Chapter Fifteen The Last Time
Chapter Fifteen: The Last Time
Cassian
The plan was always simple.
Lilian is in prison. Lilian dies. The chaos that follows is mine to use.
I pull her out in the gap between two dead surveillance feeds. The moment she walks outside the building, she is Lysandra again. Clean. Untraceable. Nobody looks for a ghost.
That was the plan.
My wolf had opinions.
He'd been howling the whole day, low and constant, a sound that didn't reach my throat but filled every corner of my chest.
Mark her. Pin her down and mark her now, while you have her, while she's close enough to breathe.
He didn't care about surveillance gaps or planted bodies or the rotating chairman's temper. He cared about one thing: she was his, and the world didn't know it yet, and that was an intolerable condition.
And I did. Mark her. My mouth on hers, my hands exactly where they were supposed to be — a very good place to be. My body didn't hesitate either, pressing her down, no space left between us.
It was going well, actually.
But
I stopped.
I stopped because I needed to know first. I told myself that.
I got the answer. She said I love you.
She said it the way people say things when they're done performing. Not aimed at anything. Just: fact.
I believe her. I would believe anything she said.
But sitting in this car now, I regretted it. I didn't need the answer that badly. As long as she hadn't said no, that should have been enough. I should have finished what I started.
She loves me or she doesn't. It doesn't matter.
If she loves me, good. I love her too.
If she doesn't, I'll stay. I'll wait. She will.
She's mine. That's the only thing that matters.
I don't need the answer about four years ago. Whatever happened in that snow was something she decided was necessary.
I will find out. Not to justify anything. Because I need to know what she was protecting, so I can make sure she never has to protect it again.
I wrap both arms around her from behind.
She doesn't move.
I feel the tension bleed out of her by degrees, her spine against my chest, her breath evening out.
If today needed a summary, it would be this: it was the last time I stopped. That's what I thought. That's what I said.
"Lysandra. That was the last time I stopped."
"If you don't push me away next time, I'll finish what I started." My voice comes out lower than I intend, and I don't adjust it. "I mean all of it. Including the complete mark."
She turns her head just enough that I can see the color rising in her cheeks. She leans back, just slightly, into my chest, and says nothing.
Something in my chest loosens. I almost smile.
Thirty minutes later, the car stops.
My building.
She's warm in my arms by the time the elevator opens, heavy with the particular exhaustion of someone whose body is still running a repair cycle.
I get her through the door and into the bedroom. She doesn't protest any of it. She lets me settle her into clean sheets without a single word.
I stand beside the bed.
My wolf is satisfied in a way it has not been in four years. It has the mate. The mate is in the apartment. The apartment is on a floor that requires a key card and a biometric scan to access.
These are, as far as the wolf is concerned, acceptable conditions.
I tuck the blanket up.
I should leave now. I have somewhere to be in twenty minutes.
I pull her hair back from her face instead. Just once, slow. She doesn't stir.
I have wanted this — her here, still, breathing quietly in a space that is mine — for so long that I have learned not to look directly at the wanting.
Looking at it directly made the years harder to get through. I built walls around it and worked, and the work was something I could look at, so I looked at that instead.
Four years of dead men's rungs.
I smooth the blanket at her shoulder.
"I'll be back," I say, to the room, to her sleeping face. "Wait for me."
I close the door.
***
My deputy is already waiting in the shadow of the building's lower entrance, collar turned up against the wind.
"Ready?"
He steps forward, voice low.
"Yes, sir. The decoy corpse has been processed. Facial features and body profile have been matched to specification. The report has been emergency-filed with the Alliance's Rotating Chairman." A beat.
"He wants you in the council hall immediately. He's—"
"I heard you."
The fury is the chairman's problem, not mine. I walk to the black car without breaking stride.
The council hall is cold in the way that old power always is.
The Rotating Chairman sits at the far end of the long table, and the skin around his jaw is white. He does not let me reach my position before he speaks.
"Cassian." The name comes out like a verdict. "You are the highest-ranking judge in this Alliance. And you allowed a critical suspect to die by her own hand in your detention facility."
"Failure to secure the prisoner. That's on me." I meet his eyes without blinking. "I'll take thirty silver lashes. Alliance statute, Article Nineteen."
The admission hits the room like a stone into still water. A few of the seated council members exchange looks.
The chairman's nostrils flare.
Before he can speak again, I continue.
"She didn't die without giving us something. Before she was found, I extracted the core network list from the illegal pharmaceutical operation." I let a pause land. "The case is about to break wide open. I'll close it clean and close it fast."
He stares at me.
These men always stare. They're calculating, running their numbers, weighing whether my record justifies the cost of a dead suspect.
They don't care about her. They never did. What they care about is the headline that comes from dismantling an entire underground drug supply chain, and I've just dangled that headline in front of them.
The chairman's expression shifts. Barely.
"Don't fail me twice."
I incline my head. One degree.
An hour later, it swings open.
The silver has a way of burning that ordinary things don't. It gets into the tissue and sits there, this long, ringing agony that doesn't peak and doesn't fade cleanly.
Thirty lashes at the prescribed force takes approximately fifty-three minutes. I know because I've administered them.
My deputy is already moving toward me before I clear the threshold. His hands are shaking slightly, which is unprofessional and also impossible to hold against him given what my back looks like right now.
"Sir, you need to go to the Alliance medical facility immediately. The silver residue alone—"
I push the bandage back into his chest.
The black coat goes on over what's left of my uniform. The fabric sticks.
"I'm not going."
"Sir—"
The sky outside the narrow window has gone from black to the color of cold steel. Dawn is happening whether I watch it or not.
"Someone is waiting for me to come home."
He stares at me. He has the good sense not to push further.
I settle into the backseat. The upholstery will need replacing.
My deputy pulls into morning traffic and I close my eyes, working through what comes next the way I work through everything: in sequence, without feeling.
Gideon. The original plan was clean enough. Arrest him on his documented involvement in the network. During the arrest, "discover" Lilian in his possession.
Gideon had attempted to help Lilian escape justice. A body swap, a planted corpse, a ghost walking free. One more charge added to his file.
Lilian back in custody.
I report it myself. Report the body swap to the chairman. Accept another thirty lashes for inadequate oversight.
Small price.
But I think about the way Lysandra looked at me tonight. The way she leaned back into my chest.
And I have a better plan.
"Listen carefully." My voice comes back flat. "The news about Alden's daughter. 'Lilian,' suspect in the controlled substance case. Suicide in the detention facility." I exhale. "Keep it sealed for now."
"Understood."
"Three hours. Then release it."
My deputy's eyes find me in the mirror for exactly one second.
He knows better than to ask.
***
The penthouse door opens without sound.
I've trained myself to move quietly over many years of doing work that required it. But she's a wolf. Her instincts reach further than mine right now, probably, and the air in this room shifts when I cross the threshold.
She's already sitting up when I reach the bedroom doorway.
The lamp clicks on.
And she sees me.
The coat is still on, but it has fallen open, and what's soaked through the uniform beneath is dark enough that no light makes it look like anything other than what it is.
The scent hit her before the visual did. Silver-burn and blood, the particular combination that means one thing in our world.
Punishment.
Her pupils contract to points.
The tears come without warning. No tremble, no intake of breath. They just fall, two at once, sliding down her face in the lamplight, and she doesn't reach up to stop them.
I didn't expect that to land the way it did.
I cross the room.
My hands are rough, one of the knuckles split from gripping the iron frame during the lashes, and I cup her face in them anyway, tilting her toward me. My thumb moves across her cheekbone. The tear disappears.
Then something in me stops being careful.
I lean down and the distance between us is gone. The kiss is not gentle. It has four years in it, and thirty lashes, and the specific madness of a wolf who has spent too long pretending patience is a personality trait.
She goes back against the pillows and I follow her down, and my inner wolf is not howling anymore.
He's completely silent.
The loud kind of silence.
I pull back by an inch. Her lips are dark and her eyes aren't quite focused and the rational part of my mind registers that I am in significant pain and also that I do not care even slightly.
"Ten seconds." My voice has gone rough somewhere between the door and here. "Push me away and I stop." A breath. "If you don't—"
I let her fill in the rest.
One.
Two.
Three.
Her arms come up. Both of them. Her hands lock behind my neck and she pulls, hard, deliberate, without any hesitation at all.
The low sound that comes out of me isn't a word.
I drop my head and don't come back up.
***
Light comes through the curtains in long, thin lines.
Three hours. To the minute.
My teeth find the place at the back of her neck that has no armor, the soft skin that every wolf carries there like a kept secret, and I press through.
She makes a sound that will stay with me longer than any scar.
The bond hits me all at once.
I feel it build between us, this new thing, fast and absolute, a fact now rather than a wish. And where it lands on her, where Gideon's old mark had been sitting for one year, thin and barely-there as an old watermark.
Gone.
Scraped clean.
I lick the mark once. Her breath comes out in one long, shaking exhale, and she goes slack against me, asleep before I've finished pulling her in.
I hold her in the stillness.
The bond hums. New.
Somewhere across this city, Gideon's phone is lighting up. The message he's been waiting for: Lilian, suspect in the controlled substance case, committed suicide in detention. The prisoner is confirmed dead.
He'll feel the truth of it in his chest before he finishes reading. The bond that told him otherwise is gone now. He'll have nothing left to doubt the news with.
I press my lips once against the top of her head.
Enjoy it, I think, without any particular heat. The floor dropping out from under you. I know what that feels like.
She shifts in her sleep, turning toward me.
I let her.