“What?” he asked.
“The man at the door that night. Calla made some kind of deal for my life."
Ronan lowered his eyes. His silence was all the confirmation I needed.
Everything about that night shifted in my memory, making room for this new knowledge.
I gasped. “Her soul—”
“Was never part of the deal."
I breathed a sigh of relief. “The what—”
“I… I can’t, Gray.” He looked at me again. The raw pain in his eyes matched the regret in his voice, and though it cut deep, I knew he was telling the truth. “I’m sorry.”
Ronan had shared so much with me tonight, so many secrets and personal demons. But he’d still never be able to share the details of the deal that had brought him into my life.
“You’re her… guardian?” Emilio asked. “All this time?”
Darius wore the same shocked expression. Only Asher, clearly more steeped in Hell’s politics than the rest of us, seemed unfazed.
Ronan remained silent.
I closed my eyes as other pieces of my life’s puzzle slowly, methodically clicked into place.
When I’d met Ronan here in the Bay, I’d felt an instant spark of familiarity, though I could never place it.
Turns out he’d been with me all along.
It explained so much about my time on the run. Life had been a shitshow back then, but despite the rough circumstances of living on the streets, I’d always been strangely fortunate—a narrow escape from a mugger here, an offered cot in a spare room during a storm there, a job turning up just when I’d run out of cash.
“So it was always you,” I said. “Saving me.”
“You’re strong all by yourself, Gray,” Ronan said. I noticed he didn’t confirm or deny it, carefully skirting anything too close to the specifics of the deal. “Always have been. There’s nothing you can’t survive on your own. The point is, you don’t have to.”
I looked down at the water bottle in my hands, slowly peeling off the label, a million questions rushing through my mind. Ronan had arrived at—or possibly been sent to—Calla’s house to warn her of the impending attack, giving her just enough time to protect me. Somehow, he’d kept an eye on me for two years as I slowly made my way across the country.
And at the end of all that, we ended up here, in a city where he already had friends. A life. The other guys.
I wondered if he’d somehow guided me here, nudging me along the path from the east coast to the west.
But deep down that didn’t ring true. My gut told me that despite Ronan’s connection to the Bay, I’d found my own way here. I wasn’t saying it was coincidence—it never was. But Blackmoon Bay had called to me for other reasons, all on its own.
Despite everything, I truly believed I was meant to make my home here. To reconnect with Ronan, to make these friends, to bond with these fiercely protective, incredible, and yes, sometimes infuriating men.
To become part of something bigger than myself.
“So what comes next?” Emilio asked. “The killer is still out there, and chances are it's the same perp who trapped Asher and took Haley Barnes. He might have Delilah, too.”
“I couldn’t get a visual,” Asher said. “Guy jacked me from behind, stabbed me with a syringe. I was out. Woke up strapped in that chair, a guy in a mask snapping a pic with his cell phone.”
“What about your connections in New York?” Ronan asked Darius. “Anything on the Grinaldis?”
“Not yet,” Darius said. “And I’m still not sure about the vamps that attacked Gray and me at the morgue. But I’m thinking that the rogue Grinaldi vamp is the connection Hollis mentioned—the one who’d gotten cold feet and backed out of his arrangement with the hunter. It would explain the blood I scented in the first three witches.”
“Makes sense,” Ronan said. “If we could track that vamp down, he might have a lead on our man.”
Our man.They were talking about the hunter. The boy I once loved, now a man I feared. A man who’d stop at nothing to carry out his demented vengeance.
