Chapter 28
Nyx
Funny, how I hadn’t really known Cain until he’d kidnapped me. Not the man behind the reputation, the man who’d grown up wild and unwanted.
I’d only known the Cain who could make me burn with a single, hooded glance.
But last night had changed something.
I sat at the kitchenette counter, doodling on a blank page. My gaze drifted to the canvases he’d brought me, the ones I hadn’t touched yet because starting a painting felt somehow permanent. Oils took time—to paint, to dry.
I was still his prisoner. I should’ve been plotting my next move.
Instead, I kept circling back to his face when he’d opened up. I’d seen no calculation, just painful vulnerability.
He’d shared a part of himself with me. A truth.
And I felt honored.
That was the part that unsettled me the most. Not the confinement, not the maneuvering to get to my father. But the way he’d handed me a piece of his story, exposed himself without asking anything in return.
Now I was doubting everything. Did I want to keep fighting him? Did I really want to leave?
That bright new life I’d pictured for myself—freedom, safety—had lost its shine. Instead, it looked like one of my charcoal sketches, a world without color or heat. Without Cain.
That’s when I realized I’d forgiven him. That I respected him for his loyalty to his friends and syndicate.
Of course, he hadn’t chosen me over Brien and Talon. They were his family. I hadn’t truly understood how deep that bond ran until now.
I sketched a wall of moonflowers opening as the sun went down behind a black turret. A threshold scene—something shifting, something beginning.
Because I’d felt something, last night. Something that had sparked my hope again, small but stubborn.
Maybe—just maybe—there was a place for me in Cain’s family.
A place for me with him.
A knock on the door made my heart leap. “Nyx?” called Cain.
“Come in,” I called back, closing the pad.
I swung around, smiling, as he entered, until three more people crowded in after him—Brien, Talon, and a slim woman in cropped black pants and a metallic pink shirt—the new prima, Twilight.
The entire upper hierarchy of the Maritime Syndicate.
My pulse picked up, and not in a good way. I slid off the stool, searching Cain’s face. “What happened?”
“We got a text from Nazaire—a photo.”
I didn’t like how the corners of his mouth had pulled downward, like he was sorry in advance. A chill snaked down my spine. “And?”
He held out my phone. “Do you know this woman?”
I snatched the device from him. My throat closed.
“It’s Perla,” I managed.
The housekeeper sat huddled against a stone wall, face bruised, eyes empty. Barefoot, her hair tangled around her face, her navy dress torn. More bruises were visible on the arms she’d wrapped around her legs, like she was trying to fold herself into a smaller target.
“Sweet Luna.” I pressed my free hand to my mouth.
Everything I’d been wrestling with—my freedom, forgiveness, my stupid, fragile hope—collapsed in on itself, suddenly unimportant.
“Nyx—” Cain started.
I drew a ragged breath. That tiny, reckless optimism I’d let myself feel—that maybe, somehow, we’d get our happy-ever-after—dried up like a salt-soaked plant.
Because while I’d been sitting here sketching moonflowers and imagining a place in his world, Perla had been suffering.
Because of us.
“You should’ve never brought me here,” I told him, voice shaking. “You should’ve let me go back to Quebec.”
He reached out, slow, unthreatening, and eased the phone from my grip. “I’m sorry, firefly. I—”
“Don’t!” I reared back. “Don’t call me that.”
His fingers twitched on the phone. “Okay—Nyx.” He exhaled heavily. “Look, we need information. Why would he go after Perla? I thought she’s his housekeeper?”
“Because she’s the one person I care about in that fucking lair.” The words tore out of me. I dug the heels of my palms into my eyes. “I should’ve guessed he’d go after her. But I didn’t think he knew.”
I shook my head slowly side to side. “I shouldn’t have made friends with her. I knew better. But we were careful. And now she’s—” My voice splintered.
“Nyx.” Twilight appeared between me and Cain. She gripped my shoulders. “Listen to me.”
I jerked against her hold, one heartbeat away from a scream. “Let. Me. Go. This is your fault—all of you.”
She hung on, mouth grim. “You’re upset. I get it. But you need to calm down. Not for us—for Perla.”
A red-hot buzzing filled my head. “What do you care?”
“Oh, I care.” Her laugh was humorless. “Cain said he told you the story—that Nazaire almost bought me at a blood-slave auction. At the Black Dahlia.”
That brought me up short. I focused on her concerned face. “Yeah. He told me.”
“So I saw what the QCS is like firsthand. Trust me, I know we have to get your friend out of there.” She paused. “Are you listening?”
She waited until I nodded.
“I get that you’re angry, but this isn’t on Cain and it sure as hell isn’t on you. It’s on Nazaire.”
The angry buzz returned, even louder. I twisted against her grip. This time, she released me.
“It is so on Cain,” I bit out. “I wasn’t part of any auctions, my father was.” I rounded on Cain. “You had to tell him I’d taken sanctuary with you. If you didn’t need me to get to him, then why bring me into it? But you had to use me. The weakest link,” I added bitterly.
Cain didn’t even try to deny it. “You’re right.”
The admission hit like a slap. I flinched.
“Except,” he went on, “I never thought you were weak. From the start, I thought there was more to you than anyone saw, and once I got to know you, I was sure of it.” His gaze locked on mine, steady, almost pleading.
“You’re fucking incredible, Nyx. If anyone’s strong, it’s you.
You’d never have survived the QCS otherwise. ”
I stared at him, chest tight. His praise slid under my skin, painful as a silver blade.
Not because I didn’t believe him. I did. But it was too little, too late.
It couldn’t undo those texts to my father. It couldn’t undo Perla, sitting broken in a cell.
“You would say that, wouldn’t you?” I said over the grit filling my throat, deliberately echoing Brien’s statement from that first night.
Let him feel what it was like to be misjudged. Doubted.
He met my glare head on, his stark with sorrow. “Because I mean it.”
“We miscalculated,” Brien said. “Based on everything we know about your sire, we expected him to strike at us here on the island. He got to my mother, and he was obviously aware Lamaire kidnapped Eden right outside her parents’ home.
” He squeezed his nape. “None of our intel suggested you had anyone in your life he could use against us. That’s on us, and I apologize. ”
His apology sliced through the buzzing in my brain. That he, a primus, was accepting the blame? That meant something.
Twilight spoke again. “We’ll help you. You want to rescue your friend, we’ll go in with you. You want us to ransom her, we’ll do that too.”
My gaze swung to her.
“Let us help you,” she said. “For Perla’s sake—and for all the other Perlas that he could still hurt.”
I nodded slowly. Seeing again my friend’s bruises, the empty look in her eyes.
“He’s your sire.” Twilight’s face held a compassion I didn’t expect from a vampire. “We understand that, respect that you owe him your loyalty. But he has to be stopped.”
My throat worked once. She was right.
The hot, buzzing anger contracted, settling cold and hard in my belly.
This time, Nazaire had gone too far, and I was going to take him down. But I couldn’t do it without their help.
I drew a shaky breath. “Ransoming her won’t work. He doesn’t want money. He wants you. All of you, but especially Brien.” I met his eyes. “This won’t end until one of you is in the ground. Permanently.”
“And I’m such a charming guy,” he said, deadpan.
Twilight flicked him an unamused look, which he met with a crooked grin. “Hey.” He ran his thumb and first finger down her shiny brown braid. “They’re not going to get to me. They haven’t yet, have they?”
They exchanged a look that felt like an entire conversation. Envy flashed through me. I couldn’t help glancing at Cain, wishing… Well, it didn’t matter what I wished.
Twilight turned back to me. “Why don’t we sit down, talk this over?”
She gestured at the nearest chair and waited until I was seated before lowering herself with a dancer’s grace onto the couch. Brien sat beside her, and Talon dropped into the other chair.
Cain didn’t sit.
He shoved my phone into a pocket and planted himself behind me, his hands on the chairback like he was aligning himself with me. When I sent him a frowning look, he met it coolly.
Like of course I’m on your side.
I dragged my focus back to Brien and Twilight, forcing Cain and whatever there was between us into the background where it belonged.
“What about your primus?” Twilight leaned forward, her braid sliding over her shoulder. “Does Dussault know about your sire’s vendetta against Brien?”
“Maybe,” I said. “They don’t talk business around me. But I do know Dussault is angry about how the Marine Syndicate’s been throwing its weight around. I wonder if—”
The pieces slid together, clean and inevitable, halting me mid-sentence.
Brien rested a sinewy arm on the couch behind his mate. “Go on.”
“What if Dussault is using my father, letting him take the blame? If he takes you four out, then Dussault can move on the Maritime Syndicate. Even if he only manages to send one or two of you to your final graves, it still weakens you. The hierarchy would be scrambling, fighting to see who becomes the next lieutenant…or even the next primus. And if my father gets caught, Dussault can swear he had nothing to do with it.”
Brien nodded. “It tracks. Dussault’s the type to hang back, watch how the chips fall, then make his move. An opportunist.”
“Back to Perla,” said Twilight. “Can you tell where she is from the photo?”
“Yes—his lair in Quebec City. He has a cell beneath it.”