Chapter Two
The Shape of Want
Knox
Briana walks away from me, and every instinct I have tells me to follow.
My beast doesn’t understand restraint. He understands scent, fear, blood.
The tremor in her hands. The rage in her voice.
The way she stands in the dark with her chin lifted like the world has not already done its best to put her on her knees.
He understands that she is ours.
Mine.
The word is not a thought. It’s a command. A bellow deep in the marrow of my being. A brutal, ancient certainty that scrapes horns down the inside of my skull as the door closes behind her.
The second she is gone, the bar feels wrong. Empty. Colder.
My fingers curl against my palms. Pain flashes through my split knuckles, but it’s nothing. Less than nothing. I welcome it. Pain is simple. Clean. Honest. It tells the body where the damage is and gives the mind something to hold on to.
Briana’s scent still lingers behind the bar. Pure woman with fear buried beneath fury. And beneath all of it, something that makes my beast slam against my ribs hard enough that my breath leaves in a growl.
Mate.
“Shit,” Cruz mutters from behind me.
I don’t turn around. If I move too fast, I might go after her. If I go after her, I don’t know what I will say. Worse, I know exactly what I will say. I will tell her everything. I will spill the truth at her feet while she is still shaking from nightmares and too exhausted to carry another burden.
I will tell her that every time she enters a room, the world inside me bows. I will tell her that her pain makes my blood boil and my horns ache beneath my skin. I will tell her I knew she was mine the first time I saw her unconscious in Akasha’s arms, pale and bitten and too still.
That moment has not left me. It never will.
I was standing in the doorway of the back room when Korvin carried in a dead vampire by the throat, and Akasha stumbled behind him with Briana in her arms. Blood soaked the front of Briana’s shirt.
Her head lolled against Akasha’s shoulder.
Her blonde hair was tangled, her skin cold, her lips blue enough that for one terrible second, I thought we were too late.
Then her heart beat. Weak but stubborn and alive. My beast rose so violently I nearly shifted in the hallway.
Mine.
Not a sweet word. Not then. It was a roar. A claim. A war starting inside me.
I had to leave before she opened her eyes because I didn’t trust myself not to pick her up and carry her somewhere no one else could breathe the same air as her. Somewhere dark and locked and safe.
Safe. What a dangerous fucking word.
I glance at the crater in the brick wall and flex my injured hand. Blood beads through the fresh bandage Briana wrapped around my knuckles. Her hands had been steady when she touched me. Too steady for a woman who flinched at a creaking hallway moments later.
She asked before touching me. Can I? Two small words, and they damn near put me on my knees.
The people who hurt her didn’t ask. I know that without knowing details.
I see it in the way her shoulders tense when someone comes up behind her.
I hear it in the quiet steps she uses, like part of her is still trying not to draw attention.
I smell it on her when the room gets too crowded, and every smile aimed her way feels like a threat.
Cruz steps closer. “Brother.”
“Don’t.”
“You don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“I know your face.”
“Then look at it when you insult it.”
I grunt. Cruz moves into my line of sight anyway because he has never valued his own survival. Same face as mine. Same height. Same horns hidden beneath skin until the beast gets too close. But where people say I look like punishment, Cruz looks like trouble that learned how to smile.
Tonight, he is not smiling. His gaze drops to my hand, then to the wall, then to the door where Briana disappeared.
“She is your mate,” he says.
The beast inside me goes silent. That’s worse than rage.
I slowly turn my head. “Lower your voice.”
“There’s no one here.”
“There are always ears in this place.”
“It’s The Gin Room, not the damn Council chambers.”
“That makes it worse.”
Cruz studies me, and for once, he doesn’t fill the silence with some smart-ass comment. That alone tells me I look as close to the edge as I feel.
“How long?” he asks.
I should lie. I am good at silence. Better at avoidance. Best at violence.
But Cruz is my twin. We came into this world bloody and furious together.
We learned how to shift in the same abandoned slaughterhouse outside Queens because our father was gone and our mother was too tired from keeping us alive to teach us gently.
We fought each other until we learned to control ourselves.
We protected each other before we understood the word.
He’ll know if I lie. “Since the night they brought her in,” I say.
Cruz’s expression tightens. “Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t tell me.” A fleeting look of hurt crosses his face before it vanishes.
“No.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“No.”
“Does she know?”
My laugh comes out sharp and ugly. “She just learned how to breathe without waiting for teeth. I’m not throwing a mate bond at her like another chain.”
Cruz’s jaw works. He looks toward the door again. Something like respect moves across his face this time, but it’s buried beneath concern.
“She deserves to know eventually.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” He tilts his head as he studies me.
I bare my teeth. “Careful.”
He doesn’t back down. He never has. “Keeping truth from a wounded woman is still taking her choice.”
The words hit harder than his fist ever could.
My beast snarls, but not at him. At me.
I turn away and move behind the bar. Briana’s water bottle still sits where she left it, half full, the plastic dented from her grip. I stare at it like it might tell me how to do this right.
There’s no right. There’s only less damage.
“She is human,” I say.
Cruz leans against the bar. “She’s also furious, stubborn, and bossy enough to make you sit down for first aid.”
The ghost of her command moves through me.
Sit down.
No fear in it. No softness either. Just Briana deciding I am bleeding and that something should be done about it. My chest tightens.
“She should be afraid of me,” I say.
“She probably is.” I look at him.
Cruz shrugs. “Not the way you think. Fear isn’t simple after something like that. She might not be afraid you’ll hurt her. She might be afraid she wants you not to.”
The bar goes too quiet. A growl scrapes up my throat before I can stop it.
Cruz lifts one hand. “I’m not saying it to be cruel.”
“I know.”
“I’m saying it because you’re already making decisions for her in the name of protecting her.”
I grab a towel from beneath the bar and wipe blood from my fingers, even though the bandage is already ruined. “I am protecting her.”
“From the vampires or from you?”
Both. The answer sits on the tip of my tongue, but remains unspoken, and Cruz sees it anyway.
He exhales. “Knox.”
“I almost shifted in front of her.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I punched a wall.” I glare at the spot.
“Better than punching a person.”
“I scared her.”
“She came toward you after.”
That memory hits me hard. Briana stepping forward. Not reckless exactly. Not unaware. She sees me. The cracked brick. The blood. The black in my eyes. She still comes closer until I ask her not to.
Because I ask. Not order. Not growl. Ask. And she stops.
My throat tightens around something I refuse to name.
“She doesn’t understand what I am,” I say.
“She works in a bar owned by a vampire with a dragon queen, a bear, witches, demons, ghouls, and our ugly asses. She understands enough.”
“Not this.” I tap my chest with my fist. “Not what happens when the beast picks one soul and decides the rest of the world can burn.”
Cruz’s face loses the last trace of humor.
The mate bond is rare for our kind. Not unheard of, but rare enough that most Minotaurs take lovers, spouses, partners, and never feel that ancient lock click into place.
We’re not gentle creatures by nature. We’re rage and maze and horn and blood.
We’re guardians when loved and monsters when provoked.
A mated Minotaur is something else. Devotion sharpened into violence. Possession with a pulse.
A beast who will tear down cities to find the one person fate carved his name into.
Monsters have already caged Briana, I won’t become another one.
“I need to fight,” I say.
Cruz sighs. “Of course you do.”
“Find someone.”
“It’s after 2:00 in the morning.”
“There are always idiots downstairs.”
“That’s sadly true.”
I move toward the hallway, but Cruz catches my arm. My entire body locks, but I don’t shake him off. Barely.
His fingers tighten once. “You can bleed some of this off, but it won’t fix the problem.”
“I know.” Goddess help me, do I know.
“Do you?”
I look at him, and he releases me.
“Fine,” he mutters. “But if you kill someone, I’m telling Aldron it was emotional distress and poor management.”
“Helpful.”
“I try.”
We head downstairs. The underground level beneath The Gin Room is not for humans. Not most of them. The main floor is polished wood and amber light, velvet and music, and flirtation. Down here, the monsters show who they really are.
Concrete walls. Steel gates. Blood drains in the floor. Old magic woven into every brick to keep sound from rising and death from leaving stains that matter. The cage sits in the center of the room, circular, reinforced, and scarred from claws, horns, fangs, and worse.
This is where monsters come to remember what they are. The world may have forgotten we exist, turned us into fairy tales, but here we can still be real.
A few fighters linger even though the official matches ended hours ago. A jackal shifter with a split lip drinks from a bottle near the lockers. Two demons play cards on an overturned crate. A ghoul stitches his own forearm with black thread and hums off-key.