Damien exhales, a harsh sound. “You were dramatic. You werealwaysdramatic. I remember you at seventeen, crying in my office about some imagined slight—”
Wraith moves. I don’t have to tell him to. He just does. One second he’s behind Ember, the next he’s in front of her, and his hand is on Damien’s throat.
Not choking. Not yet. Holding. His face is carved out of pure fury.
“You don’t say that word about her ever again,” he grinds out. “You don’t take her mouth in yours like that ever again. You don’t get to say ‘crying.’ You don’t get to call anything she felt ‘imagined.’ You don’t get to reduce a seventeen-year-old girl telling you she was being touched to ‘dramatic.’ You don’t get to live in that lie, Damien. You hear me?”
Damien tries to laugh. It curdles. “Christ,” he coughs. “You’ve lost your—”
Wraith squeezes. Just enough to cut sound. My wolf knows every pressure point.
“Move your hand,” I say, quiet and lethal.
Wraith goes still. He doesn’t like it, but he does it. He pulls his hand back and steps to the side, not behind her this time — beside her, body brushing hers, like he’s physically declaring what side he’s on.
Ember doesn’t thank him. She doesn’t have to. She never looks away from Damien. “I went to you,” she says to him.
Damien’s eyes flick back to her.
She smiles again, but all the warmth is completely gone. “I went to you, Damien,” she says. “Remember?”
I taste blood, and don’t even realize I’m biting the inside of my cheek until iron hits my tongue. She keeps going.
“I walked into your office,” she says. “I sat in the shitty plastic chair while you finished ‘taking a call.’ I stared at your stupid framed commendations on the wall — Imperial College, MoD liaisons, Royal Honors, all those little lapel pins you weresoproud of — and I told you Marcus was putting his hands on me.”
“You were a child,” he snaps, voice breaking. “You were emotional, you were doing anything you could to keep your brother close, you were making up drama to keep yourself in the game—”
Ash moves. He doesn’t lunge, or grab. He just steps forward, slow, eyes gone flat, and says in a voice I’ve only heard when he’s standing over someone who doesn’t know they’re already dead, “Donotcall her a liar again.”
Damien laughs like he thinks this is still salvageable. “Oh, is that the game? You’re all going to take turns pretending you’re outraged? You think I haven’t broken—”
“Youtold me,” Ember says, louder now, voice cutting over his, “that he wasvaluable.”
The room stills.
“You told me he had higher clearances than me and Owen,” she continues. “You said he’d been embedded for years and if I accused him of misconduct, it would ‘compromise delicate operations and international relationships.’ You told me if I made a formal complaint it would reflect poorly on Owen’s judgment and cost him his in, he’d lose his cover and they’d burn him, and well then where would we be?”
She smiles again. It is the most vicious thing I’ve ever seen on a human face. I fucking love it.
“You told me to be a good girl and shut my mouth,” she says.
Something inside me snaps clean. I don’t even feel the movement. One heartbeat I’m standing beside Ash, calm, measured, watching. The next heartbeat I’m across the room, and my hand is in Damien’s hair, and I’m yanking his head back so hard his neck strains.
He chokes on a curse. I lean in close. Close enough to smell him — sweat, fear, that sour bureaucrat cologne they all wear, the kind that tries to say “respectable” and just reeks of control.
“You covered for him,” I say softly. It’s not a question.
Damien bares his teeth. “I did myjob.”
“Your job,” I repeat quietly. My voice is calm. Calm in that way that means people start praying.
“I had an asset in protection,” Damien spits. “You think I’m going to blow an operation over some girl crying because a man touched herknee? You think that’s higher priority thanfour yearsof placement? Than our access? Than the—the Syndicate lines we were embedding in? You think we give a fuck if some little feral foster rat gets her pride bruised—”
That’s when Vale laughs, cruel and delighted. “Oh,” he purrs, eyes bright like a knife. “He said that out loud.”
Saint exhales very softly, like a man coming to the end of his patience with absolution. “Rook,” he murmurs. “May I break a bone?”
“Not yet,” I say, still very calm.
