No, no. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Violet.
If he had known, he would already have come for her.
Unless... he was toying with her. That would be very much his style. Holy blazes. She needed to leave. She needed torun. She needed to send word to Holly and Pippa. Immediately. Before anything else. They had helped her escape—hidden her,stood between her and her brother’s reach without a care for him—and if her brother had found her, he would trace the path back to them without mercy. He had never required proof to punish. Suspicion had always been enough for him.
And Violet would not be the reason they suffered for her sake.
She had gained her freedom after years of pain. She would not lay it down at any man’s feet now. Not her brother’s. Not Drake’s.
Not even her own heart’s.
*
Drake had neverwanted the head of a brother before. He slammed Deveraux into the wall the moment he entered the tap room of the tavern, the impact shuddering up his own arm. How dare he drag Violet into the darkest part of them, into the place where mercy died and monsters ruled? How dare he let her see the beasts they were?
The beast Drake was.
He had managed it so carefully until now. The violence existed, yes. She had known that from the beginning. But there was a difference between knowing a man was dangerous and watching him work. Between understanding darkness in the abstract and standing inside it while it raged. Thank God he’d been in conversation at that moment and not pummeling the man. Deveraux had still stripped that careful distance away in a single decision, and Drake could not get it back.
She had seen them now.
Seenhim.
It had taken everything to keep himself from taking her into his arms, clasping a lock of hair between his fingers, andcarrying her off, away from the brutal reality of his world. The irony did not escape him. He could fight Ox in front of her, yet he couldn’t bear to let her see him rough up an enemy.
“What the devil is wrong with you?” he demanded, forearm across Deveraux’s chest, glaring at his brother.
“What’s wrong withyou?” Deveraux shot back. “You take her to a fight, expose her to the danger, and then want to keep it from her? How fickle.”
The word raised his hackles. “What the devil do you know?”
“I know you’re making a bloody fool of yourself.”
“You—”
Reaper clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Fighting won’t solve the matter. Dagger already took her home. You should have followed them and discussed matters with her.”
“You heard her,” Drake snarled over his shoulder. “She didn’t want me to escort her, nor talk to her.”
Deveraux snorted. “When has that ever stopped you? Never, from what I can tell. I’m curious, brother, what has you so scared?”
Fury exploded. “Who the hell is scared?”
“You.”
Reaper stepped between them, and kneed Deveraux between the legs, the man collapsing with a grunt. “I warned you to watch your mouth.”
Drake grabbed a chair and hurled it across the room, the legs splintering on impact as it struck the far wall. Scared? He couldn’t even bloody deny what Deveraux taunted.
Why the devil had Violet brought up the matter oflover? The word was like a damn echo from a cursed lineage, one that dragged his father’s sins roaring back to life, and the root of this restlessness in him.
He hadn’t been able to utter the wordyeseven though he didn’t want her to leave his bed, but he couldn’t say no either, leaving him stranded in hell.
His father had lovers, too many to count on all his brothers’ damn hands, and he had ruined every single one of them in one way or another. Some by neglect. Some by cruelty. Some simply by proximity.
Drake had sworn he would never be that man.
But damn it. He had wanted her to stay, and God help him, he had wanted her in his bed, warm and trusting, soft against him. The ache of his want for her settled into him like a fresh blasted wound. Drake pinched the bridge of his nose, breath coming hard. He believed he’d done right. He’d held back. He had chosen vagueness. Deflected. He had let her leave with Dagger.
