I let my eyes close. My hand stays where it is.
I sink slow this time, and things come down with me.
My magic doesn’t work on him. He saw me. That first morning in the yard. In the supply room. He was never fooled. Not for one second.
Aurora brought him in to find their leak. He found me. He watched me for days, followed me down that mountain, andstood in that lane while two men worked out how to get rid of me.
And then he didn’t take me back.
He could have. One drive up the mountain, hand me to Viktor, job done. Instead he brought me here, to the one place nobody knows. He fed me. He chased me down when I ran. He put his body between a dragon and me.
Nobody has ever stood between me and anything. That was always my job. Stand in front. Keep Serenity behind me. Be the one who takes it.
The voice comes up hard. The one that’s kept me alive this long.
Don’t, Grace. Don’t you dare.
Trusting is how it ends. I trusted Aurora and then betrayed them. I trusted a voice on a phone, and it sent men to kill me. Anyone I let close becomes one more thing they can take from me. Being alone is what’s kept Serenity breathing. Being alone is the only thing that’s ever worked.
But under all of that, buried so deep I can hardly stand to look at it, I want it anyway.
I want one person in this world who knows the worst thing about me and stays. Who looks straight at me and doesn’t move. I’ve been small and quiet and afraid for so long I told myself I’d stopped wanting that.
I lied.
My wolf stirs, low and certain.
Stay.
She’s not asking.
The dark rises over me, and I take one thing down with it.
He isn’t the enemy.
He’s the only thing standing between me and every person who wants me dead. Maybe the only one left on my side.
And that scares me worse than the men in the lane did. They could only kill me.
If I lean on him and I’m wrong, Serenity pays for it.
My hand is still there, close enough to feel the heat off his wound.
I should pull it back.
I don’t.
Chapter 19
Grace
I wake up warm. His chest is under my cheek. His arm lies heavy across my back, and the fur covers us both. The lantern has been turned down to a dull glow on the far wall.
I don’t remember him getting on the cot. What I remember is surfacing in the small hours, cold and aching, and reaching out. Finding his shoulder in the dark. Pulling. He came up off the floor and settled beside me without a word, and I slept like the dead for the first time in years.
My hand is still resting against his chest, fingers curled in. I put it there. Nobody made me.
I check myself over before I move. The hip aches deep where the bandage sits, but the sharp edge is gone. My ribs only complain when I breathe in too sharply. My shoulder is stiff. The tear along my left side pulls, already knitting. The wolf worked hard all night.
