I just wonder if I’ll have to do it again.
If the interesting ones always become the dangerous ones.
If the slightly darker gray-blue eyes and the soft chuckle and the five-second injector assembly are the beginning of a pattern I’ve seen before and survived by ending.
I can only wonder.
The bathroom is quiet. The tile is cold beneath my bare feet. The Febreze sits on the shelf behind me, and Ruby’s distant mew echoes from somewhere above—a small, fierce declaration of war against a man who has no idea what he’s dealing with.
I can only wonder as I sit on the toilet and decide to do my business for the sake of my bladder.
CHAPTER 18
Four Against One
~CASSIAN~
Iwalk into the kitchen with a cat on my shoulder and a woman in my arms.
The sentence, if spoken aloud, would sound like the opening of a joke—the kind that begins with an implausible premise and escalates toward a punchline that the audience sees coming from a distance but enjoys anyway because the absurdity of the setup earns the absurdity of the conclusion. But this is not a joke. This is my life, as of approximately seven hours ago, and the fact that it has produced this particular configuration of variables—Ruby balanced on my left shoulder with the proprietary confidence of a creature who has claimed the elevation as her personal territory, and Victoria Sinclair cradled against my chest with the reluctant compliance of a woman whose legs are temporarily non-functional and whose pride is temporarily subordinate to her biology—is simply the latest evidence that the universe rewards preparation with chaos.
Ruby’s claws find purchase in the fabric of my shirt at the shoulder seam—a precision grip that I register as mildly destructive and entirely deliberate. The kitten has been riding this position since I retrieved Victoria from the bathroom, having launched herself from the top of the doorframe ontomy shoulder with the particular, feline trajectory of a creature who has identified the highest available surface and claimed it without consulting the surface’s owner.
Victoria weighs less than she should.
I confirmed this during the bicep curl—an impulse I’m not entirely sure was clinically motivated, though the data it produced is clinically relevant. She claimed one-eighty. The actual figure is closer to one-seventy, maybe one-sixty-five, the deficit consistent with chronic caloric insufficiency in a body that burns energy at the rate hers does. Dancer’s metabolism. Fighter’s expenditure. The thermodynamic output of a woman who runs cold and moves fast and has been surviving in an environment that prioritizes lethality over nutrition.
When all this is over, we’ll feed her.
I said that.
We.
The pronoun exited my mouth before the part of my brain responsible for vetting social commitments could intercept it.
Interesting.
The kitchen is above ground—the residential unit’s standard-issue galley that occupies the first floor of the townhome Violet allocated to us. Unlike the underground lair, this space is ordinary: wooden counters, basic appliances, the institutional functionality of a room designed for sustenance rather than pleasure. Lucien has made modifications, naturally—a set of copper-bottomed pans that he sourced from somewhere I didn’t ask about, a knife block containing blades that are technically culinary but could be repurposed for non-culinary activities without significant modification, and a spice rack organized by cuisine of origin because my brother considers alphabetical organization intellectually lazy.
All eyes are on us.
Lucien is leaning against the counter near the stove, a wooden spoon in one hand and an expression on his face that I recognize as the precursor to commentary that I will not enjoy. Hawk is standing near the back wall with his arms crossed and a fresh cigarette between his lips that he hasn’t lit yet—the unlit cigarette serving as a oral placeholder while he assesses the scene. Dominic occupies a position by the kitchen’s single window, his posture rigid, his aged-whiskey eyes tracking our entrance with the particular intensity of a Prime Alpha whose threat-assessment protocols have been activated by the sight of his pack’s prospective Omega being carried by one of his subordinates.
Subordinate.
The word doesn’t sit comfortably in my vocabulary.
But the pack structure assigns it whether I accept it or not.
I walk to the kitchen island—a rectangular surface that occupies the center of the galley and provides the only seating in the space, four stools arranged along its outer edge. I lower Victoria onto one of them.
The motion is careful—a controlled descent that transfers her weight from my arms to the stool’s surface with the precision I apply to all physical transfers, whether the object being transferred is a chemical compound, a fabric sample, or a woman whose legs are still running below operational capacity. The stool is wooden, backless, positioned at a height that allows her feet to rest flat on the floor—or approximately flat, given the left leg’s compromised function.
“Is that comfortable?” I ask.
She looks at me.
The expression on her face is?—
