien won’t send street dogs,” I finish. “He’ll send cleaners. He’ll send black-bag boys. He’ll send men who lift you in daylight and make it look like you tripped and then you’re gone and we don’t get you back. I can’t — we can’t — let that happen.”
Silence stretches between us, rain falling softly in the background. Her voice is soft when it comes. “You’ll sleep here, then.”
It’s not a question. I swallow. “Yeah.”
She nods one, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “Okay.”
Some of the iron in my shoulders eases. I didn’t realize how tight it was until it starts to let go.
She shifts slowly, sliding closer. Her knees press to my hip, and then she climbs into my lap like she’s done it a thousand times and not once, tucking herself in under my chin, hands fisting in my shirt.
My arms go around her automatically. Natural as breathing. Like this is where she fits. Her voice is a whisper against my collarbone. “We crossed a line today.”
“Yeah,” I murmur.
“Good,” she says.
My mouth tips up, a small smile ghosting across my face. “Yeah,” I say again.
I feel her smile against my skin—satisfied. She’s not scared. She should be, but she’s not.
She’s ready.
The realization settles in my chest like a vow. No turning back now. Not for her, Or for us.
Not for anyone who thinks they’re coming. I press my mouth to the top of her head. “Sleep,” I tell her. She exhales slow, her whole body softening in stages — shoulders, spine, fists, jaw. I feel it happen around me, like the manor exhaled and took me with it. “I’ve got you,” I say into her hair.
Her voice is already fading. “I know.”
Her breathing evens out, and I keep holding her tightly against me. Downstairs, Rook is building exit plans, Saint is fortifying the grounds, Ash is digging up the bones of anyone who’s ever breathed near Damien, and Vale is already whispering fear into Syndicate lines.
Up here, I’ve got Ember in my lap, and my gun on the table, and a promise in my throat…
Anyone touches her, I end them. Anyone tries to take her, I burn the city.
They wanted a war.
They’ve got one.