Chapter Six #2
The room freezes. My beast slams against my control so hard I taste blood. Aldron doesn’t look at me. He is either very smart or very cruel.
“She won’t be unprotected,” he continues. “She’ll wear layered charms. A glamour. A blood mask. Knox will enter as her guard.”
“No glamour on me,” Briana says.
Aldron’s eyes narrow. “Briana...”
“They want me. If I walk in hidden, they’ll know it’s a trap.”
“She’s right,” Krishka says, and I slowly turn my head toward the witch. She lifts a brow. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t create the situation.”
Briana’s gaze is locked on the blueprint. “They invited the girl they lost. Let them see her.”
“You aren’t wearing fear for them,” I say.
Her eyes lift to mine. “No,” she says. “I’m wearing survival.”
Akasha breaks the silence. “I can make a charm that triggers if anyone tries to bind her. It won’t stop everything, but it will alert us.”
Krishka nods. “I can add a pain backlash to the first person who touches her with the intent to harm.”
“Make it strong,” I say.
Krishka’s smile is sharp. “I was not planning to make it polite.”
Cruz taps the blueprint. “What about extraction?”
“Here.” Aldron points to a service tunnel. “If things go wrong, Knox gets Briana out through this passage.”
“And if Knox is the thing going wrong?” Briana asks.
Everyone goes silent again. My gaze snaps to hers, but she doesn’t flinch. Good girl. The thought moves through me before I can stop it, dark and warm and mine. I crush it before it reaches my mouth.
Cruz answers when I can’t. “Then I get you out.”
Briana looks at him. “Can you stop him?”
Cruz’s face turns serious. “No.” I respect him for not lying. “But,” he says, “I can slow him down and yell loud enough for someone worse to intervene.”
Aldron sighs. “I assume I am someone worse.”
“Obviously,” Cruz says.
Briana looks at me again. “Can you stop yourself?”
The question is not cruel. I want to tell her yes. I want to give her the easy answer. The pretty answer. The one that makes me look less like a threat and more like a man. But I told myself I would not lie to her.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Her face stills, and the room seems to hold its breath.
“But I am better when you speak,” I add. “Your voice reaches me.”
Something moves across her face. Fear. Awareness. Heat. A complicated tangle I want to unravel with my teeth and hands and patience I don’t possess.
She looks away first, and the beast preens like an idiot. I hate him. I am him.
After the meeting, everyone scatters to prepare.
Aldron disappears beneath the bar to contact informants. Malichai drags Ari into a private conversation that starts with her saying, “Don’t use your king voice on me,” and ends behind a closed door. Akasha and Krishka leave for the coven’s supplies, Korvin shadowing them.
Cruz goes to check weapons.
Briana remains at the bar, staring at the blueprint. I should leave her alone. Instead, I stop beside her, keeping distance between us. “You don’t have to stare at it until your eyes hurt.”
“I’m memorizing.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you bothering me?”
“Because you haven’t blinked in a while.” She blinks deliberately.
She folds her arms. “Better?”
“No.”
Her mouth twitches, then falls. “I hate that place, and I haven’t even seen it.”
“You don’t have to go.”
Her eyes cut to me, and I lift a hand before she can stab me with more words. “I know. Your choice. I’m just saying it once.”
“Only once?”
“I am capable of growth.”
She huffs a laugh, and the sound does something dangerous to my chest. I look away, because watching her laugh feels too much like touching something sacred with blood on my hands.
“Knox.” I look back. “Do I scare you?” she asks.
The question guts me. “No.”
“Then why do you always look like you’re about to run from me?”
“Because I am.”
Her breath catches. I force the truth out before cowardice can stop me. “Not because you scare me. Because I want things from you I have no right to want.”
Her cheeks flush. Not much, but enough.
“What things?” she whispers.
The beast rises with a low, eager rumble. I could tell her.
I could say I want her mouth under mine.
Her trust. Her anger. Her hands on me without shaking.
Her body soft and willing and safe beneath mine, months from now, years from now, whenever she chooses.
I could say I want to curl around her while she sleeps and dare the nightmares to come closer.
I could say I want my mark on her and her choice on me.
Instead, I step back. “Not yet,” I say.
Her brows draw together. “Not yet?”
“You deserve answers before wants.”
Confusion flashes across her face. Then frustration. That’s good. Frustration is safer than heat, for now.
“What answers?”
Before I can speak, the front door opens. A human man steps inside. No. Not human. He smells wrong. Not vampire. Not shifter. Not witch.
Empty.
Everyone in the room stills. The man wears a courier uniform and a blank expression. His eyes are pale, pupils too wide. Glamoured or compelled.
Ari appears at the top of the stairs. “That’s not one of ours.”
I move in front of Briana. This time, she doesn’t argue.
The courier lifts one hand. In it is a small black box.
“For Briana,” he says in a dead voice.
My beast lunges, and I hold him back by a thread.
Aldron appears from the hall, fangs down, face inhumanly calm. “Set it on the floor.”
The courier obeys.
“What is it?” Briana asks from behind me.
No one answers. The courier smiles, and blood pours from his nose. Then his eyes roll back, and he collapses.
Ari swears, and Malichai catches her before she can rush forward. “No.”
Aldron crouches near the body but doesn’t touch it. “He’s dead.”
Briana’s fingers brush the back of my shirt. Not grabbing. Just there. My entire body locks around that single point of contact.
“Knox,” she whispers. “The box.”
I look down. The lid has opened by itself. Inside, resting on black velvet, is a silver collar. Small and delicate. Made for a woman’s throat. For Briana’s throat.
The beast in me goes silent. Dead silent. Right before the first horn breaks through my skin.