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“Not under ordinary circumstances.”
“There is nothing ordinary about forcing a woman into your car.”
“No.”
His agreement pressed harder than a defense would have. He didn’t pretend necessity made his actions right. He simply refused to let guilt change them. The difference should have mattered. Instead, it reminded me that a man could understand he was stealing my choice and still decide his fear outweighed it.
“I need to see my father.”
“You will.”
“When?”
Rurik’s gaze remained fixed on the road. “When taking you to him won’t place you exactly where Sylvia expects.”
The calm certainty in his voice stripped the promise of comfort. He wasn’t refusing forever. He was only claiming the right to decide how long forever lasted.
“You don’t know whether he’ll survive.”
His hands tightened around the steering wheel. “No.”
The answer struck deeper because he didn’t soften it. Somewhere behind us, my father lay broken beneath hospital lights, and neither of us knew whether I would ever hear his voice again.
I had called him Dad only a handful of times. The first had felt strange enough to make us both laugh, and then his eyes filled before he looked away. I thought we’d have years to make the word ordinary. Losing him now would preserve it forever as something new and unfinished.
“Then how can you keep driving?”
“Because he used what strength he had left to protect you.”
My eyes burned. I looked through the fractured rear glass before Rurik could see the tears. Cian had spent my entire life appearing whenever I needed him, never understanding why leaving me alone had always seemed impossible. Now, when he might need me for the last time, I was disappearing down a dark highway because the love between us had become another weapon.
My anger broke loose. I struck the dashboard and demanded the keys, his phone, anything that would return control of my life to me. I threatened him with Uncle Sal and Duncan. With Mac’s wrath when I told him how he took me against my will. I explained what Cian would do when he recovered and what my mother would demand once fear stopped ruling her. When none of that moved him, I called him every ugly name grief placed on my tongue.
Rurik absorbed every accusation without raising his voice or changing direction. He didn’t ask me to forgive him or insist that one day I would understand. He let me hate him because hatred kept me from collapsing beneath everything else.
“Turn around,” I pleaded.
“No.”
I grabbed the door handle again. The lock refused to move beneath my fingers.
“Let me out.”
“Not here.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“No,” he agreed, even as the road carried us farther from Boston.
His refusal to defend himself gave my anger nowhere to land.
The miles continued gathering behind us. Traffic thinned until headlights appeared only occasionally through the damaged glass, then vanished again into the darkness. Heat lightning flickered above the trees, illuminating clouds swollen with a storm that refused to break.
Eventually, my voice failed. Silence entered the SUV, filled with everything Rurik had told me and everything he still didn’t know.
Sylvia St. James was my grandmother. She had nearly killed her own son to reach me, not because she loved me, but because she believed her blood had created an obligation I couldn’t refuse. She wanted an heir to inherit the Society, and my consent mattered so little that Cian’s life had become an acceptable price for securing mine.
The word grandmother should have carried warmth. Instead, it tasted like blood.
