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More spilled out of Daisy, and she didn’t know why. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here. They expect me to, you know, and I—” She glanced at the sky and shook her head.
“Totally get it.”
“So I needed some air.”
Elena’s gaze ping-ponged between them. “Oh my god. You guys already speak your own language.”
Axel shoved her playfully and they both grinned, but it wasn’t at Daisy’s expense. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but some of her nerves settled. She had the sense she could trust Axel, and it was more than the fact he’d pulled her from the storm drain or snuck her food while she’d been tortured. It all came back to that feeling of knowing him.
For some strange reason, a memory from her childhood hit. She’d just arrived at Julius’s family home. Every corner of the house was filled with mementos of his dead wife and child. From the photographs on the halls, watching her every move, to his daughter’s bedroom—still pristine with frills and dolls. Once, Daisy had been bored and explored. She’d come across the box of dolls she’d found under the bed and, having never had such a plethora of toys in her life, she’d fallen into playing with them.
When Julius found her, it was the first time she’d seen a crack in his caring façade. She supposed she should have known then. But she was too young to understand and could only focus on his deep despair as he snatched the dolls from her hands and said, “I’d rather these be destroyed than played with. They don’t belong to you.”
Even then, for a moment after Julius had snapped at her, he followed it up with a swift apology and the promise that, together, they would fix everything wrong in the world.
Hope.
That’s the feeling Daisy had with Axel. Hope was the lifting of her soul, the dreams of an orphaned child, and the wings of a bird. But just like Julius’s boot on the dolls, hope could be crushed, and when it was, the dark empty despair that replaced it was the worst of all. Daisy wanted to shut herself off but couldn’t do it any longer.
Maybe this unyielding resistance she now had to giving up was an effect from the mating bond. And maybe that wasn’t so bad. At the very least, she owed it to everyone to figure out Axel’s story.
“So,” he said, eyes hopeful. “Do you want to come out with us?”
“Now?” Daisy’s brows lifted.
“Why not? Curfew has only just been announced, and it doesn’t start for another hour or so.”
“I’m supposed to be helping.”
He thought about it, then cocked his head. “Do you want to be?”
She studied him before answering. “I don’t know. But I do know that the right thing to do isn’t to take a break.”
“You don’t strike me as someone who always does what’s right.”
Elena slapped her hand on Axel’s gut and he grunted, annoyed at her.
His words were a tease designed to cause trouble, but they awoke something that had been slumbering inside her. The bird of prey spreading its wings, testing the space.
It was those words that finally sparked Daisy’s attraction for her mate. That maybe he had a little monster sitting on his shoulder, whispering daring things to him. She looked at him in a new light and wondered if he would be the perfect cure to her apathy.
“You need to blow off some steam,” Axel said perceptively. “So do we. Come on.”
“But…” She gestured down the boarded-up street.
He took her hand. “The end of the world can wait.”
All the despair she’d been sensing from the neighborhood suddenly winked out of existence. Daisy gaped at their joined hands. Without that squirming churn of sensed sin in her gut, his touch was rough, calloused, yet warm and soft. Not sweaty. It sent little sparks skipping up her arm. He must have thought her wide eyes were offense, because he tried to let go, but she tightened her grip.
She couldn’t believe she was considering this. “Where can we go?”
He shared a knowing grin with his sister. “We know a place.”
