He pushed to his feet, stretching in a slow, unhurried way that made her stomach flip. “I should be exactly where you are.”
How could such a rough statement sound so sweet? “Because you find me suspicious and I drew a pistol on your brother and tied him up?”
The corner of his lips twitched. “Merely a day in the life of a Fury.”
She slowly sat up straighter. “How reassuring.”
“The fact I’m more concerned about is that you fled.”
“I prefer to think of it as a graceful withdrawal.” Fled was completely accurate! “Didn’t your brother tell you? I don’t want to be a nuisance.”
“You’re not.” His expression didn’t change, but his voice dropped. “You’re not a nuisance. You’re not troublesome.”
Her heart fluttered, foolish thing. “You have your brothers. Your work. Your underworld empire or whatever your world is. You don’t need me—”
“Stop.”
She clamped her mouth shut.
He shoved a hand through his hair and slumped into the chair. “When I was sixteen, I tracked my brother Drake to a brothel outside Seven Dials. He was only a year younger, drunk off his arse, didn’t even know I existed. But I dragged him out. Cleaned him up. Fed him.”
Her lips parted, her throat too tight for words. Stars, this was his past. He was offering her a piece of his past...
“They were scattered. Bastards from different mothers. Different towns. I had no obligation to any of them, but I found them. One by one. Took them in. Even when they questioned my motives. Even when my face was as bare as a babe’s.”
Maxen as a boy. She would have loved to see him then.
His jaw flexed. “They acted like brats most of the time, but they were never a nuisance. Not when they fought, not when they got in trouble, not when they blew up half of Brighton with one bloody tavern brawl. My only fear has always been that I’d never live up to what they deserved.”
Her chest squeezed, sharp and sudden. This fierce, fearsome man, afraid only of not being enough. The imbalance felt so utterly wrong.
“My point,” he said, voice thick, “is that once I decide someone is mine to protect, they’re mine, and I will not fail them.”
So... he considered her his to protect? Reasonably, that should have alarmed her, but his claim did the exact opposite. “You count me among them? Yours to protect?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” she challenged.
“You are my tenant.”
Justhis tenant? “That doesn’t mean I’m yours to protect.”
“That’s not how this works, Calliope.”
Her name. Not the first time spoken from his lips, but this time, she felt the change in her bones. Dark and deep and permanent.
He was right.
Thatwasn’thow matters worked. Protection—true protection—always came at a price. Either the kind spoken plainly in coin or the kind extracted later in favors. Safety was nothing but a loan. And yet the main Beast of Brighton sat beside her bed, declaring her under his protection as if it were a simple fact. Immutable. Irrevocable.
A whisper of panic rose in her chest.
Because if she believed him—if she let herself lean even an inch toward the idea that someone like him could mean those words—what then? What would happen the next time she stumbled? When she failed to be agreeable, useful, obedient? What if he looked at her one day and saw a burden instead of someone worth protecting? She’d spent most of her life trying not to need anyone too much. Attempting to remain insignificant enough to stay safe, clever enough to survive, invisible enough to slip between the cracks.
And yet what other choices were at her disposal?
Shewantedto believe him.
