CHAPTER NINE
CADI
Blinding pain exploded as Cadi’s head collided with metal.
The world dipped, the street in front of her shifting in and out of focus.
Something hot cut a path down the side of her face and the biting tang of copper assaulted her nose, making her stomach churn.
She tried to push herself up, but her arms didn’t respond.
Useless. Pinned.
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t think past the pain in her head. Her mind clawed through the haze, desperate to make sense of what was happening.
The club. Her car. Her keys. A faint sound of footsteps and then …
She cried out at the pain that shot through her arms as a heavy force pressed hard at her back, pushing her wrists into an unnatural angle beneath her.
A fist twisted in her hair, yanking her head to the side.
Then there was hot breath at her neck, and a voice soured by beer and malice that turned her blood to ice.
“You don’t get to say no to me.”
Damon.
Adrenaline shot through her veins. His sweaty palms grabbed her shoulders, spinning her around before he slammed her body back into the car, her skull screaming at the impact.
He tore her keys from her hand and threw them out of reach.
Even if she managed to fight him off again, she couldn’t escape.
Her instincts finally surged to the surface, tearing through her shock.
“Hel—”
Damon’s thick hand clamped hard over her mouth, smothering her cry.
Cadi thrashed against him, fighting. With her hands now free she clawed, scraped, pushed, and hit, anything to get him away, but he just pressed forward, undeterred.
As she stared into the fury burning in his eyes, the cold truth of her situation sank like a stone in her gut.
He was bigger than her, stronger … and they were alone. No one was coming.
A ragged cry tore from her throat, the muffled sound straining against his hand. No no no, this isn’t happening, this can’t be real. Tears mixed with the blood on her face, and desperate sobs wracked her chest as she bucked against his violent hold.
Then she was falling. Damon’s weight vanished and her knees buckled, palms connecting with cold concrete as she collapsed onto the sidewalk.
The sound of Damon’s low grunt from somewhere in front of her sent her heart hammering against her ribs.
Her head snapped up, eyes pulled to the brick wall across from her by a flurry of movement.
Damon’s head snapped to the side with the force of a punch before his body was slammed into the wall, pinned beneath the weight of Elias’s arm where it pressed against his throat.
“Fuck you, Masterson,” Damon spat.
He moved to swing, but Elias reared back, knocking Damon against the wall with enough strength that he let out an audible grunt as the air rushed from his lungs with the impact.
“You don’t get to speak,” Elias snarled. “Touch her again and it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”
Damon seethed, but beneath his anger and bravado, Cadi saw the flicker of fear that shadowed his eyes. Elias leaned in, pressing his weight deeper into Damon’s throat, his voice a low, threatening growl. “Do you understand me?”
For a moment, Damon said nothing. He just stared at Elias with a fury that heated the air around them until finally, his chin dipped in a tight nod.
In a single, swift motion, Elias pulled his arm from Damon’s throat to let him drop to the ground with a thud.
Damon scrambled to his feet and shot one last, venomous look at Cadi before sprinting down the street.
Hints of pine and mint mingled with the salt-tinged air as Elias crouched in front of her, his sudden closeness sending another shot of adrenaline slamming into her veins.
Her body went rigid as she pressed her back against a tire, and he held up his palms while leaning back to offer a small buffer of space between them.
He didn’t move, didn’t speak—he just watched her, his gentle concern slowly unraveling the tension in her limbs.
In the silence, her pulse began to settle, her lungs once again finding a steady cadence until at last she let out a long, trembling breath.
When Elias spoke, his voice was soft, steady. “Are you okay?”
Cadi huffed a dry laugh. Normally, she believed that there was no such thing as a stupid question, but he may have just proven her wrong. She opened her mouth to educate him on just how far from “okay” she was, but the softness in his eyes made her pause, killing her sharp retort.
“Yeah,” she said instead with a voice still rough from her cries, “I’m fine.”
His attention shifted to her forehead, and she saw the muscles in his jaw flex when he caught sight of the cut still streaming blood down her face.
“We need to get you to a doctor.”
She shook her head, wincing at the dull ache that bloomed behind her eyes with the movement. Every piece of her medical training screamed that he was right, that the chances of a concussion were extremely high, but doctors asked questions. Questions she wasn’t ready to answer tonight. If ever.
Shifting onto her knees, she pushed up, then immediately regretted her decision as the ground beneath her dipped, pulling her right back down.
Elias was there in an instant, his strong arms effortlessly supporting her weight before she could fall.
Cadi tensed at the sudden contact, but before she could protest, a wave of nausea washed over her, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut and focus on her breath to keep the contents of her stomach where they belonged.
She would not throw up on this man. If the street would just hold still …
“I just want to go home. Where are my keys?”
Elias’s quiet breath of amusement caught her off guard. “There’s no way you’re driving. You can barely stand, and you might need stitches.”
Any comfort she had started to feel at his timely presence immediately morphed into annoyance.
He didn’t even know her; who was he to tell her what she could or couldn’t do?
Even if he did have a point. Which she would never admit out loud.
Twisting against his supportive hold, she turned in the direction of what she hoped was the way to her apartment.
“Fine. I’ll walk.”
She took a step. Then another. Her third stride ended abruptly when her toes caught on her heel, and she stumbled forward, landing right back where she started: cradled begrudgingly in Elias’s arms. Yet beneath her irritation, a flicker of something that vaguely resembled gratitude began to take hold.
“Okay,” he said, “let’s just slow down for a minute.”
With surprising care, he guided her back to her car, holding her gently while she steadied herself against the metal frame.
For a moment, he just stared at her, and Cadi stubbornly stared right back, though her tenacity may have been slightly undermined by the way she kept stumbling from the periodic shifts in her vision.
Elias let out a deep sigh and ran a hand down his face. “I’m not winning this, am I?”
She blinked, but said nothing. Something shifted in his gaze, a hint of unexpected lightness softening the concern.
“Okay. Fine,” he murmured, “may I at least drive you home?”
Her pulse ticked up, her fingernails digging into her palms to hide the tremble that was trying to work its way into her hands.
The idea of being alone in a car with a man she hardly knew made her stomach go acidic, especially right now, but she knew there weren’t many viable alternatives at present.
She studied him for a moment, the way he kept his body angled away, his touch light instead of claiming.
It was clear he just wanted to help her, and she had a feeling that Sera’s taste in male friends was significantly better than Zoe’s.
Reluctantly, she nodded.
With a quick dip of his chin, Elias went to retrieve her keys. He jogged back a moment later, hovering close, but careful not to touch her until she reached for his arm to steady herself, then gently guiding her to the passenger side of the car.
Cadi sat and stared out the window, cursing the quiet flow of tears that refused to yield. Her reflection in the side mirror made her wince; dried blood crusted the side of her face, but at least she wasn’t bleeding anymore so she didn’t have to worry about needing stitches.
The cars and buildings blurred together as Elias drove silently through the city streets, and it wasn’t until they passed her neighborhood transit station that Cadi noticed they were almost to her apartment, and she hadn’t spoken a single word of direction.
With a jolt, she realized that this was not his first time following this particular route, as proven by the sigil necklace currently resting safely on her dresser.
“How do you know where I live?” she asked, shattering the stillness. His fingers tightened against the steering wheel in a movement so slight that it would have gone unnoticed had she not already been staring at him, waiting for an explanation. After a beat, he lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug.
“Gunner.”
He said it as if his single-word response provided all the explanation she would ever need. Cadi’s brows pinched, the motion sending a slice of pain across her skin as it tugged on the barely sealed cut. She grumbled at the faint dribble of warmth that reappeared next to her eye.
“What?” she asked, unable to contain her annoyance at the nonanswer.
Elias’s eyes darted to her before quickly returning to the road. “He’s the bouncer. At The Crow. The one who checked your ID.”
The memory of that night hit her like a gut punch. Everything had felt so new and easy, so full of potential. Now, it felt as though it had happened in an entirely different lifetime.
“Wait,” she said, the pieces slowly clicking into place. “That was weeks ago. How …”
A smile tugged at the corner of Elias's mouth as he smoothly cranked the wheel and pulled the car against the curb outside of her building.