I glance toward the doorway. “They’re nervous because I’m a Rogue.”
“They’re nervous because Saint claimed you in front of God, Sol, and everybody with ears, then left before explaining what the hell anyone’s supposed to do with you.” She pours the eggs into the pan, and the soft hiss gives me somewhere to look besides her face. “The Rogue part doesn’t help.”
The word claimed moves through me with the remembered pressure of Saint’s hand at my neck. I lift the mug and drink too quickly to cover whatever my face might be doing. “That’s… how do you know all that already? No, nevermind. I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing.”
“Saint always knows what he thinks he’s doing. Whether he’s right is the question.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Wasn’t meant to be. Comfort comes after food.” She slides the eggs into a tortilla, adds something green from a container, and sets the plate in front of me. “Eat first. Panic after.”
I’m trying to decide whether taking a bite will make me cry for reasons too pathetic to survive daylight when a prospect appears in the doorway. He has a bruise darkening near one elbow, hair sticking up in the back, and the expression of a man who started speaking before deciding whether speech was safe.
“Tally, have you seen the—oh. Hey. Oisín. Morning. Good morning, I mean. Not just morning like I’m announcing the time.”
“Demo,” Tally says without looking away from the stove. “Breathe.”
He takes an exaggerated breath, then immediately ruins it by pointing toward the plate. “Are you okay? Wait, am I allowed to ask that? Saint didn’t say not to ask that. Saint didn’t say anything, actually, which is usually worse, so maybe I should’ve waited until someone official said—”
“Stop talking,” Tally says.
Demo closes his mouth, nods once, then whispers, “Right.”
Despite myself, I say, “I’m fine.”
Tally snorts softly.
Demo looks at her, then back at me. “People never say that when they’re fine.”
A voice from the hall answers before I can. “Kid, stop trying to adopt the hostage before breakfast.”
Demo’s face flushes. “He’s not a hostage.”
The man who steps into view isn’t Bricks, though for one second my brain reaches for that comparison because he’s large enough to block most of the doorway. He’s broad through theshoulders, blond, with a trimmed beard and a tattoo climbing one side of his neck. His cut identifies him as patched, his gaze moving over me with the kind of lazy appraisal that makes my stomach go cold before he even opens his mouth.
When he smiles, there’s no warmth in it. “No? Saint really left a piece of ass sitting in the kitchen and we’re calling that diplomacy now?”
The room gets smaller around the sentence. My hand tightens around the fork, and I hate that the first thing I feel isn’t anger but the old instinct to become less visible, to lower my eyes and let the insult pass over me because fighting it will only give it a place to land. Demo looks horrified enough for both of us.
“Cade,” he says. “Don’t.”
So his name is Cade.
Tally turns from the stove slowly, spatula still in hand. “You want to try that again?”
Cade leans against the doorframe like size is a legal argument. “I’m saying what everyone’s thinking.”
“No, you’re saying what the stupid ones are thinking.” She sets the spatula down with such care that the soft tap of it against the counter sounds more dangerous than if she’d thrown it. “The alliance between the clubs has been cemented. It doesn’t matter how, and it sure as hell doesn’t matter whether your delicate feelings got bruised because Saint brought home the pretty brother instead of the scary sister.”
Cade’s smile twitches. “Pretty brother. So you agree.”
“I agree you’re about ten seconds from making your morning worse.”
His eyes slide back to me. “He Rogue or Obsidian now?”
I don’t know the answer. I’m wearing Saint’s clothes, standing in Obsidian’s kitchen, carrying Rogue blood and Saint’s marks in the same body. Nobody asked me where I belong before making belonging a matter of signatures.
Tally steps between his line of sight and mine before I have to answer. “He’s under Saint’s roof, wearing Saint’s mark, and carrying Saint’s name in the contract. You hurt a hair on Oisín’s head, and Saint will make you pay for it whether he likes the Rogue or not.” She pauses and clears her throat. “Let me rephrase. Youtoucha hair on his head and there will be a problem.”
