Chapter 18 #2
“No. Crow, you’re the only one I’ve told.” I glare at him. “If you tell anyone, I’ll yank your dick through your ass—”
“Whoa, I’ve got it.” He raises his hands in surrender. “Relax. I’m not going to say anything.”
I sigh.
“What are you going to do now?” he asks after a beat.
“Have you found any other leads on a hex?” I ask hopefully.
He shakes his head. “They’ve all fled the city.”
“Cazzo di merda!” I resist the urge to break something. Mostly because everything in this place is already broken.
“Ramsey thinks destabilizing you will neutralize us,” Crow says quietly.
I meet his gaze and find an intensity that borders on violence. Crow’s always been protective, but the look he wears now is particularly hellbent.
“He might not be wrong,” I say reluctantly.
“Fuck that,” he says. “Let the wards fall. Let him come. Even as a super alpha, I’ll still put him down.”
“You sound like Razor.”
“Except I can back it up,” he says.
We share a snicker. I shake my head, my temper receding—for now. Which was likely his goal.
“I need to make some calls,” I say. “Find out if there’s another—”
Crow’s phone buzzes. He checks it, and his expression shifts into something more focused. “It’s Nash. He needs us at the estate.” He looks at me. “Sounds like they found evidence tying Davina and Ramsey together.”
I hesitate, balking at the idea of facing Nash today. Every time I think of it, my chest tightens, and I find it suddenly hard to breathe. I’m not sure if I’m scared he’s my mate—or scared that he isn’t. Either way, seeing him without Null in my system sounds like a fate worse than death.
“Do you want me to tell them you’re busy?” Crow asks.
My eyes snap to his. He looks at me knowingly, and I realize I was wrong. Seeing Nash isn’t the worst. Having all of my friends and family watch it happen, all of them knowing my feelings for him, is by far worse than death.
“Did he ask for me specifically?” My voice is small.
Coward.
“He’s been asking around at the house all day,” he says. “He’s wondering why you didn’t come in this morning. And he’s been texting you, I think.”
Shit.
He has, and I’ve ignored them all.
“Come back with me. Talk to Grey. We’ll help you come up with a reason to stay away for a day or two. Recon or something. So you can find more Null.”
“What if there’s none left in the city?”
“The wards are compromised. You’re free to go outside the city if you need to.” His expression darkens. “Not alone, though. Promise me.”
I nod. “I promise.”
“Good.” He doesn’t move, though—waiting for me to decide.
I blow out a breath, knowing it’s my best option. With any luck, the last of the Null will hold long enough for me to get in and get out again.
“Okay,” I say with more confidence than I feel. “Let’s go.”
The drive to the estate takes twelve minutes. I spend eleven of them on my phone, running down every hex contact I’ve ever heard of in Indigo Hills and coming up empty on anyone who might still be operational and accessible.
I spend the twelfth minute telling my wolf to be quiet.
She is louder and snarlier than she has ever been in my entire life.
It’s worse in the car. In the enclosed space, Crow’s familiar scent isn’t quite enough to drown out everything else my senses are reaching for.
The smell of fresh bread wafting out from the Velvet Crumb, my favorite dessert spot.
An angry comment tossed at a pedestrian from the car beside us.
Crow’s alt-rock music clanging from the speakers that, even at a low volume, makes my head pound.
I can feel the Null thinning like ice in spring. Not gone. Not yet. But thin enough that the world has a different quality to it than it did before, more saturated, more immediate, every sense sharpened past the comfortable threshold I’ve maintained for seven years.
Seven years of a calm temper and freedom over my own fate. Ramsey wrote that note because he thinks taking the Null makes me vulnerable. And maybe it does. But not in the way he thinks. Not in the way that helps him.
I hope.
The estate is its usual controlled chaos when we arrive: patrol rotations, Donahue coordinating something near the east gate, Andy crossing the courtyard with her tablet and the expression of someone who has seventeen things in motion simultaneously.
Normal. Everything is completely normal.
I follow Crow through the east wing and down the corridor toward the meeting room. I’m already thinking about Davina, about what evidence Nash could have found, about how the pieces of this thing fit together and what it means for the timeline and what Grey and Lexi need to do and in what order—
The door to the meeting room opens.
Nash steps out.
I freeze, feet suddenly glued to the floor, and hold my breath.
But nothing happens.
Slowly, I exhale.
Inhale.
Exhale again.
Still, nothing is different.
It’s not Nash after all.
My heart leaps… then slowly cracks and begins to break.
“Mia?” Crow says.
“I…”
It hits me the way I always imagined it would and nothing like I imagined it would simultaneously. Not a gradual awareness, not the slow recognition I've been feeling for weeks, the compass needle gradually readjusting itself to Nash as true north.
This is different. Like something I’ve always known and just now decided to recall with full and complete clarity.
Oh, my wolf says.
Fuck, I say. Maybe out loud. Who knows.
Nash goes completely still.
Not the controlled stillness he deploys deliberately; the alpha composure, the soldier’s discipline. This is different. It’s utter and complete shock.
His eyes find mine across the corridor. And I know I’m not imagining it.
There’s no more muted almost-awareness that the Null has been suppressing since the day we met.
This is the real thing, the whole thing, rushing in to fill every space I’ve been carefully keeping empty.
I know because my wolf suddenly isn’t loud anymore.
She’s not pushing or pressing or demanding.
Instead, she’s gone perfectly, completely quiet. Not submissive. Just… satisfied.
Like she’s found what she was looking for.
No, I think. The word is clear and calm and approximately as effective as telling the tide to stop.
No, I think again anyway, because I am Mia Reyes and I don’t accept things just because they’re inevitable, and I have spent too long building a life that belongs entirely to me, and I am not going to stand in a corridor in the Giovanni estate and let the universe rearrange my future without my permission—
Nash takes one step toward me.
Just one.
And every bit of control I’m holding onto dissolves at the edges.
Crow says something beside me.
I don’t hear it.
Nash is two feet away, and the bond is roaring, and my wolf is so happy that it’s disgusting, and I open my mouth to say something—anything—that stops this moment from risking everything I’ve worked so hard to protect.
“Mia,” Nash says.
Just my name.
Just that.
But it’s more than enough for me to see just how badly he wants this. And I realize I am completely, catastrophically, irreversibly screwed.