Chapter Twenty-Three #2
Legend’s features shift fast. His smirk is swiped away, a deep-rooted glare in its place.
Sinner chuckles somewhere in the room. “Changed your tune real quick there, brother.”
“Mind your fucking business.” Legend’s jaw ticks, his eyes locked on mine. “Fine. I’ll take you.”
“The hell you will.”
“Absolutely fucking not.”
“Fool.”
Knight. Creed. Sinner. Their responses pop off at once and I couldn’t hold in my smile if I tried.
London sighs, sliding off the counter with all the grace of someone who’s used to cleaning up Deveraux disasters. “You’re all wasting time,” she says, dusting her hands. “If Haide has information, then we move. Now.”
Creed snaps his glare to her. “She’s unstable.”
“So are you,” London fires back. ”Difference is she’s actually useful right now.”
“Yes. Because she is the only common denominator here. Everything that is happening started when she came back,” he argues. “Just look at Legend! She’s sucking the life out of him!”
Wait, what?
My head yanks toward the man in question, but he only shakes his head, exhaustion written all over him.
“Legend?”
“Enough.” Knight’s fingers drum once against the table before he pushes to his feet, voice dropping into that cold, decisive authority that ends arguments. “We take her to the scene, let her look around. If her information is useful, she can help. If not—”
Legend growls, low and lethal. “Finish that sentence, and we’ll have another body to investigate.”
Legend’s growl hangs in the air like a threat, venomous and absolutely meant, and his family must know it. Not one says a word, just staring at him with varying expressions.
“We leave in five,” Legend informs, leaving no room for argument.
Sinner rolls his shoulders like he’s bored, but his eyes flick once to the blood on his fingers, then to me.
I can practically hear the thoughts he doesn’t say out loud.
Creed’s stare stays on Legend. It’s easy to see he is pealing past his damn skull and into his mind—or trying to at least, can’t say for sure.
London mutters something about getting supplies and disappears before anyone can drag her into the next argument.
Just like that, the room fractures into motion.
Everyone has somewhere to go, something to do, or a role to play. For a second, I’m standing there with my codex tucked under my arm and my pulse still thrumming from the knife that appeared without my permission. And the way Legend looked at me like I’m both a weapon and a treasure.
Then his hand finds my wrist. He doesn’t say a word as he pulls me through the corridor that leads away from the room. The second a new door shuts behind us, the silence swells, thick and private, and it does something strange to my ribs.
Legend stops, his hand going to his face.
He doesn’t turn me toward him right away, just stands there for a moment with his head angled slightly down. His shoulders rise and fall with a single deep breath.
When he finally looks at me, there’s still that familiar lazy dominance. That infuriating calm he wears like armor—but this time there’s a crack in it, thin as a razor’s edge, and it shows what sits underneath.
Concern.
Real, raw, vicious concern. Unease settles beneath my breastbone
“I don’t want to do this,” he says, voice quiet enough that I almost think he didn’t mean to say it, but then he continues. “Take you toward potential danger.”
I huff a laugh, head shaking. “You don’t get to decide what I can handle.”
“I know.” His eyes drag over my face. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
The playful arrogance he lives in seems to have evaporated completely.
“What are you saying, then?” I ask, because I can feel the argument sharpening on my tongue, but there’s something else there, too. It’s a strange sensation, almost like an itch in my mind needing to be soothed.
I don’t like it. Mostly because where I come from, voices in your head are a very bad thing. I open my mouth to argue, but Legend’s thumb rises and presses gently to my lower lip.
It’s a command to shut the fuck up. Without the cruelty, sure, but a command nonetheless.
“Quiet,” he murmurs, and the word should make me bristle…but it doesn’t. It settles over me like a hand on the back of my neck, steadying. “You’re still getting your way. I’d give you anything you could ever want and more, and you know it. Even if you deny it, you know.”
My mouth parts on instinct—half to argue, half because his thumb is warm and my nerves are traitors—and his gaze drops to it like he feels every millimeter of surrender.
“But this is a risk,” he continues, “and I don’t know how to accept that when it comes to you.”
The words settle into my bones like a stone dropped into dark water.
A risk, as if I matter. As if I’m not just some Exile stray they dragged into their realm to interrogate and contain, but something he’s trying to… keep.
As if all he’s been saying this whole time is true.
That I’m his.
I swallow, my throat tight. My gaze drifts away for one stupid second because it’s easier to stare at the wall than the way he’s looking at me.
He doesn’t let me ignore him, though. Because this is Legend, and Legend can never be ignored.
His other hand slides to my jaw, tilting my face back without force but with certainty, like he knows I’ll comply even if I don’t understand why.
I hate that my breath catches. I hate the warmth spreading under my skin. I hate the way my body seems to recognize him before my mind can decide what to do with it.
“You’re spinning out,” he says, almost amused, almost gentle.
“I don’t do gentle,” I mutter.
“No,” he agrees softly. “You don’t.”
His thumb shifts, dragging along my lip again, and something in me pulses—hot, reckless, familiar in the way it shouldn’t be. Like a thing inside my chest perks up and leans toward him, hungry and pleased to be noticed.
My eyes lower to his hand before I can stop myself, to the thumb still there, and that small patch of skin that made my thoughts scatter like frightened prey.
A stupid impulse rises, something that feels like curiosity wearing a crown, so I give in just enough to prove to myself I’m still in control.
I lean forward and press my lips to his thumb in a small kiss. It’s barely a touch and should feel like nothing, but it feels like everything.
Legend goes still, his throat working, and the satisfaction that flickers in his eyes makes my stomach dip.
I do it again, only slower this time, more deliberate. I let my mouth linger, my lips softening around the edge of him as if I’m tasting the boundary of what I’m allowed to want. Before I can think too hard, I suck his thumb into my mouth, tongue swirling and bursting at the taste of this man.
I give him a good nip.
A warning bite.
A promise?
Legend’s breath punches out of him in a low, rough sound. His head dips as if he’s fighting the urge to drag me closer and devour me the way I know he wants to.
“Haide,” he rasps, and it isn’t a reprimand. It’s a plea with teeth.
There’s a dangerous kind of delight flickering in me because, for once, I’m the one holding the reins.
“For someone so concerned about danger,” I murmur, voice soft and wicked, “you make it really hard to listen.”
His eyes flare white at the edges, like his power is answering mine without permission. His thumb slips free from my lips as his hand slides down to my throat, not squeezing or threatening, but holding. Claiming and possessive in a way that makes my skin hum.
“Later,” he says, and there’s a hard edge to it now, a restraint that looks painful. “When we return, I’ll give you whatever you want.”
I should scoff.
I should tell him I don’t want anything.
Instead, the words drag themselves out of me, breathy and honest before I can stab them. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
He locks on my mouth like he’s memorizing it before he sighs and steps back. “Come on. Let’s wait for them in the courtyard. They should be ready soon.”
With that we head out, a nervous excitement swimming through my veins.
Because if what they’ve described really is Isles royals’ Kiss, these royals have a lot bigger problems than little old me on their hands.
I just have to figure out what it is and what it means.
The only thing coming to mind?
Not fucking good.