I’d be lying if I said I cared right now, which is dangerous.
In the dark, I stare at the sky and frown. Maybe he’s thinking about the people we’ve lost, or the people we still owe. Maybe he’s counting down the minutes until he can leave this house and everyone in it behind. Or maybe he’s just trying to outlast the urge to punch holes in the drywall.
The back door rattles. I freeze, all nerves and static. But it’s not Taurus; it’s Talia, slipping outside like a shadow. She’s got a hoodie over her pajamas and bare feet. She looks at me, eyes huge in the porch light.
“He’s not mad at you,” she says. “He’s just—” She shrugs, like that sums up the world’s entire supply of fucked up.
“I know,” I say.
She sits next to me on the lounge chair, close but not touching. “I could make tea.”
“Sure,” I say. “Maybe later.”
She nods, tucks her knees under her chin. “I heard about the lockdown.”
“They’re all assholes,” I say. “It’s not like I abandoned anyone. I just found people I want to love in a family just for me. Is that too much to ask?”
“But you abandoned them in their eyes,” she says, and it’s not judgmental, just true. “Even if we know that’s not true.”
I snort. “Yeah, well. Maybe they did that to themselves with all this bullshit. I was wrecked after the winter. What did they expect?”
Talia smiles, and the edges of the night soften a little. “You can’t fix people who stayed broken. Sari revels in her damage and she made you pay for setting those boundaries, even if her actions caused them.”
“I didn’t plan to find you guys and cut people off. It just happened.”
“Neither did we.”
We sit quietly after that, listening to the distant clang from below together.
After a while, Talia stands, stretches, and says, “He’ll come around.” She pads inside, leaving the door ajar.
I stay put, letting the cold chew through me while I try to convince myself that waiting counts as survival. For someone who always demanded I confess my every wound, Taurus is amaster at hiding his own. Maybe that’s all family is, in the end—a bunch of people too stubborn to abandon each other, no matter how high the voltage.
Eventually, the sounds from the gym stop.
I don’t go inside to check on it. I don’t need to see the aftermath tonight.
Curling up in the lounge chair, I hug my knees to my chest and close my eyes. It’s a long time before I sleep.
Perhaps I need space right now as much as he does.
The Blade Dukes It Out
TALIA
The first warning is the heavy, wet thump of the reinforced door as it slams open, scraping paint from the dented frame. Taurus’s voice chases through the humid gym, raw and ragged as he roars, “I said?—”
I’m already moving because I’ve been preloading since we left the house where that fucking troll and her foppish zombie live. While I stewed elsewhere, Taurus headed straight back to the Pridelands to start his usual regime of punishment. The sparring mats are already sticky with his blood as he beats the bag hard enough to damage himself. I know what comes next; he’ll move from taking it out on himself to everyone else.
The moment the air pressure shifts, I know he’s sensed me entering the gym. Before he can come for me, I lunge forward, ripping a carbon-fiber arm blade from its sheath, and snap-throw it across the room. It’s a perfect, practiced release—born from hours at the range with Taurus shouting corrections over the zeroed sights. The blade launches like a supersonic blur, aiming for my primary in a spot that will only annoy him, not damage him permanently.
Unfortunately, Taurus is already moving, his muscled arms still focused on the heavy bag, which seems to hardly register the blow except for the way the bag’s chain screeches against its bolt. My blade misses him, but it slices the bag in half with a dull, meaty whomp. Sand and rubber pellets explode in a gritty cyclone, engulfing him in a white-out haze. Taurus doesn’t even flinch; he just keeps punching, his eyes never leaving mine as his knuckles split on the canvas shell. He’s a biologically engineered machine built for violence, and I’m the only person in his path.
“Nice try, my goddess,” he grunts.
I hiss as the sand spills everywhere—there will be hell to pay for the clean-up later, but I’m past caring. My soul is burning from the hell of this morning, but that’s nothing compared to the raw, howling engine in my chest. “Yeah, well, you didn’t say it to me, so fuck off,” I sneer, because mutual disrespect is our only shared language.
The room is filled with the scent of sweat, blood, and fury now. Taurus stalks towards me, his body gleaming in the overhead light. Each step is calculated—not a charge, but a slow, predatory testing of my boundaries. My primary is always reading the angles, his own and everyone else’s, always thinking two moves ahead. “Well, well, well,” he drawls, smiling with all sharp teeth. “I guess when you’re coming at me, you’ve got a pair. But every bloody time you’re going at that bint, you stand here and take her shit, forcing me to as well!”
