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“He had my clothes on; we didn’t want to take any risks.”
My eyes fall shut. “I truly thought you were gone.” My fists clench tighter.
“Giana always struggled to tell the difference between the two of us. When she decided to finally go after you last night, it was easy to have Hawke step in and pretend to be me.”
“But…why?” It’s bad enough being concussed, but with all these revelations, my bruised brain is fighting to comprehend it all.
“That was Ven’s call. Once he figured out what was really happening before any of us reached the warehouse, he nearly damn shot both of us on sight before we got to you and Ky.”
My eyelids pop open as I look over at my wolf, who stands with arms folded, silently listening on.
His jaw flexes. “I needed a clean target. By using Hawke in the room with you, I knew I could hit the right spot to injure, but not kill him.”
“Oh, my god. So you knew the whole time?”
Ky pipes up from behind me. “Baby, just admit it, you couldn’t have shot Thorne. But knowing it was Hawke—”
“Don’t go reading anything into it.” He growls, cutting him off.
There’s a chuckle and then coughing from Ky as he groans with pain.
“What happens now?” This surely can’t be it. The world of the Anguis is still a twisted mess, and we’re forever tangled in the spiderweb of belonging to this madness.
Thorne clears his throat. “Hawke and I will take the evidence to the council of the trafficking rings Giana was orchestrating, her confessions of trying to kill her own daughter, plus the links to the death of Cara Flannaghty. There’s too much we have at our fingertips for the Anguis to ignore, especially if we guarantee to expose what has been happening in Port Macabre for decades.”
Around us, the mist coats the forest, and the dawn chorus of birdlife drifts through the air. There’s a potent silence that hangs between the four of us.
Because they all know what I meant.
What I was truly asking.
What happens now…for us?
Thorne’s big palms skate down over my shoulders, and Raven’s energy bristles close by. Ky appears on my other side, with a limp and his sling holding his arm tight against his chest.
I immediately search Thorne’s eyes, while my pulse begins to race.
“Noire House, the lineage, the inheritance of the Household—it all belongs to you. Full authority remains with you to do with it as you like and how you see fit. But this world isn’t good enough for you; it’s raw and bloodthirsty, and even though we’ve eliminated the worst, the Anguis will always be the way they are. They’re all power-hungry, and that eventually manipulates everything.”
Thorne pauses, swallows, and then I see his expression tighten.
“We’ve organized the jet, and you have a new apartment waiting for you, along with a full security team that will guard you twenty-four hours a day. You can oversee Noire House from afar, or choose to have nothing to do with it at all and we’ll take care of the Anguis for you.”
My breath hitches in my throat. What is he saying?
Thorne drops his forehead against mine with a heavy exhale. “We used you. I’m a piece of shit who started this whole course of events only thinking of a way to exact revenge on Giana. But I never wanted to see you get hurt. A part of me fell for you a very long time ago. I don’t exactly know when it happened, but one day, I realized the woman I had been guarding in secret was embedded so deep in my bones, it physically destroyed me to think of being apart from you. I’ve been cursed to love you from afar; maybe that’s all I’m worthy of because I certainly don’t deserve someone as kind and generous and loving as you, Foxglove.”
I’m outright sobbing. There’s a desperate noise coming out of me, even though all of this has left me speechless. This impassioned, poetic version of Thorne Calliano has swept me out to sea and left me struggling to keep my head above water.
He loves me.
He loves me.
And yet, this stupid, wonderful man is telling me he’s willing to let me go.
I turn my head toward Ky, who watches me with sorrowful eyes. The deepest glades of the forest greet me when I meet his gaze.
“You would let me go?” I sniffle.
