I let out a small, startled laugh. “That’s all you have to say about it?”
“What do you want me to say?” Her hand finds my wrist, her thumb brushing the inside of my pulse. “She tried to shoot me with Ethan in the room. I’m not going to lecture you about restraint, Grayson.”
I lift her hand and press my mouth into her palm. The skin’s warm, her heartbeat steady against my lips.
“Miranda, here.” I hold out the dagger. “I want you to keep this safe. If you’re ever in danger from my kind, I want you to use it.”
“A knife?”
“It’s a dagger coated in wolfsbane. Wolfsbane is incredibly toxic to us. The wounds caused by it are fatal unless treated immediately. If you’re ever in danger, act fast, and this will save your life.”
“Why do you have it?”
I shrug. “Gabriel gave it to Annie. It was in their belongings, and I just kept it. Please, Miranda.”
She hesitates and then nods before putting it in the drawer beside her and locking it.
She lets out a heavy breath and then looks at me. “Lie down with me,” she murmurs. “I will never have to use it, but I will never leave the house without it. Will that make you happy?”
I nod and climb under the blanket with my jeans still on and curl my body around them both. Ethan doesn’t stir. Miranda’s good arm slides under my neck. Her face presses into my collarbone, and her breathing evens out within minutes.
I lie awake a long time, one hand cupping the back of her neck, my son’s small body tucked against my chest, the sound of the two of them breathing slow and even in the dark. The promise I make them isn’t one I’m foolish enough to say out loud. Whatever shadows close in around us, I’ll keep them safe.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Miranda
The arena is louder than I remember. The Silverpeak crowd has come out in full today, dark blue from the cheap seats up to the boxes, the cold of the rink rising in waves against the heat of twenty thousand bodies packed into one building.
Derek hands me a bottle of water without taking his eyes off the ice.
“Drink. You haven’t sat down since we got here.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re standing on a healing shoulder, a healing arm, and you’ve been watching the corridor entrances for the last hour.”
I take the water. “I was checking the exits.”
“Sure you were.”
I sit when he tilts his chin at the seat. The ache in my shoulder pulses once with the motion, so I breathe out slowly through my nose until it eases. The bullet went through clean. Sera’s come by the house twice this week to do her quiet wolf-healer work, and she’s pronounced it well on the mend. My arm still complains when I forget to favor it, though I can hold a pen,lift a coffee mug, or write a note without flinching. Today I refuse to flinch at anything.
On the ice, Grayson is fast. Faster than the last time I watched him play, which I’d have sworn wasn’t possible. He skates with a tightness in his shoulders that won’t loosen, even when Brody throws himself into a check at center ice. The grin Grayson flashes back is for the cameras. The look he flicks up at our box every few minutes belongs to me.
“He keeps checking on you,” Derek murmurs.
“I noticed.”
“He’s had one eye on the family entrance since the puck dropped.”
“Vanessa isn’t here.” I’ve swept the away section three times already. “Her seat’s empty. Brent’s little perch beside it too. I checked when we came in.”
Derek’s gaze travels the same arc mine keeps making. “Brent’s on the ice. She turns up for all his games, I heard.”
“Not today, apparently.”
The buzzer cracks. The crowd surges up around me. Samuel’s just put a clean wrist shot past the Crimson Rock goalie, the puck flashing through traffic into the top corner of the net. Grayson is half across the ice with his stick raised before the lamp finishes its spin. I’m on my feet too, hand pressed to my mouth, a laugh punching out of me.
