26. Crypt Keeper
CRYPT KEEPER
Pain had become familiar. It was no longer sharp, but it was there.
A dull ache had settled into my bruised ribs. The pull of stitches across my chest, a constant reminder of the scalpel that had opened it. The sting of the lingering burn wherever the warded silver had kissed my skin.
Yet, I’d survived worse after Thane.
Barely.
The clubhouse infirmary had been unusually quiet for two days—almost respectfully so. Nobody barged in. Nobody made jokes. Even Zeus had somehow restrained himself.
The brothers understood.
I’d come home. That was enough.
But damn, was I ready for my own bed, I thought as I dozed off for the hundredth time.
Slowly, I opened my eyes. Each time I did, I was afraid I would be looking up at bright white lights.
Yet, early morning sunlight filtered through the curtains, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
The room smelled faintly of coffee. With the underlying scent of antiseptic… and lavender.
Katalina.
Rolling my head to the side, I drank her in. She was sitting in the chair beside the bed, one boot propped against the frame, reading one of Hack’s reports.
Still wearing one of my T-shirts.
She’d argued the first night, claiming she’d only borrowed it because hers had been destroyed. Now she’d stolen three more. But I wasn’t complaining.
She looked up and her beautiful lips curved up. “You’re awake.”
“I was trying to get some healing sleep,” I replied, my voice sleep-rough.
“You’ve been asleep for twelve hours.” She cocked one brow as she smirked.
“I was committed,” I replied.
A tiny smile tugged at the corner of her mouth before disappearing again. There it was—the smile she always tried so hard to hide. The one she only seemed to forget and use around me.
“How bad?” I asked.
“Obviously, you’ll live,” she replied as she closed the folder. She set it aside and leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees.
“I figured. You disappointed?”
“Terribly so,” she murmured as she got up, leaned over the bed, and braced herself above me.
I reached up to run my fingers over her silky, dark hair.
When I did, she glanced at my wrist and turned her head to place a kiss on the still-reddened inside of my wrist.
“What else happened?” I asked, some of my memory still a bit hazy.
“The cathedral collapsed.”
“I remember.”
“The laboratory is gone.”
I nodded.
“The Doctor escaped.”
That hurt. More than the stitches. Anger simmered beneath the surface of my skin.
“Rafael?” I asked, hoping that my brothers had taken him out.
“Gone,” she reluctantly replied.
Of course he was. “The research?”
“Hack destroyed most of it.”
“Most.”
Her expression hardened. “The Doctor left with enough.”
Enough. One word. With far too much meaning.
She stared into my eyes and I into hers. Silence settled comfortably between us. That was new. Once upon a time, we’d filled every silence with sarcasm.
Threats.
Arguments.
Now… it was as if neither of us found it necessary. She gave me that rare and gorgeous smile before she lowered her lips to mine. It wasn’t passionate. It was a momentary connection on a level I hadn’t known existed.
I tugged her down next to me. She huffed and tried to fight me, but she gave in. My fingers twined with hers.
We simply sat there.
Together.
Dexter gave me his blessing to return to my room as long as I promised to rest. He’d given me and Katalina a pointed stare. Though I’d given him a wicked grin in return, the walk to my room had exhausted me.
All I could do was collapse into my bed before my knees buckled.
I must’ve dozed off again, because I awoke with a start when the bedroom door creaked open.
Tiny footsteps padded across the floor.
Neither of us looked. We already knew. Zara climbed carefully onto the bed, still in her pajamas. With a sleepy-eyed stare that told me she’d just woken up, she looked at me. Then at Katalina.
Without asking permission, she crawled beneath the blanket and curled against my uninjured side. A moment later, she reached one small arm toward Katalina. An impatient little grabby hand in the air.
Katalina blinked. “What?”
Zara sighed dramatically before she patted the other side of the bed. “You go here.”
Like it was obvious.
Katalina looked at me. I looked back. Neither of us moved. Zara huffed.
“You two are slow,” she muttered and rolled her eyes.
I snorted.
Katalina muttered something in Romanian that definitely wasn’t polite.
Then, she got to her feet and awkwardly stood there for a moment before she walked around the bed and slid beneath the blanket beside me. Carefully. Avoiding every bandage. Every bruise. All the places she’d apparently already memorized.
Zara immediately smiled. Satisfied. Then closed her eyes. Within minutes, she was asleep. One little hand wrapped around the edge of my shirt, the other gripping Katalina’s sleeve where her arm rested across my abdomen. As though making absolutely certain neither of us disappeared.
I looked down at the child, then over at Katalina. She was already watching Zara, her fingers absentmindedly brushing loose strands of hair away from the little girl’s face. So gently. So naturally.
The woman who once claimed she’d rather fight an archdemon than babysit now looked like she’d been protecting children her entire life.
She caught me staring. “What?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Liar.” She gave me that “I don’t believe you” look.
“Probably.”
We stayed that way for a long time. Katalina’s head resting on my chest after a bit of a battle and a promise that she wasn’t hurting me. Listening to Zara’s soft little snores. Listening to the clubhouse settle. Listening to the unusual lack of activity in the building.
Eventually, I spoke. “You’re staying.”
Not a question. Not really, anyway.
She didn’t even look up. “You don’t own me.”
“No.” I smiled. “No, I don’t.”
Finally, she met my eyes. The room was quiet enough that I could hear my own heartbeat—or maybe it was hers.
“I think…” I lifted my hand until my fingers found hers where they rested lightly on my abdomen. In a featherlight caress, I trailed along her skin. “We own each other.”
For the first time since I’d met her, Katalina had no sarcastic reply. No deflection. No joking. No walls.
She simply stared up at me. Then she slowly intertwined her fingers with mine.
“The marks…” she said quietly. “They’re real.”
Listening, I nodded.
“My parents had them,” she explained.
“I know.”
“Except according to my uncle, they appeared after my mother became a demon for my father. They were never supposed to happen between our kinds,” she continued.
“I know.”
“They mean our lives are tied together,” she went on.
“I know.”
A faint smile touched her lips. “You keep saying that.”
“Because I do know, but none of it changes anything.”
She raised an eyebrow. “It changes everything.”
“Not the important part,” I insisted as I gently squeezed her hand.
“And what’s the important part?” Her head tilted, her brow pinched, and she waited for my reply.
Before I answered, I looked from her… to Zara sleeping peacefully between us… then back again.
“You came back here. You stayed with me.”
Obviously uncomfortable with these new emotions, she swallowed hard. “So did you.”
I laughed softly. “Barely.”
“Barely still counts.”
We fell quiet again. There were still questions. Too many. The Doctor. Rafael. The experiments. The amplifiers. Those fucking cages.
Zara.
The impossible blood running through all of us.
In time, those answers would come. But not today. Today, we were alive. Today, the people I loved were safe.
For now, that had to be enough.
Hiding my wince, I leaned down and kissed her forehead. No urgency or desperation. Only certainty.
She closed her eyes for a moment. Then rested her head against my shoulder. “I suppose,” she murmured, “this is home.”
I smiled. “It always was.”
“For now,” she whispered, and I drew back.
“What?”
She grinned. “We need to get our own place. I’m not living with a bunch of man-children for the rest of my days.”
I chuckled softly in return, hissing when it made my stitches pull.
She glared and pointedly stared at my chest.
“I’m fine,” I insisted and pushed her head back to rest on me again as she huffed.
Outside, somewhere beyond the clubhouse walls, a motorcycle rumbled to life. The swamp stretched endlessly beneath the Louisiana sun. Peaceful. Beautiful. Hiding secrets older than most people’s memories.
The war wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. If anything… it had only just begun. But whatever came next—the Kings of Anarchy wouldn’t face it alone.