AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I listen hard, just in case he didn’t leave at all, and he’s hiding in one of the side rooms. But long minutes later, when I don’t think I can hold my breath any longer, I let myself breathe again.
I’m alone up here. He left.
With my plastic bag gripped in one hand, I creep toward the front door, halting at each open door to peek inside.
A small, spotless stainless-steel, red and black kitchen with a bunch of browning bananas on the counter. A bedroom with a perfectly made-up bed and an empty black laundry basket. A bathroom with black and white chequered floor tiles, a brilliant white shower curtain, and a bathmat. Everything is so clean I struggle to believe a man lives here. And a closed door that leads to… it creaks open under my hand. I take in the washer-dryer stacked on top of each other.
The door closes and I move on.
At the front door, I press my ear against the dark wood but hear nothing. No heartbeats, no footsteps, nothing at all to suggest anyone is waiting to force the door open. Just the same pulsing bass from the powerful sound system downstairs.
Gripping the key, I turn it in the lock before sinking to the floor with my legs stretched in front of me, back against the door, and the shopping bag in my lap.
I’m alone.
And I’m… safe?
If only for a little while. It won’t last, but for now, at least I can breathe.
As if my stomach were just waiting for that admission, it grumbles and I remember the last thing I ate was hours and hours ago.
I empty the plastic bag on the floor beside me and for several seconds I do nothing but stare at the contents.
And then laughter blows out of me.
14
ADEN
Imeet Dariel halfway up the apartment stairs. From the glower darkening his deep olive skin, I guess Kade has been in one of his rare chatty moods. “Dariel.”
Although I stop in front of him, Dariel’s green stare goes through me. Enough that I know he’s weighing up whether he’s going to shove me out of the way or order me to move. “Kade said he saw—”
“He doesn’t know what he saw,” I say. “We need to talk. All of us. Right now.”
“You look serious.”
“That’s because I am. Let’s go to your office.”
“And what do we need to talk about?”
I grip his shoulder and take a step down. “Something important. Come on.”
Dariel doesn’t move. His wolf isn’t in his eyes but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the predator living beneath his skin. “Tell me now.”
It’s an order and nothing else.
In the past, it would be enough to send fear skittering down my back as I stumbled over my words in a rush to tell him whatever he wanted. But Dariel is family. And every family has its leader.
“So you weren’t fucking her then?” A murmur from the bottom of the stairs draws my gaze that way.
Kade.
I think of the girl I left plastered to the living room wall, her plastic bag trembling in her hand. An animal might not live in me as it does Dariel and Kade, but if I ever came face to face with the man who did that to her, I couldn’t trust myself to stop until he was dead.
Maybe not even then.
Stormy blue eyes flash in my mind.
