“I know,” I answer.
“Stay with her anyway,” he says.
There’s something in his voice when he says it. Not command. Not quite plea. Something like trust with teeth in it.
I nod once. “Always.”
His jaw loosens a fraction. He leans back in his chair and drags a hand through his hair, the first sign all night that he’s tired. Ash doesn’t look up from his screen when he says, almost absently, “You should tell her. Now.”
My head snaps toward him. “Now?”
Ash keeps typing. “Yes,now. That she’s not going anywhere alone. That we’re locking down. That she’s on watch. You should tell her before she figures it out and decides to test the perimeter just to prove she can.”
Saint’s voice drifts in from down the hall. “He’s right, wolf. She’ll turn it into a game if you don’t frame it like a vow.”
Vale laughs, low. “And you know how much our girl loves a game.”
Caelum gives me one last look — this one almost amused under the frost. “Go,” he says. “Before she decides she can’t sleep and comes back down here.”
I grunt, and turn to leave.
The hallway is long and quiet and warm. The rain outside is steady enough now that you can hear it pattering against the tall old windows. The manor at night always feels like the bones of something older than us, older than London, older than the Syndicate or Damien or whatever other bastard thinks they can take what’s ours.
I climb the stairs, and head straight to her room. I already know how she sleeps. Curled on her side. Shoulders tense at first. Loosening in stages only if there’s weight at her back.
Mine.
The thought comes unbidden. I move through the corridor and stop outside her door.
I knock once. Her voice comes, soft, immediate. “Ronan?”
My throat goes tight. “Yeah,” I say quietly.
“Come in.”
I open the door and slip inside. The room’s dark. The only light leaks in from the hall, throwing a faint wash of gold over her bed, over the spill of her hair across the pillow. She’s clean, damp hair curling at the ends, one of my shirts hanging off one shoulder.My holster’s on the nightstand within easy grab range. My mic patch, Ash’s patch, still sits faint under her jaw.
Good girl.
Her eyes find mine in the half-dark. She looks steady, but also wrecked. Both can be true.
“You okay?” she whispers.
That simple question almost cracks something in me. She almost died today. Yet… She’s the one asking if I’m okay.
I cross the room, and sit on the edge of the bed, close enough to reach her but not touching yet. “We need to talk,” I say.
Her head tilts. “That sounds…bad.”
“It is,” I say, because I made a promise—respectwhile I cage her.
Her brows lift. She pushes herself up to sit, blanket sliding down to her lap. Bare legs bend, knees brushing my thigh. “Okay,” she says slowly. “Talk.”
I take a breath.
“From now on,” I say, voice low, steady, “you don’t go anywhere alone.”
Her eyes flick over my face. “Wraith—”
