I let go of her jaw, my fingers reluctantly sliding away from her skin. She made no attempt to step away from me. Instead, she wrapped her arms tightly around her middle, shoulders caving in as if her own bones were too heavy to bear.
Shifting my attention away from her, I turned toward Nolan. “Take Acelynn back to the Queen’s Table. Have Astoria set her up in one of the dorms.”
She didn’t argue. That alone sent a fresh feeling of unease crawling down my spine. In the short time I have known her, Acelynn has always been fire and sharp edges—never silent compliance. Whatever had happened between her and Logan had left fractures she hadn’t let show until now. I knew Logan. I knew what kind of chaos he thrived on when he wore the Death Dealers patch. Alec Spade had always described the new initiate as unstable, dangerous, and the reason why I took my seat at the roundtable years too early.
Acelynn moved like a ghost, her steps clumsy and unfocused. Nolan stayed close, one hand hovering over the small of her back in case she became unstable. He glanced over his shoulder at me, a silent promise in his eyes sayingI’ll get her home safe.I didn’t need the reassurance. Nolan had never failed me, but the fact that he gave it anyway twisted something in my chest.
As the front door clicked shut behind them, Vince emerged from the shadows again, rubbing one hand over the top of his forearm where two perfect, angry puncture wounds were visible.
I let out a laugh. “Need me to suck the poison from your wounds?”
“Shut up,” Vince grumbled at me as he shot me a dirty look, knowing that a rattler’s poison would do him no harm thanks to his father’s insistence on building immunity to every poison he could find.
Vince’s dad had given my own father the idea of using hemlock against our enemies, but neither of us had known that he was sick enough to test his experiments on his own flesh and blood. Vince had survived that hell, and I respected him for it.
His gaze flicked to the ceiling, then back to me. “I told you she was hiding something.”
“She had already alluded that she was in danger,” I replied coolly. “We were going to talk particulars this afternoon.”
“She was with an excommunicated club member,” Vince snapped, voice cracking like a whip. It was rare to see him lose his calm, but the moment we stepped into Acelynn’s house, he’d been on edge.
It wasn’t hard to see why either. Acelynn’s home was bare. No moving boxes piled high. No trash needed to be removed from the bin. Not a single nail hole in the wall for decor to show off her personality. Acelynn Thorton did not live in this house. Slept here, maybe. But that was all.
And Vince knew this. He threw a hand toward the red scrawl above the bed. “Read the damn writing on the wall, Kaius. She isn’t who she says she is. That girl is aSpade.”
“Watch your mouth,” I growled out.
My heart pounded against my chest rapidly as the lies I had been trying to convince myself of for over a year threatened to bubble over. Alec Spade’s frantic voice echoed in my ears fromthe night that he was killed by his own father. The night the Spade family went to their graves.
Alec’s sister was never around the club life. He made sure of it and forced his father to send her to the most elite schools he could find, where she would be safe. But the time of his father complying with Alec’s demands had run out.
The booming sounds of a full bar thudded around the silence in my office. I was buried in paperwork Astoria had tossed onto my desk earlier when my office door flew open, slamming into the wall.
I looked up, coming upon the last man I expected to be walking through the Queen’s Table on a Saturday night when it was crawling with Knights.
Alec Spade, the VP of the Death Dealers Motorcycle Club, stood tall in the doorway, his hands shoved in the dark jeans he wore. I leaned back in my chair, reaching down to trace the underside of my desk where one of my many hidden gun safes sat.
“What can I do for you, Spade?” I asked, voice clipped with annoyance.
His chest heaved upward as if he was trying to find the courage to speak. I furrowed my brow at the man. I had never once seen Alec show even an ounce of fear when it came to club business, but now he was practically shaking in front of me. His bloodshot eyes frantically searched around the room on their own, as if his mind was racing faster than he could explain.
“I need to call in a favor.” Alec’s voice was rough with emotion. I nodded, waiting for him to continue. He stepped fully into my office, shutting the door behind him, keeping his back to me.
Frowning at the man, I spoke, “The Spades and Knights don’t strike deals anymore. Not after the last one went south.”
“I know,” he whispered. “So that must tell you how desperate I am, Kaius, to come ask the devil for help.”
Alec turned back to me and began toward one of the chairs in front of my desk. He slumped down, face falling into his hands as they raked through his long brown hair.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “What is it you need, Alec?”
“I need your help killing my father.”
“Kaius.” Vince’s voice pulled me out of the memory where I damned us all.
The Knights, except for Nolan and Vince, thought the Iron Serpents, a smaller club which had been a thorn in our backsides since the moment they arrived outside of Lovelen, executed the Spades. But it had been my hand that had pulled the trigger that killed Bran Spade seconds after he burned his own family alive in the family home. That night had left scars we didn’t talk about, and Vince had never forgiven me for dragging us into it.
“Get a cleanup crew in here,” I said flatly, my shoulder connecting with his as I stalked out of the room.
