Knox is there. Dimitri can feel him through the bond, a flare of alarm and urgency, and then Knox’s hand is on the new Templar’s wrist, gripping hard, pulling.
“Vale, wait!”
Vale. The name means nothing to Dimitri. What means something is the way this man’s fury is shaped. It’s not the fury of a soldier encountering a threat. It’s personal. It’s intimate. It’s the kind of rage that comes from seeing someone you care about in danger, and the way Vale’s dark eyes sweep over Knox’s face, cataloging the damage, the healing split lip, the faint bruise at his jaw, the flush that hasn’t entirely faded from his neck, is not the assessment of a colleague. It’s the assessment of someone who knows this face well enough to know what doesn’t belong on it.
Dimitri looks at Knox’s wrist on this man's hand and the protective fury in those dark eyes and thinks:oh, they’re fucking.
The jealousy that detonates in his chest is so sudden and so violent that it obliterates everything else. It isn’t the sharp territorial flare from the Sable. This is a wildfire. This is consuming. It floods the bond in a torrent of black heat before Dimitri can even think about suppressing it, and he watches Knox’s expression change in real time, the alarm shifting to confusion, then to something worried and searching as he feels what Dimitri is feeling and doesn’t understand why.
Knox’s green eyes find Dimitri’s across Vale’s shoulder. His brow creases. His lips part. He looks confused and concerned and faintly flushed, and Dimitri hates him for it, hates that Knox can feel this, hates that the bond has made him transparent, hates that a Templar he’s known for two days can look at him with worry in his eyes while another Templar holds him by the collar, and Dimitri buries the jealousy under fury and bares his teeth.
“This demon attacked you,” Vale says. It’s not a question.
“It’s not like that.” Knox’s voice is distracted. His eyes are still on Dimitri.
“Not like that.” Vale’s grip tightens on Dimitri’s collar. The blessing rings flare, and the consecrated energy bites into Dimitri’s chest through his shirt, searing and bright. “Then what is it like, Knox? Because from where I’m standing, it looks exactly like that.”
Dimitri bares his teeth wider. “Your little blond boyfriend is bound to a demon, Templar. If you’re going to hit me again, I’d recommend asking him what happens to him when you do.”
He saysboyfriendand means it to cut, means it to confirm what he already knows, and the word tastes like poison in his mouth.
Vale’s fist cocks back.
Knox grabs it. Both hands around Vale’s wrist, pulling with all his weight, which isn’t much but is apparently enough becauseVale lets himself be pulled. Not because Knox overpowers him. Because he chooses to let Knox stop him. Because even through his fury, even with a demon in his grip, Vale trusts Knox enough to let him intervene, and the easy intimacy of that trust makes the buried jealousy flare again, hot and ugly.
Knox pulls Vale back a step. Then another. Vale releases Dimitri’s collar and Dimitri settles against the cracked wall, rolling his shoulders, and gives Vale a slow amused grin that he knows will make the man want to hit him again.
It works. Vale’s jaw clenches so hard Dimitri can hear his teeth grind. But Knox is between them now, one hand on Vale’s chest, and Vale’s dark eyes drop to Knox’s face.
“Is that true?” Vale asks. His voice is quieter now, but no less dangerous. “You’re bound to him?”
“It’s true.” Knox drops his hand from Vale’s chest. “A novice witch botched a summoning and caught us both in a soulbind. And we need help breaking it.”
Vale’s gaze cuts to Dimitri, then back to Knox. The fury is still there, banked but burning, and underneath it Dimitri can see the worry again, the fear, the desperate protectiveness of someone who would burn down the world to keep this man safe. Dimitri knows the shape of that feeling because it’s been growing in his own chest for two days and he is only now, watching it on another man’s face, beginning to understand what it is.
He hates Vale for having it first. He hates Vale for having it longer. He hates the ease of it, the history, the context that Dimitri doesn’t have and can’t earn.
Knox explains what they need. Three things: close the rift, exterminate the rifthounds, find the witch. Vale listens with the focused intensity of a man already building a plan, and Dimitri watches the exchange between them and the jealousy settles into something colder and more permanent. These two have a language that doesn’t require words. A shift in posture fromKnox and Vale adjusts. A look from Vale and Knox nods. Dimitri watches them and wants to break something.
“August might be able to close the rift,” Vale says. “When he gets back.”
Dimitri raises an eyebrow. “Who?”
Knox glances at him. “August is a necromancer. He’s working as a psychopomp for the Lord of the Underworld. Dimensional magic is his specialty.”
Dimitri stares at him. Then he stares at Vale. Then he huffs out a laugh, short and disbelieving and genuinely delighted. “A necromancer. Working for the Lord of the Underworld. And he’s working with Templars?”
Vale gives him a look that could strip paint. Dimitri opens his mouth to elaborate, catches the look, and keeps his comments to himself. He has excellent survival instincts when he chooses to use them.
“I’ll get in touch with August,” Vale says to Knox, deliberately turning his shoulder to Dimitri. “I’ll find you when I have something. Where are you staying?”
“My apartment.”
Vale’s eyes flicker. “With him.”
“There’s not much choice, Vale.”
Vale stares at Knox for a long moment. Something passes between them, silent and loaded, some form of communication that Dimitri doesn't get. Then Vale nods, once, tight.
