15. Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Fifteen
ZAVIN
The door hasn’t finished sliding open when something is wrong. Salt catches first. Then the flat chemical residue of burned adrenaline. Both ride the air into the heat-sensing pits along my jaw before my eyes find her.
Miro sits cross-legged on my bed, blankets wrapped tightly around herself, Percy resting in her lap where he belongs. She scrubs at her cheeks the instant she sees me, as though she can erase the evidence before I notice. Too late.
Who came through that door? Who thought they had the right to come anywhere near her? My mind is already assembling names, routes and access logs, every guard rotation and servant schedule running through my head while one question refuses to let go. What did they do to her while I was gone?
Her shoulders draw tighter beneath the blankets, eyes locked on me. Before I left this room, there’d been heat in her gaze. Curiosity. Want. As though she couldn’t look away. No one looks at me that way. No one ever has.
She did.
Now her cheeks are wet, and she’s holding herself like she’s waiting for me to become the thing she’s afraid of.
I cross the room until I’m standing between her knees.
Slowly, giving her every chance to stop me, I slide my knuckles beneath her chin and lift her face.
Her skin is warm against mine. She lets me tip her head back until her eyes meet mine, and I lean down.
Her pupils widen. She shudders softly as my breath brushes her mouth. The change is immediate enough to quiet the questions crowding my head.
Desire unfurls through her chemistry, sweet enough that I almost close the last fraction of distance between us. The wanting is still there.
Then the sweetness fractures. Bitterness slips underneath it, settling over her musky female scent. I know that scent. Fear.
My thumb stills against her cheek. Fear has no place here. Not in my rooms. Not while she’s in my arms. “Who,” I ask, “do I need to kill to make this better.”
Her eyes flare wide. Sourness floods her scent before she jerks away from my hand. “I don’t know what you mean.” Her fingers tremble as she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.
I don’t believe her. “When I left you were a sated female, and now you’re scared. What happened while I was out?”
She quirks her lips into the semblance of a smile that doesn’t meet her eyes. “It’s just been a long day.”
She isn’t lying. She’s simply choosing which truth she’ll let me have.
I take stock of the room while she works: no sign of entry on the door panel, nothing displaced in the arrangement of my things.
“That’s not it. Tell me, Miro.” I don’t know if the decision is about protecting herself or protecting me. Either answer makes me want to put my fist through something. I don’t like seeing her this way. I swallow hard because I… I want to make this right. “Please.”
Her eyes flick up, roam my face, catch on something at my jaw, then snap back to my eyes. “While you were gone, our bait was taken.”
The words hit and keep going, straight through to my gut. My hearts kick, and then pounding heavy thuds echo in my throat.
First Tevan. Now this. I don’t like the timing. Tevan moves against me, I put a bullet in him, and while I’m down there scrubbing his blood off my hands, someone’s up here stealing the trap we laid. It can’t be merely coincidence.
“Do you know who triggered it,” I say.
She shakes her head. “Percy’s still running the trace, identifying which version they pulled and what path they used.”
The bait worked. That should be the only thing in my head right now, but it’s not. Not when she’s upset and running scared when I don’t know what happened.
I reach over and cup her jaw. She stills under the touch. For one second her scent goes warm, unguarded, the real thing bleeding through. Then she catches herself and she turns to the console and doesn’t look at me. “I won’t have a name yet tonight, but Percy will track it down.”
“You did well.”
“It’s all Percy.” She says it fast, automatic, like she’s already decided she doesn’t get credit for anything that goes right.
“It isn’t all Percy. You built the bait. This is all you, Miro.” She’s smart. Smarter than anyone I’ve had at my back in years. Smart enough to scare me. Someone with her mind should have escaped this place long ago.
Even now, wrapped in my blankets with her eyes red and her shoulders tight, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
She’s also frightened, and every instinct I possess demands I fix it.
I’ve negotiated peace between rival Houses and pulled secrets from males who would rather lose fingers than speak, yet somehow none of that has prepared me for this.
I have no idea how to make the female in front of me stop hurting.
My eyes settle on her, and the thought arrives with uncomfortable clarity.
Everything I’m doing now begins and ends with keeping her alive.
The moment Tevan sold Miro’s identity to Kazren, he’d sealed his own fate.
I’d already given him one chance. A broken wrist. A warning no male could misunderstand.
Walk away. Stay loyal. Live. Instead he’d chosen credits over the House and over the human female whose identity I’d worked so hard to keep hidden.
There was no second warning to give. I don’t regret what I did.
I regret that Tevan left me with no other choice.
The problem is that killing him doesn’t undo the damage. Kazren already knows Miro exists. He’s seen her with me. For a male like Kazren, the rest won’t take long. Now the bait has been taken, proving the mole is still moving, and Miro sits in front of me carrying a fear she refuses to explain.
Maybe they’re unrelated, but I don’t believe it. Too much shifted tonight for coincidence to satisfy me.
Whether I can see how they fit together yet or not, they’re moving across the same board, and every instinct I possess tells me Kazren is somewhere in the middle of it. I just need Percy to confirm and then I’ll need indisputable evidence against my brother to bring the House down on him.
That leaves Miro standing in the path of the most dangerous male I know.
If Kazren has begun making his move, she’ll be the first thing he reaches for, because she’ll lead him straight to the investigation and, through it, to me.
Whatever she’s keeping behind those guarded eyes, I’ll uncover it.
I have to. Because if I’m already one step behind my brother, I may not get another chance to keep her alive.
“Come here.”
I lift Percy from her lap and set him carefully on the side table before settling back against the headboard.
When I open my arms, she hesitates for only a heartbeat before shifting across the mattress.
I draw her against my chest, wrap my arms around her and rest my jaw against the top of her head.
She comes willingly, but every muscle stays tight beneath my hands, her body held together by sheer determination.
I begin rubbing slow circles over her arms, saying nothing, asking nothing, giving her whatever time she needs.
Little by little the tension eases. Her breathing lengthens.
The rigid set of her shoulders softens until she’s no longer simply allowing me to hold her but leaning into it, trusting me to carry a little of whatever weight she’s been bearing alone.
I hold her a little tighter, listening to her breathing steady beneath my chin. Somewhere along the way, protecting Miro stopped feeling like another responsibility and became the one decision that mattered. The realization is unsettling enough on its own.
The thought that follows is worse. House Sethrak no longer feels like the only future worth fighting for.
She could have disappeared weeks ago. She’s clever enough to slip through my security and vanish into the Warrens without leaving a trace.
Instead she stayed. She kept digging into a conspiracy that could cost her life, trusted me with truths she’d never intended to share, and chose to remain here when walking away would have been easier.
She’s still here. That has to mean something. I keep my arms around her while the lights dim into the House’s night cycle. I remain with her as long as I can, listening to the steady rhythm of her heart beneath my hand, until exhaustion finally claims us both.
Percy’s cheerful chirp tears through the silence.
Miro jerks awake so quickly she nearly knocks my chin from the top of her head. She twists from my arms, already reaching for him before I’ve fully opened my eyes.
“He’s got something,” she breathes.
Green lights race across Percy’s display while lines of data cascade faster than either of us could read them individually.
He isn’t showing us raw information. He’s sorting it, matching it, discarding thousands of dead ends every second until only the relevant pathways remain.
I move to her side, our shoulders brushing as we watch the patterns tighten into a single thread.
One location remains. The final identifier settles onto the screen. I know that room.
“Kazren,” I say.
Some part of me has been expecting this for weeks. Now the questions finally have somewhere to point. It isn’t satisfaction I feel. It’s the weight of what comes next.
Accusing Kazren isn’t enough. Suspecting him isn’t enough. Even this isn’t enough.
Father won’t condemn Kazren because I ask him to. He’ll condemn him because the evidence leaves him no other choice. Betrayal of the House carries only one sentence, and blood has never been enough to escape it.
But that judgment will only come if the proof is undeniable.
One loose thread. One unanswered question.
One explanation Kazren can twist to his advantage, and he walks away knowing exactly how close we’ve come.
He’ll disappear deeper than before, taking the mole, the evidence and every chance of finding the truth with him.
And take Miro with him because she was the one who found him.