Chapter 20 Erryn
ERRYN
My mind was racing, running every scenario that I could think of, trying to claw back the control I was rapidly losing.
To fix everything. And above it all, there was the screaming reminder that Claire was lying dead in the morgue because of me.
She had been there for me through everything, and I hadn’t even told her how much I appreciated her steady presence.
And now it was too late. There was so much to do.
I had one night to ready myself for the largest fight of my career, and I was taking a knife to a fucking gunfight.
How the fuck had I let it get to this point?
Even the release Helena had just given me had only quieted my mind for a moment, the noise seeping back in as my heart slowed and my skin cooled.
I selfishly wanted more of the reprieve her touch gave me, and I was spiraling enough to ask her to do it again.
To take away my thoughts until she was too tired to go on.
I opened my mouth to ask her, but she turned to me, holding her phone out, a victorious little smirk on her flushed cheeks, water still dripping from the dark ringlets falling across her bare shoulders.
“Vanguard has a weak spot, and I just found it.”
It took a moment to register what she had said, my eyes sliding down to the screen in her hand and the photo of a young blonde girl in the back seat of a dark car.
She was leaning against the window, looking out through the rain-splattered glass, her face illuminated by a stop sign. There was a note beneath it.
Octavia Vanguard.
“He has a daughter,” Helena said. “One he has tried very hard to keep a secret.”
I flicked my gaze back to her. I had approved things during my career that were in very grey areas. Things that had kept me up at night, lurking in the dark corners of my soul, ready to come for me in the end.
But bringing an innocent girl into her father’s crimes…
“She’s just a child,” I said. “Helena, I—”
“That photo has got to be nearly two decades old, and it’s the last image that can be found of her,” Helena interjected. “She’d be nearly thirty by now.”
I stilled, glancing back at the screen.
“Let me find her,” she said quietly. “I’ll use my channels outside the Triarchy. He won’t even know we are aware of her existence until we have her.”
I didn’t answer her for a moment, not trusting myself to speak. Trust had always been hard for me. Time and time again, it was broken. But Helena was different. There was a savage loyalty to her that, even in my most vulnerable state, meant I knew I could lean on this woman.
I leaned in, sliding my lips over hers in a kiss that said everything I couldn’t, and when her hands trailed up my body to tangle in my hair, I didn’t stop her.
My body was still humming from the orgasm she had just given me, my mind shredded from the events of the day, yet for that slow, delicious kiss, I didn’t feel anything except her. A moment of peace in a maelstrom.
She tugged me against her, and I winced involuntarily as my hip spasmed, the old injury protesting the day spent on my feet.
I thought I’d hidden it, but clearly not well enough.
Helena pulled back just enough to study my face, her hands still tangled in my hair as her expression shifted from the lingering heat of the kiss to something far more assessing.
“Did I hurt your hip?” She looked concerned.
“I am not old enough to be having this conversation,” I said, trying to give her a dark look.
“You know what I mean,” she pushed.
I exhaled slowly, trying to straighten, but the movement only sent another ripple of protest through my hip and lower back, and Helena’s brows drew together immediately.
“Erryn.”
“It’s fine.”
She stared at me for a long moment, and I realized too late that the argument had already been lost.
“Right,” she said, the word delivered with the calm finality of someone who had no intention of debating the point further. I recognized it. I used it often.
Before I could even begin to claw back the little of my pride that remained, she reached past me for the towel draped across the counter, looping it around my shoulders and began briskly rubbing the damp strands of my hair dry, the warmth of the fabric and the firm motion of her hands startling enough that I actually went still.
“Helena—”
“No,” she said mildly, continuing the task with stubborn concentration. “If you insist on acting like an alley cat when it comes to affection, you are at least going to be a dry one.”
“That is a deeply unflattering comparison.”
“You’ll live.”
She finished drying my hair with one last vigorous pass before dropping the towel around my shoulders, her hands sliding briefly to the sides of my neck where her thumbs pressed into the tight muscle there, and the quiet, involuntary breath that escaped me at the pressure betrayed exactly how much tension I had been carrying.
“Jesus,” she muttered under her breath. “You’re a fucking mess.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“You heard me,” she said calmly, already turning me by the shoulders and guiding me toward the bedroom. “Good thing I signed that NDA, isn’t it?”
I threw her a glare over my shoulder, and she smirked at me, pressing down gently on my shoulders until I sat on the edge of the mattress, the movement sending a dull ache through my lower back that made me grit my teeth despite myself.
Helena noticed, of course. She noticed fucking everything.
“Forward,” she said softly.
I hesitated only briefly before leaning forward, bracing my forearms against my thighs as she moved behind me, the mattress dipping slightly beneath her weight before her hands settled against my shoulders.
For a moment, she did nothing.
Then her thumbs pressed firmly into the tight muscle beside my spine, and the sound that escaped me was embarrassingly close to a groan.
Her hands moved slowly, methodically, working along the lines of muscle across my back with an ease that suggested she had done this before, each careful press and roll of her thumbs easing years’ worth of knots built up since the injury.
The first few seconds were agony.
The next few, less so.
By the time she reached the base of my neck, the relentless tension that coiled through my shoulders since finding Claire’s body finally began to loosen.
“Fuck, Lox,” she murmured, her fingers sliding down to press into another knot near my shoulder blade. “No wonder you’re limping.”
“I am not limping.”
“You absolutely are.”
Her hands moved lower, working carefully along the muscles that had seized around my old injury, and I felt more of the slow, reluctant release of tension beneath her touch. I let myself drift, focusing on the feel of her hands, my mind slowing to a more manageable speed.
Helena’s hands slowed eventually, her thumbs tracing one last line up my spine before she rested her palms briefly against my shoulders.
“If those strikes get too much, you could consider a second career,” I said quietly.
“Massage therapist?”
“Something along those lines.”
She snorted softly. “Lie down, Lox.”
“That sounds dangerously like an order.”
“It absolutely is.”
I allowed myself the faintest smile as I shifted back onto the pillows, the exhaustion I’d been holding at bay all evening finally settling over me like a heavy blanket now that the tension in my body had eased.
My eyes closed before I had intended them to, and for the first time that day, the chaos in my mind finally went still as the warmth of her body curled against my back, her hand still kneading gently.
I didn’t know how long I’d slept.
For a few blissful seconds after my eyes opened, I simply lay there, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, my mind slow to surface from deep, dreamless sleep, and my thoughts gradually began to assemble themselves into something resembling coherence.
Then memory returned, and I wished for a moment it hadn’t.
I exhaled slowly through my nose and pushed myself upright, bracing a hand against the mattress as I swung my legs over the side of the bed, instinctively waiting for the familiar flash of pain in my hip that usually followed a day like the one I’d just survived, but there was only a muted stiffness.
The room was quiet.
Too quiet.
I ran a hand through my hair and stood slowly, listening.
At first, there was nothing beyond the faint hum of the heating, then something clinked softly in the other room. Metal against glass. A moment later, there was a faint rustling sound, followed by a muttered curse that was unmistakably Helena’s.
Curiosity tugged at me despite the lingering fog of sleep, and I padded quietly toward the doorway, pausing long enough to pull on a robe and glance at the digital clock on the bedside table as I passed.
0900hrs. I had been asleep for eleven hours.
Another soft noise drifted in from the lounge as I stepped into the hallway, and when I finally reached the doorway, I stopped dead.
Helena was crouched on the floor, bundled in a robe near the small coffee table, her dark curls falling forward as she leaned slightly to one side with her tongue caught between her teeth in concentration. In front of her sat the most pathetic artificial Christmas tree I had ever seen.
Silver tinsel had been wrapped around the thin plastic branches with questionable enthusiasm, glinting under the warm yellow light of the table lamp, but it was the ornaments that were the true pièce de résistance.
Half the branches were drooping alarmingly, adorned with polished steel shuriken from Helena’s weapons case, each one strapped on with what looked like surgical tape.
She had even managed to wedge one at the very top like some sort of homicidal star.
I leaned one shoulder against the doorway, folding my arms as I watched her attempt to hang another throwing star without toppling the entire thing.
“Helena.”
She startled so violently that the tree wobbled dangerously.
“Jesus—” she muttered, grabbing it before it could tip over completely. “You weren’t supposed to be awake yet.”
My gaze drifted slowly from her face down to the tree and then back again. “What”—I gestured toward her artistic little abomination—“are you doing?”
Helena followed my line of sight and then shrugged one shoulder with the casual confidence of someone who saw absolutely nothing unusual about the situation.
“Decorating.”
“With weapons?”
“Well, excuse me for working with the materials available,” she said, straightening slightly as she adjusted a length of tinsel that had begun sliding down one side.
My eyes lingered on the shuriken perched precariously at the top of the tree.
“Is that one titanium?”
“Yeah,” she said with a small nod of satisfaction. “It catches the light best.”
I pushed away from the doorway and stepped further into the room, the faint smell of cheap pine-scented air freshener drifting through the space as I took in the ridiculous little display she had constructed.
It was absurd. And yet a strange warmth bloomed in my chest that was even more alarming than the damn tree.
“When did this become necessary?” I asked slowly.
“I figured we could use a little Christmas spirit. Been a real shit couple days, ya know?”
A quiet breath escaped me that came dangerously close to laughter, and Helena’s head tilted slightly at the sound, her expression shifting into something softer as if the reaction surprised her.”
She made me feel…
That was it. She made me feel.
For so long, I had numbed myself to everything, and suddenly this infuriating, stubborn, gorgeous woman had thrown my ordered life into utter chaos, and somehow, it felt good.
I lowered myself next to her, leaning to pick up a shuriken off the little pile beside her, and squinted at the tree.
“Fine,” I murmured. “But I draw the line at Christmas music.”
She gave me a wicked smile and hit a button on her phone, Mariah Carey’s voice drifting from the kitchen.
“Oh, absolutely the fuck not,” I snapped.