Page 18 of Ryker

“This isn't the time nor the place…” Aeron reached for me but I shook my head, trying to wrap my head around everything.

“Then when? That woman—Jenny—died weeks ago. Where is her sister? Why wasn’t her sister trying to give the tell-all?” I held my breath, sifting through a few scenarios but only kept coming up. “She’s dead, isn’t she? Why? Fuck, did you eat her?”

Aeron’s expression darkened tenfold as he reached for me again, but this time I pressed myself against the door before kicking him in the knee. I froze, wide-eyed, clutching at the door.

Dude, did you just fucking kick Aeron?

No. I thought that was you.

It wasn’t me.

I frantically searched for an answer, running through a breathing exercise Killian had learned years ago from his mother.

We’ve never used that, Daemon. Are you… panicking?

For the first time in a while, I felt like a separate entity from the other two, dangling over a void, waiting to be dropped inside and forgotten.

Killian was silent, but I couldn’t tell if that was him or not. It was so out of character for the three of us… Sure, we hated on our men sometimes, but to act out violently? That just… and it couldn’t be Killian. He was barely conscious when we took over.

“Kitten?”

I jerked back to attention, watching the concern build in Aeron’s eyes. Fuck. This was bad, right? I wanted to shrink into the door and escape. I was the darkest of us. I was the unruly one. The one the others hoped wouldn’t act out. But I hadn’t done that. I yelled for Killian to take over, but he wouldn’t budge. Dark was frozen.

The breathing exercises weren’t helping even as I started counting in my head. Erratic pulses of confusion shot through me as I tried and failed to reel myself back in.

Aeron blinked a few times, his hands twitching. He wanted to reach out to me again but wasn’t sure what I needed. Hell, I didn’t know what I needed.

“Please,” I finally pleaded with him, a sob escaping my throat as I sunk to my knees. “Help me.”

AERON

We’d have to make sure that Nyla didn’t know anything more than the tidbits Jenny had offered up but that wasn’t today’s problem. Right now, I needed to figure out what my Kitten needed.

The problem was that I had no idea what that was.

I cradled him in my arms as he trembled against my chest for what seemed like hours. It was five minutes, but long enough for me to realize that neither one of us could be here right now.

As much as I wanted to keep our current relationship on the down low, there wasn’t time to care about the specifics. Had I told Killian about the interview in the first place, maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation. Guiding Killian from the bathroom, I let the journalist team know I had more pressing matters and carted Killian to the car. The stares were unavoidable, and Killian would have to deal with them later. But I had just watched Daemon break down, which didn’t sit right with me.

He still wasn’t speaking, his expression switching between his personalities as he carried on internal conversations. Daemon seemed conflicted. Those painful words ‘help me’ were so out of place for his character. He seemed surprised that they had fallen from his lips. The entire drive home was silent and tense, his hands folded into his lap. I shot Samael and Slash a text, knowing they’d try to call almost immediately. But I didn’t have time to talk as I pulled up my driveway and ushered Killian up the steps.

I opened the front door, Killian stepping inside before I did. He seemed lost, and I had no idea which personality I was about to talk to. “Kitten…”

He stared at me, thinking, and I approached slowly. Touch him or not? When his fingers nervously grabbed at the edge of my shirt and then tugged, the word ‘please’ on his lips, I knew I couldn’t touch him. Daemon stood before me, unraveling, but for what? I had no fucking idea.

I grabbed his fingers, holding them in my hands. “Kitten, that’s not what you need.” I wanted to. I wanted to devour the Kitten before me, especially as his look darkened.

“Don’t tell me what I need.” He jerked his hands back to his sides, making me tumble a step closer. Daemon grinned wide and grabbed my shirt, pulling me down into a kiss. I thought the previous kiss was desperate, but this was an entirely new level. I needed him just as much as he needed me, so I didn’t fight it despite the nagging voice in the back of my head. I backed him up to the table, lifting him effortlessly and setting him on it. He moaned into my touch as my fingers dug into his waist, and my tongue attacked his lips, demanding submission.

He gave in, rocking his hips, his erection rubbing against mine. The other two were going to have my ass if they knew I had walked out of there without any information. But fuck if I cared at the moment. Then again, Killian needed to work through this, and while getting pounded into the table would be fun for both of us, it wasn’t what he needed.

I kissed him for a moment longer before untangling myself from him and taking the few steps to the bathroom, locking the door. Dark and Daemon would be furious for a while. But Killian would forgive me. Eventually. I hoped. It was getting really hard to read them, and I wasn’t sure I had just made the best decision by leaving a hungry Kitten perched on my kitchen table.

SLASH

I was trying to keep calm and breathe through my nose like a goddamn regular person, but it was damn hard when I was about to fall apart. It had nothing to do with Killian and his ability to rip my heart from my chest. He was everything to us in a way that we couldn’t be to each other. This newest development, though, wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for.

Staring at the text Aeron had shot over a few minutes ago, I reread it again.

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