Page 123

Sentinel reaches over and covers Echo’s shaking hand with his uninjured one, his voice softening. “We’ll fix this,” he tells her. “All of it. I promise you that.”

Echo looks down at their joined hands, blinking hard.

I catch Sentinel’s eye over her bowed head.

Brother. That’s all I mouth.

One fucking word I can’t even put sound behind.

Sentinel sees it anyway, and his face shifts, the smart-ass angel disappearing for a second as he looks at me across the table.

Then he nods once.

Brother. He mouths right back at me.

I swallow around the empty place where my voice should be and look away before the bastard gets any ideas about hugging me.

Chapter Twenty-One

ECHO

The Following Night

Garlic hits me the second I walk into the club room, mixed with woodsmoke, and whatever Ivy has done to the cornbread, has Ruckus reaching for his third piece before he’s finished his second.

Dinner has dragged everyone around the long table tonight. Plates cover nearly every inch of it while Ruckus, already a few beers in, tells some bullshit story that keeps getting louder every time someone calls him a liar. Wreck is heckling him from across the table, Roxy is laughing beside Raze, and for the first time since the realization about who we’re facing, the clubhouse feels almost normal.

I’m sitting beside Carnage with my thigh tucked against his beneath the table. He hasn’t moved away once. He can’t join the shit-talking the way I’m sure he used to, but every so often his leg nudges mine, or his fingers brush the back of my hand when he reaches for something.

I’ve started noticing those little touches.

Maybe because he keeps finding reasons to make them.

Maybe because I keep finding reasons to stay close enough for him to.

The glass beside my plate trembles.

I frown at it, as another ripple runs across the water.

No.

A second glass starts shaking farther down the table. Then another. Water climbs the sides without spilling, gathering higher until thin streams lift clear of every glass on the table.

My chair hits the floor behind me. “Get away from the water!”

Carnage is already moving. One second, he’s beside me, and the next his body is planted between the doors and me, his hellhound pushing close enough that black bleeds into his amber eyes. Around the table, dinner is forgotten.

Raze is on his feet, Scar has Cali behind him, while Wreck and Thorn spread out across the room.

Ruckus stares at his beer. “If this starts fucking singing, I’m leaving.”

Nobody laughs, because every brother in this room remembers what happened at the gate.

Water spills from the glasses, but it doesn’t hit the table—it hangs there. Slowly, every stream turns toward the clubhouse doors.

My pulse kicks hard.

Twelve years. Twelve fucking years I’ve spent running from this woman, and my body knows she’s here before I see her.