Chapter Two #3
The words scrape against my nerves. I think of Cruz upstairs, and the words he said. Keeping the truth from a wounded woman is still taking her choice.
“She is more than just a victim,” I say.
Aldron’s expression shifts. “No. She is not only a victim. But pretending she was not victimized won’t help her either.”
I look away.
The old vampire is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “You are close to the edge.”
“I’m fine.”
“I have buried men who said the same thing with more conviction.”
I snort. Aldron comes around the desk, stopping a few feet away. He doesn’t crowd me. Smart vampire.
“Your beast has chosen her,” he says.
Every muscle in my body locks. There it is. Spoken aloud. The thing I have kept clenched behind my teeth.
I meet his gaze. “Did Cruz tell you?”
“No.”
“Then how...”
“I am very old, Knox. Not blind.”
I look at the seal because it’s easier than looking at him. “She doesn’t know.”
“I assumed.”
“She is not ready.”
“Perhaps not.”
“I won’t put another chain around her throat.”
Aldron is silent long enough that I glance up. For once, there’s no amusement on his face. No old-world charm. No sly vampire distance. Only something tired and sharp.
“A mate bond is not a chain unless you make it one.”
My jaw tightens. “I know that.”
“Do you?” Everyone keeps asking me that tonight, and I am starting to hate it. Aldron continues before I can answer. “The danger with men like us is not that we feel too little. It is that we convince ourselves our control gives us the right to decide what others can survive.”
The words land too close to the truth. I think of Briana in the bar, eyes blazing. I am alive. Her voice still echoes in me. Not broken. Not pleading. Furious. Alive.
“I need to protect her,” I say.
“Yes.”
“I need to hunt the creatures who hurt her.”
“Yes.”
“I need...”
“You need to remember she belongs to herself before she belongs to fate. Or you.”
The beast hates that. I hate that. Not because it’s wrong. Because it’s true.
My hands flex at my sides. “If the ring comes for her, I will kill them.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
“If Lucius is involved...”
“Then you won’t face him alone.”
I look at Aldron. His eyes are ancient again. Empty of warmth. Full of promise. “Lucius is mine,” he says.
The temperature in the room drops another degree. For the first time tonight, my beast settles by a fraction. Not calm. Never that. But willing to wait.
I leave his office with the symbol burned into my mind and Briana’s scent still caught in my lungs.
Upstairs, the bar is empty. Cruz is gone, probably pretending not to wait near my apartment like an overgrown mother hen with horns. The lights are lower now, shadows tucked into corners, chairs still stacked.
The crater in the wall glares at me. I should fix it.
Instead, I leave and head to the staff apartment building, moving quickly through the dark, abandoned streets. Inside, the building breathes around me. Pipes. Distant traffic. Cruz’s heavy steps upstairs.
And above that, faint but there, a heartbeat. Briana. Fast at first. Then slower. My beast presses against my ribs, aching toward the sound.
Go to her.
No.
She is alone.
She chose to go to her apartment. She is allowed to be afraid without me forcing my presence into the room.
The beast snarls, and I close my eyes and lean my head back against the wall. The brick is cool against my skull. My body hurts. Chest sliced. Hand split. Jaw bruised. But none of it matters.
Above me, Briana moves across her apartment. Three steps. Pause. Two more. The creak of a floorboard near her window. She is pacing. I picture her in that oversized black sweater, hair tangled, eyes too tired and too fierce. I picture her standing in the dark, refusing to be a victim.
Mine, the beast whispers.
“No,” I tell him. “Not yet.”
Not until she knows. Not until she chooses.
The thought costs me. Physically. Like peeling skin from bone. But beneath the pain is something steadier than hunger.
A promise.
I won’t cage her. I won’t lie to her. I won’t let the monsters who touched her keep breathing once I find them. But I won’t become the next thing she has to survive.
I push away from the wall and head for the stairs. Each step away from her feels wrong. Each step is necessary. By the time I reach my apartment, my blood has dried sticky on my skin, and my beast has gone quiet in the worst possible way.
Not asleep. Waiting.
I strip off the ruined bandage and stare at Briana’s careful wrapping before dropping it in the trash. Her touch is gone, but the memory is not.
In the shower, water runs red at my feet. Claw marks knit slowly across my chest. My knuckles close. My jaw aches. I brace both hands against the tile and let the water pound against the back of my neck.
I fist my cock under scalding water, eyes slammed shut, picturing her on her knees in my stall, wet hair plastered to her back, mouth already open for me. My strokes are brutal, possessive, every pump a claim.
I imagine shoving between those plush lips, watching her choke and take it because she’s mine, because I trained her throat to accept me.
My free hand slaps tile, bracing while I rut into my fist, imagining her watering eyes fixed on mine, the way she’d whimper around my length when I grip her hair and force her deeper.
The water pounds my shoulders, but I’m burning, cock throbbing, balls tight, picturing her submitting completely beneath me, owned, crying as she swallows everything I give her.
My hips snap forward, hand working viciously, and I growl her name into the steam, coming hard with the image of her pretty mouth dripping with me, marked by me, ruined for anyone else.
By the time I climb into bed, dawn is bleeding gray at the edges of the curtains.
I don’t sleep. I listen. To the building. To the city. To the heartbeat two floors above mine. And when Briana finally stops pacing, when her breathing evens into something close to rest, my beast settles for the first time all night.
Not because she is mine. Because, for now, she is safe. For now, that has to be enough.