Page 171

One Month Later

The last few weeks have been almost fucking quiet.

Almost.

After everything with Malgrave and the Devil, nobody complained about having a little time to heal, sleep, and put the clubhouse back together. Somewhere in the middle of it, Titania checked in. The Seelie Queen wanted to know if there was anything the Kings needed after closing a fucking chasm into Hell and saving a decent chunk of the supernatural world from whatever the Devil had planned.

Raze asked about the tear in the clearing. Turns out Titania had already been keeping an eye on it. The smaller tears we’d seen since that first night weren’t going away. They were getting bigger, little by little, and whatever was damaged out there wasn’t fixing itself.

Not exactly the news Sentinel and I wanted after everything that started with that fucking tear.

Titania offered to seal it completely, and her reasoning was simple enough. We’d done the supernatural world one hell of a favor by closing the chasm into Hell, so she’d do us one in return. She seals the tear, nobody owes anybody anything, and the Kings and the Seelie Court walk away even.

Raze agreed before she could find a Fae-shaped loophole in her own offer.

So Titania came out to the clearing, did whatever the fuck Seelie Queens do when reality has a hole in it, and sealed the thing for good.

No more tears.

No more waiting for the ground to split open.

No more Sentinel and me wondering if the next roar between us is going to rip another hole somewhere it shouldn’t.

For the first time since this whole shitshow started, that part of it is finally done.

My roar feels different in my chest these days. I notice it most when everything settles down, like now, sprawled across the clubhouse sofa with my boots on the coffee table and a cold beer in my hand. There’s always been a low rumble sitting behind my ribs, hellfire waiting there whether I need it or not.

Except it isn’t only hellfire anymore.

Sentinel’s Grace is still mixed through it, a faint pulse I can pick out if I pay attention. Neither of us has figured out how to separate the damn stuff, and at this point, I’m not sure we’re supposed to.

But there’s something else in there now too.

Something that definitely wasn’t there before.

I take another drink and feel it move through my chest again, a low vibration that settles my hellhound almost immediately.

Echo.

Somehow, when she called my power back from Hell, a little piece of her came back with it.

Not her voice, something deeper than that.

When Echo reached all the way into fucking Hell and called my power home, some part of her came back with it. I can still feel her there now, tangled through the hellfire and whatever Sentinel left behind.

I roll the beer bottle between my palms as my hellhound settles beneath my skin, quiet in a way he never used to be. For the first time in my entire miserable existence, the thing living inside me doesn’t feel like a weapon.

It feels like ours.

Boots sound in the hallway before Raze appears in the rec room doorway, a single sheet of paper folded in one hand.

I glance at it, then at him.

He isn’t pissed, so that’s a good start.

Raze walks over and tosses the paper onto the coffee table. “Council’s ruling came through.”

I swing my boots off the table and sit forward. “And?”