Jagger’s door opened. “What’s going… on?” He stared at the suitcase now in Hawk’s hand. “You’re leaving?”
He sounded so wounded it was almost enough to make me change my mind.
But that would be a mistake, one with deadly consequences.
“Fine,” I said, “keep my suitcase.”
I tried to push past Hawk but it was like trying to push past a freight train.
He grabbed my arm and wrestled me back into my room.
“What the…? Ow! You’re hurting me.” It wasn’t really true, but I had to say something to make him stop.
“Bullshit,” he said. “If we can clamp your pussy you can manage a hand on your arm.”
He backed me into my bedroom and pushed the suitcase aside, then tried to wrestle the bags off my shoulder.
“Are you crazy?” I gasped, trying to keep ahold of the bags. “Let me go! Bram?— ”
“I fuckingdareBram to try and take you from us!” Hawk roared, his beautiful face transformed by fury.
“Is this some kind of new game?” Vigo asked, his voice sleepy behind me. “Should I get toys?”
“It’s not a game,” Jagger said. “Cassie wants to leave.”
Hawk ripped the bags off my arms and tossed them to the ground. “I’m not letting you walk out of here like this, not when those psychos are out there picking people off.”
“You want to leave us?” Vigo asked, his green eyes wounded.
I was panting when I turned to face him and Jagger. Panting from the struggle over my bags and the pent-up emotion welling inside my body.
“Don’t you understand?” I sobbed. “I’m a fucking death sentence! Anna is dead because of me and you’ll be next if I stay!”’
I couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear to lose them. Couldn’t bear for them to be hurt — or worse — because of me. I’d already lost so much. I needed to know they were tearing through the world, that they were wreaking havoc, living on their own terms.
Even if they weren’t doing it with me.
“Cass…” Hawk stepped toward me and tried to pull me into his arms.
“Get away from me! Let me go!” My breath was coming in giant heaves, catching in my throat, making it hard to pull oxygen into my lungs. “Just… let me go!”
I fought against Hawk’s embrace but he wouldn’t have it, and he pulled me tight against him, his arms coming around me like an iron cage.
“I wish I fucking could, Cass.” He held me so long the fight slipped out of me little by little until I was sobbing in his arms. “I wish I fucking could.”
He kissed the top of my head and let me cry until my sobs slowly subsided, leaving me wrung out and whimpering against him, his chest wet with my tears.
He pulled back far enough to take my face in his hands.
“Nobody’s fucking leaving.” His eyes burned like molten amber, his hands almost rough on my cheeks. “Not you. Not us.”
“They’ll kill you too,” I said.
“I dare them to fucking try. If they do, we’ll be ready, but we’re not letting them win by tearing us apart.”
Hawk’s hands dropped to my shoulders and Jagger entered the room to take my hand. “We belong together, Cass. I thought you knew that.”
Vigo joined us. “Yeah, you’re one of us now, mouse.”
