“He won’t be on his own.”
“What?” Her nose wrinkled.
“Go. To. Sleep.” I made another mistake of catching her stare and drowning. “Use the cat as a pillow and do what you do best.”
“Are you calling me lazy?”
“I’m telling you I need you strong for the next part because if you aren’t, I don’t know if I’ll be able to control myself. And this thing...” I pressed my fingers to the dead vitalsync core. “Thisthing might’ve actually been helping me instead of hurting me so...do what I say andrest.”
Silence fell as I fiddled with her phone, trying to figure out how to bring up the keypad. She didn’t speak until I finally got it and hovered my fingers over the numbers.
“You’re in worse pain than you were with the pacemaker...aren’t you?” she murmured hesitantly as if afraid of my answer. “You’re burning more than you were before.”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m fine.”
“Do you regret destroying it?” Yawning, she slid onto her side and used Whisper as a cosy bolster. The panther puffed up with pride, turning to lick her like she was his very own kitten.
Tucking her hands beneath her cheek on his pelt, she never took her eyes off me. “If you could fix it...would you?”
I blew out a slow, uneven breath.
Twenty years of agony burned behind my eyes—two fucking decades where the vitalsync core had crippled me, crushed me, and knocked me out far too many times to count.
Ihatedit.
I would slaughter all the men responsible for putting it inside me, yet...what if it hadn’t been punishing me but preventing me from punishingthem? What if I’d always been able to burn like this? How quickly could I have learned to master the flames and razed everything to the ground, including them?
“No, I wouldn’t fix it.” The words were sharp in my throat. “Nothing in this world would make me accept that level of control again. I’d rather burn alive. Besides...” I looked up, heat smouldering in my bones as I looked at my two favourite things, cuddled together as if they weretryingto break me. “I’m not in pain when I’m around you. I’m just...hot.”
She sucked in a breath.
The air went electric.
I fisted her phone so hard the casing creaked as I fought the urge to replace Whisper with myself. To finish what we started. To slip between her legs again, only this time with no clothes between us.
Fuck—
“But how?” she whispered, interrupting my quick descent into debauchery. “Howdo I help—”
“No idea.” I cut her off, wrenching my eyes away. “Stop being so noisy and rest. Don’t talk to me again.”
She sighed heavily before mumbling around a yawn. “Hear that, huge sleeping tablet? I’ve been told to nap, so do your worst.”
I looked up again as Whisper nuzzled her then rested his head on his paws. Rook closed her eyes and snuggled closer, making jealousy pinch.
My fingers shimmered with warmth, making the phone screen waver.
Gritting my teeth, I yanked the heat back and input the number my father had forced me to remember ever since I was five years old.
Bringing the phone to my ear, I waited for the number to connect. It rang for so long, I panicked that I’d remembered it wrong or it was no longer valid—
“Welcome to Sovereign Retrieval. This is an automated message. Unless you are a client and have your thirteen-digit key, you will not be connected. Please enter your number or hang up.”
My pulse increased as I typed in the numbers that had lurked in every nightmarish day sincethatday.
And nothing happened.
I glowered at the device. Was it broken? Had I inputted it wrong—?
