Page 384 of Eight of Swords, Part One

Lachlan starts sleeping in Jules’ bed.

He knows he shouldn’t. He tries to resist it after the week following the lake incident, when exhaustion kept dragging him under in Jules’ arms for hours at a time, but it’s impossible. After that night, he begins to feel a little better.

He stops his manic research into the other kinds.

He starts eating properly again.

He and Danya both train Jules, but Lachlan eases back into taking the bulk of it. Slowly, it becomes fun again. His hands don’t shake anymore. His mind is less prone to obsessing over things like, why didn’t you teach Roman this? Why didn’t you do this for him instead of what you did? Violence is all you have, all you give and all you get.

The intrusive thoughts ease off.

He loves to see how Jules’ abilities come together, interwoven with pride and ego. It’s a delightful balance that Lachlan and Danya shape well. Lachlan will sometimes show Jules something new, take his breath away and use it to demonstrate that pride goeth, always, but deep down he knows that Jules’ ego, like any true artist, is the core of his innovation and talent.

Danya is impressed with Jules’ potential too. He ruffles Jules’ hair after a good spar session, and winks, calling him Charlie Foxtrot, which never fails to make Jules roll his eyes, but he likes the nickname, Lachlan can tell.

Sleeping in Jules’ bed becomes a serious problem because, despite Lachlan’s ironclad plans to distance himself from everyone before what he is certain will be his death, he realises he cannot break away from Jules.

Not properly, no matter how hard he tries.

He’s addicted to loving him. He’s caught in the riptide of it, unable to get free because he doesn’t want to. He loves loving Jules. It’s the highest point of peace he’s ever known, twined with the biggest roller-coaster drop of pure euphoric thrill, beyond compare in every possible way.

The house rallies around him.

Danya and Blaire cover everything.

Mimi and Jules are his world, and that world keeps on turning.

So slowly, Lachlan comes back to himself.

His mind is no longer foggy and tunnelled.

His body is no longer exhausted upon waking.

But Lachlan can’t stop himself from falling into bed with Jules, and staying there after. Sometimes, it’s not even always sex, although most of the time it is. Even in grief, Lachlan can’t get enough of Jules Penhalyx. He wants to worship him, make unholy devotions of love through bodily adoration.

Lachlan never loves himself more than when he’s buried inside Jules, fuck-drunk and obsessed with dragging one more out of him, and Jules is just as hungry for it, if not more so. He matches, meets and exceeds Lachlan’s own hunger and it’s all tempered with love.

Precisely what Penhalyx forbade.

He knows somewhere down the line, he’ll have to make a distinction, shift this into something more secret.

But September was a blur and October is his awakening.

He doesn’t want to risk fucking it all up.

Savannah says she’ll stay until Jules’ birthday, but then she wants to go back to England, where she was born.

Savannah has enough wealth to vanish into luxury for the rest of her life without consequence. Instead, she talks with Jules and Vasily about funding trauma centres, private recovery housing, legal teams for abused children and women trapped in violent situations, discreet extraction networks for people trying to escape powerful families, corruption or trafficking rings. She wants to buy old estates and convert them into long-term safe housing with on-site medical care, security and education programs. Real things. Structural things. The kind of help that still exists after the donations dry up and the headlines move on. Savannah Alderwyck might be one of the only people Lachlan has ever met with money who deserves it.

Her leaving means more than just her own freedom, though. She could be someone on the outside for him. Someone to protect the kids when Lachlan gets them free. He has no doubt that she’ll succeed in whatever she wants, now that she’s surrounded by lawyers, advisors and security teams of her own. Their job is to protect her interests instead of exploiting them.

She’ll be fine.

Vasily worries Lachlan.

Now officially in the process of being legally adopted by Alistair, Vasily is quiet and unobtrusive, but just because he’s not causing trouble doesn’t mean he’s fine. He seems stable and content here but losing his family has changed something in him. He’s like a little ghost sometimes.

One night, Lachlan is making the rounds when he gets a little ping to alert him that Vasily isn’t in his bedroom in the East Wing.