Chapter One #3
“A circle,” I say, voice low. “A line through it. Three drops underneath. I saw it on the wall and on black wax. Maybe a seal. Maybe a brand. I don’t know.”
His expression hardens until his face looks carved from stone.
“You’ve seen it before,” I say.
“No.”
“Another lie.” His gaze snaps to mine. I laugh without humor. “You’re not as unreadable as you think.”
Something almost amused touches his mouth, but it disappears fast. “I haven’t seen it,” he says. “But Aldron might know it.”
Aldron. The ancient vampire with kind eyes and blood on his hands. The man who gave me a place to stay and never once pretended he was harmless. I like Aldron. That probably says something deeply concerning about me.
“Then we tell him,” I say.
“Tomorrow.”
“Now.”
“No.” The word slams into me.
My temper ignites so fast it almost feels good. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“And vampires famously keep banker’s hours?”
Knox’s nostrils flare again. “You’re exhausted.”
“I’m involved.”
“You’re recovering.”
My vision goes red at the edges. There it is. That fucking word again.
I set the water bottle on the bar very carefully. Too carefully. “Say that one more time.”
His brows draw together.
“Say it,” I dare. “Tell me I’m recovering. Tell me I’m fragile. Tell me I should go home and drink my tea and lie in my soft little bed while all of you big scary monsters handle the ugly things for me.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“It’s exactly what you’re doing,” I accuse.
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“I am alive.” The words burst out of me, loud enough to echo through the empty bar.
Knox goes silent.
My chest heaves, my hands shake, and this time I don’t hide them.
“I am alive,” I say again, quieter but no less furious.
“Not because someone put me on a shelf. Not because someone wrapped me in blankets and told me not to think about the dark. I am alive because I endured it. Because I survived them. So don’t stand there and treat me like survival made me useless. ”
His face changes. Pain moves through his eyes, raw enough to make me regret nothing and everything at once.
“I don’t think you’re useless,” he says.
“Then stop acting like I am.”
“I think you’re human.”
The words are careful, but I hate them anyway.
“And there it is.”
His head tilts. “What?”
“The thing everyone is too polite to say.” I spread my arms. “I’m human. Breakable. Weak. The poor little thing all the monsters have to protect.”
Knox moves before I can blink. Not toward me. To the side.
His fist slams into the brick wall beside the hallway, and the sound cracks through the room like thunder. I jump, and he freezes instantly.
Dust drifts from the wall. A small crater marks the brick where his knuckles hit. Blood beads over the white tape around his hand.
His breathing turns harsh. “Fuck,” he says under his breath.
I stare at the wall. Then at him. He closes his eyes like he can’t bear whatever he expects to see on my face. Fear? Revulsion? Proof that he is exactly the monster he believes himself to be?
My heart beats hard. I should be scared. Maybe I am? But beneath the startle, beneath the shock, something else rises. Something hot and reckless and impossibly sad.
He did that to the wall because he would rather break stone than raise his voice at me.
I take one step forward.
His eyes open. “Don’t,” he says.
Now I hear the plea, and I stop. Not because he orders me to. Because he asks.
Blood drips from his knuckles onto the floor.
“You’re hurt,” I say.
“It’s nothing.”
“I am really starting to hate that word.”
His mouth flattens. “Briana...”
“Don’t fucking Briana me. Sit down.”
He blinks. It’s possibly the most satisfying thing that has happened all week. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask.”
For a second, neither of us moves. Then, slowly, like he can’t believe he is obeying me, Knox walks to one of the stools and sits.
The stool looks ridiculous beneath him, and I almost smile. Almost.
I grab the first aid kit from beneath the bar. My hands are steadier now. Purpose does that, it gives fear a job until it forgets to exist.
When I step toward him, Knox stiffens, and I stop immediately.
“May I?” I ask.
His eyes drop to the kit, then to my face. The silence stretches until finally, he nods once.
I move closer, but not too close. Just close enough to smell him. That’s a big fucking mistake.
Knox smells like smoke, leather, and something warm beneath it. Not cologne. Not soap. Something wild. Earth after rain. Heat beneath skin. It wraps around me before I can prepare myself, and my body reacts with humiliating interest.
I open the kit too quickly and drop a packet of gauze. Smooth, Briana. Very impressive.
Knox bends to pick it up at the same time I do, and our hands brush. Barely. A whisper of contact, but the world narrows to that single point. Heat snaps through me, bright and electric, and I suck in a breath. Knox goes utterly still, his fingers against mine, his eyes locked on my face.
For one suspended second, there’s no bar. No nightmares. No vampires. No broken little human. Only his hand, my pulse, and the dangerous thought of what it would feel like if he touched me on purpose.
Then Knox pulls back, as if contact burns. He grips the edge of the bar with his uninjured hand hard enough that the wood groans.
“Sorry,” he says.
I hate that he sounds like that. Like he has done something wrong by existing too close to my skin.
“It’s fine.”
Another useless word neither of us believes.
I unwrap the ruined tape from his hand. His knuckles are split, but not badly. Already healing too fast for human comfort. I focus on the task because looking at his face feels impossible.
“You always punch walls when people annoy you?” I ask.
“No.”
“Just me, then.”
“You don’t annoy me.”
I glance up.
Bad idea.
He is watching me. His face is shadowed, eyes dark, mouth grim. But there’s something almost helpless in the way he looks at my hands on his.
“What do I do?” I ask before I can stop myself.
His throat works. “Make it hard to think.”
The admission drops low between us, and my fingers pause around the gauze.
Outside, somewhere far away, a siren wails and fades. Inside, the bar feels too warm. Too quiet. Too full of things neither of us should say.
I wrap his hand carefully. “That sounds inconvenient.”
“It is.”
“I’m not sorry.”
His mouth twitches again. This time, it almost becomes real.
“Good,” he says, and the word moves through me in a way it has no right to.
I finish tying the bandage and release his hand. He doesn’t move for a second. Neither do I. Then the hallway behind him creaks.
My body reacts before thought. I jerk backward, slamming into the bar. The first aid kit crashes to the floor. Every muscle goes tight, ready for hands, teeth, pain.
Knox is on his feet instantly. Not touching me, never touching me, but he moves between me and the hallway, enormous and silent, his injured hand flexing at his side. His shoulders broaden somehow. The air thickens. Something in him rises, old and brutal and barely contained.
A shape appears in the hallway.
Cruz steps into view wearing basketball shorts, a sleeveless shirt, and a scowl that matches Knox’s closely enough to make the twin thing deeply unfair.
He looks from Knox to me to the first aid kit on the floor. Then his gaze lands on the cracked brick wall.
“Do I want to know?” Cruz asks.
“No,” Knox and I say at the same time.
Cruz’s brows rise. I don’t like the amusement creeping into his face.
“Interesting.”
“Go away,” Knox growls.
Cruz lifts both hands. “Gladly. I heard a noise and thought someone was dying.”
“No one’s dying,” I say.
Cruz glances at the wall again. “Wall might disagree.”
Despite myself, a laugh slips out. It’s small, rusty, and barely there. But it’s real.
Both twins look at me. Knox looks like the sound hurt him. Cruz looks like he just learned a secret.
I clear my throat and crouch to gather the scattered supplies. “I’m going home.”
The words surprise me. Knox doesn’t stop me. That surprises me even more. He only bends, picks up the gauze I missed, and sets it on the bar.
“Briana,” he says. I pause near the end of the counter. His eyes meet mine. “Tell Aldron about the symbol in the morning.”
Cruz’s expression sharpens. “What symbol?”
Knox ignores him. I should be angry that he doesn’t ask. That he has turned it into an instruction again. But this time, his voice is different. Not controlling but trusting me to do it.
“I will,” I say.
He nods, and that should be the end of it. I should walk away. Instead, because I am tired and angry and apparently determined to make questionable choices around Minotaurs, I say, “And Knox?”
His entire focus locks on me. Dangerous and addictive. “Yes?”
“I’m still not afraid of you.”
His eyes darken, but this time they don’t go black. This time, something warmer moves through them. Something that looks too much like hope before he buries it.
“You should be,” he says.
“Maybe tomorrow.” I turn and walk toward the elevator before my courage notices what I have done and abandons me completely.
I feel Knox watching me the entire way. Not like cracked glass. Not like a victim. But like a woman walking out of the dark on her own two feet. And for the first time since the vampires took me, the thought of being watched doesn’t make me feel hunted.
It makes me feel seen.