Chapter Five #3
His mouth twitches. “If I tell you not to go,” he says, “you’ll go just to spite me.”
“Probably.”
“If I ask you to be careful?”
“I’ll consider it.”
His eyes darken. “Briana.”
There it is again. My name is like a warning, a prayer, a wound.
I push off the wall before I can think better of it and step closer, and he goes deathly still. I stop with less than a foot between us. Too close, but still not close enough.
The air warms. His scent wraps around me, smoke and leather and rain-wet earth. My pulse changes, and his does too. I hear it somehow, or maybe I imagine it. Heavy, controlled, but not calm.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
His face changes. Not pity, but something worse. Reverence.
“So am I,” he says. The honesty knocks the breath from me.
“You?” I am shocked that he would admit something like fear out loud.
His laugh is low and humorless. “Constantly.”
“Of what?”
His eyes hold mine, and the alley disappears by inches.
“Of touching you wrong. Wanting you too loudly. Letting the beast in me decide protection means possession.” His voice drops. “Of becoming another monster you have to survive.”
My chest aches. I should step back.
“You’re not them.”
“No.”
“But you are a monster.”
“Yes.”
The answer should scare me, but it doesn’t, maybe because he doesn’t dress it up, maybe because every monster who hurt me smiled like he was civilized. Knox stands in an alley with blood barely healed beneath his skin and tells me the truth.
I lift my hand, and he stops breathing. I stop, too, my fingers hovering between us.
“Can I?” I ask and hate that my voice shakes.
His eyes flash black. Then brown. Then something in between.
“Yes,” he says, rough enough to hurt.
I touch the back of his hand. That’s all. Just my fingers over warm skin. The contact is small, but the feeling is not.
Heat moves through me, slow and terrifying. Not the sharp panic of memory. Not the crawling disgust of stolen touch. This is different. This is mine. Chosen. Fragile as a match flame in a storm.
Knox doesn’t move. Not a breath. Not a twitch. He lets me have the touch without taking anything from it.
That almost undoes me. I pull back before tears can humiliate us both.
His hand remains exactly where I left it. “Thank you,” I say.
His throat works. “For what?”
“For standing still.”
The words hit him hard. I see the effect it has on him. See the beast in him go quiet behind his eyes, not gone, but listening.
Inside the bar, voices rise again. Plans. War. Monsters preparing to hunt monsters. Out here, in the narrow strip of alley between brick and shadow, I feel something else begin.
Not healing. I am not that optimistic. But maybe a seam. A place where torn edges might someday meet.
Knox looks toward the door. “They’ll be waiting.”
“Let them.”
His gaze returns to me, and I lift my chin. “Tomorrow night, I’m going to The Marrow House.”
His body tightens. “Briana...”
“I’m not asking permission.”
“I know.”
I blink. He looks like the words cost him bone.
“I’m asking for a plan,” he says. “One that keeps you breathing.”
My heart stumbles. “That sounds dangerously reasonable.”
“I hate it,” he mutters.
“I can tell.”
His mouth curves. Not fully, but enough. Just enough to make something warm and reckless unfurl beneath my ribs.
The alley light above us flickers. Once. Twice. Knox moves before I understand why. He is in front of me, his massive body shielding mine, one arm extended but not touching. A low rumble fills the alley. Deep and animal. The air thickens around him.
At the far end of the alley, something black flutters to the wet pavement. An envelope.
My blood turns cold, and Knox growls loudly. I step around him before he can stop me.
“Briana.” The warning is low.
“I see it.”
The envelope lies in a shallow puddle, dry despite the surrounding water. Black paper. Black wax. Same seal.
Circle.
Slash.
Three drops.
Knox reaches it first and crouches, lifting it carefully by the edge. His eyes are nearly black when he turns it over. My name is written across the front in red ink.
No. Not ink. I know the color of dried blood.
For a second, neither of us speaks. Then Knox opens it. Inside is a single card. He reads it, and the sound that leaves him is not human. I take the card from his hand before he can crush it. The message is written in the same blood-red script.
The girl we lost is invited home.
Knox turns toward the street, horns pushing beneath the skin of his forehead, rage rolling off him in waves strong enough to steal my breath. But I don’t look at the street. I look at the card.
At my name.
At the word home.
Something cold and vicious settles inside me. They think I am still theirs. They think fear will bring me crawling.
My hand stops shaking. “No,” I whisper. Knox looks back at me, and I lift my eyes to meet his. “They don’t get to call it home.”
His beast stares out through his eyes. For once, I don’t look away.
“They want the girl they lost?” I say. “Fine.” My fingers close around the card. “Let’s introduce them to the woman who survived.”