“Let him.” Parker’s voice is sharp. “I’m done hiding. I’m done letting people manipulate me with threats and secrets. If Ryan wants to tell Charles, fine. If he wants to make it public, fine. I’m not ashamed of this.” She gestures between the four of us. “And I’m not going to let him control me with it.”
Something in my chest loosens at her words.
“We need to tell Charles,” Jace says. “Tomorrow. He needs to know about Ryan’s recruitment attempt, about Aria’s intelligence gathering, about the alliance they’re building.”
“Agreed,” Cal adds. “But tonight—Parker needed to know what Ryan thinks he has, what leverage he might try to use.”
“Thank you,” Parker says, looking at me specifically. “For telling me. For not trying to handle this without me.”
“We’re done making decisions for you,” I say, moving to sit beside her on the couch. “This affects all of us. We handle it together.”
She leans into me slightly, and I wrap an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.
“Together,” she agrees.
And sitting there in her living room, with Jace and Cal watching, with the weight of Ryan’s threats and Aria’s schemes pressing down on us, I let myself believe it.
That we can handle this. Together.
That we can protect what’s ours. Together.
That we can build something real and lasting despite the odds. Together.
Tomorrow we’ll talk to Charles. Tomorrow we’ll start planning how to ha ndle Ryan and Aria, how to protect Parker and the boys, how to neutralize the threats before they can do real damage.
But tonight—tonight we’re just the four of us, processing what happened, making plans, being a family.
And that’s enough.
40
PARKER
Sunlight seeps through the curtains in molten ribbons of gold, warming my skin and painting bright stripes across the rumpled cotton of the sheets. For a long moment I lie still, eyes half-closed, letting the morning glow coax my brain awake after a night almost entirely bereft of sleep.
Jace lies beside me, his arm heavy across my waist, anchoring me with the slow, even rise and fall of his chest. Still asleep. Cal and Silas have already gone—I can feel the icy imprint of Silas’s body where he pressed against my back all night, and on my other side there’s nothing but the cool, empty space where Cal should be. They’re off to meet Charles this morning to hash out the Ryan situation, the Aria situation—really, the everything’s-going-to-shit situation.
But here, in this hushed half-light, there’s only me and Jace and the gentle hush of dawn. I turn my head to gaze at him, fully awake now, free to drink in every detail without fear of being caught staring. God, he’s beautiful.
I shouldn’t still think that—not after the rage I felt when he doubted me, after watching him let Charles twist his mind untilhe’d rather investigate me like a threat than come straight to the woman he claims to love. But I do think it. Can’t help it.
Jace asleep is nothing like Jace awake. Gone is the taut precision, the razor-sharp intensity he wields on every op. In its place is softness: his brow smoothed, the crease between his shoulders relaxed. His dark hair is tousled, mussed by my fingers and the pillow where he buried his face sometime around three, seeking comfort in the hollow of my neck. His breathing is deep, unguarded.
His steel-blue lashes rest like fallen wings over cheekbones that catch the dawn, and a faint five-o’clock shadow softens his jaw, making him look less invincible, more human—more mine.
I’m still furious with him. Hurt that he let Ryan’s lies plant seeds of doubt instead of asking me for the truth. That he chose meticulous investigation over the simplest act of communication. And I understand exactly why—understand it so painfully that my chest aches. This man, so disciplined and controlled, shattered himself because he loves me. The mere possibility of losing me—to those boys, to California, to anyone else—was enough to break his mind open. He let himself spiral, let himself be fragile and afraid.
And damned if that vulnerability doesn’t make my heart catch. That Jace Moreau—tactical genius, Carter enforcer, the man who can end a life in six different ways before they hit the ground—loves me so fiercely he nearly fell apart. My fingers itch to trace the inked lines across his skin, tattoos I’ve memorized in breathless detail.
There’s the compass rose over his heart, its needle forever pointing north—coordinates etched beneath in tight, black script that mark the spot where he, Cal, Silas, and Charles spilled theirfirst blood together and bound themselves as brothers. Along his ribs curls an elegant calligraphic quote: In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take. He told me once it was a vow to stop overthinking, to leap instead of calculating. He should have remembered that before he began investigating me. On his shoulder blade a phoenix stretches wide, wings unfurling in permanent rebirth—reminders all of destruction and renewal, of rising stronger from the ashes.
I let my fingertips follow those lines, drifting from the compass down to the script, feeling the soft swell of muscle and bone beneath sleep-warm skin. His heartbeat thrums steady and sure—the quiet rhythm I’ve fallen asleep to more nights than I can count.
He shifts, a soft sound rumbling in his throat, caught somewhere between sleep and waking. I should let him rest. After Silas laid out every contingency, after we argued strategy with Charles at dawn, hours of talking bled into need, into touch, into losing ourselves in each other because out there everything is complicated and fragile, but this—us—simple and certain.
Still, I don’t want to let him sleep. I want those steel-blue eyes open, fixed on me in the golden light before reality drags us back into chaos.
I slide closer, pressing my bare skin flush against his, savoring the heat of his body. The floor is littered with the evidence of last night’s abandon: my storm-grey dress in a soft puddle by the door, Jace’s tux jacket draped over a chair, Cal’s shirt crumpled near the bed, Silas’s pants hanging from the bedpost.
