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Carnage stares at me for a second before his silent laughter starts all over again, his forehead dropping back against mine while the warmth of it rolls straight through our connection.

I close my eyes and let myself stay there with him, surrounded by broken furniture, shattered glass, and enough evidence of what just happened to keep Ruckus entertained for the next hundred-fucking-years.

A few hours ago, Thessaly stood at those gates and reminded me that the Conclave has spent twelve years finding me no matter where I go. Every instinct I’ve built since the day I escaped tells me what comes next. Pack what I can carry, disappear before they return, and make sure nobody gets close enough to become another reason staying hurts.

Except lying here with Carnage wrapped around me, his chest shaking with silent laughter against my back and his arm holding me close, something about leaving feels different than it ever has before.

For twelve years, running had been the easiest decision I knew how to make.

Running from Carnage might be the first one I simply cannot do.

Chapter Seventeen

ECHO

The Next Morning

Dawn comes in gray through the kitchen window, and I’ve been sitting with the same cup of coffee for twenty minutes, not drinking it, just staring into it while my brain keeps circling everything that happened last night.

Carnage is asleep down the hall in what’s left of his bedroom, assuming the mattress on the floor surrounded by broken furniture still qualifies as a bedroom. I slipped out while he was sleeping because lying there beside him, wrapped up in his arms with his hellfire still warm beneath my skin, was making it increasingly difficult to think about anything except how badly I wanted to stay exactly where I was.

That should probably be the part freaking me out.

Somehow, it isn’t.

I keep going back to the way he looked at me afterward, once the shock wore off and the brothers finally stopped barging into the room to make comments about the fucking disaster the room was now in. The way he curled himself around me without hesitation when that door flew open, covering me with his body before he even knew who was coming through it. The way I could still feel him everywhere once we were alone again, his heat, his arms around me, the steady beat of his heart, all that hellfire and chaos somehow making me feel safer than I have in years.

I’ve spent what feels like forever getting good at leaving.

A room, a town, a life I’d started liking a little too much.

Because staying has always been the dangerous part.

And now there’s a hellhound asleep down the hall who never pushes when I go quiet, never makes me explain the shit I can’t put into words, whose power somehow fits against mine strongly enough to blow apart a fucking room, and who makes the idea of packing a bag and disappearing feel harder than it ever has before.

I wrap both hands around my coffee and finally take a sip.

It’s cold.

“Great,” I mutter, pushing the mug away. “Apparently, I’m having an existential crisis before breakfast.” I sit there another minute anyway, staring at the cold coffee like it might eventually offer something useful.

It doesn’t, and all I get is more Carnage.

Carnage looking at me from above while the room came apart around us. Carnage throwing himself over me when the door burst open. Carnage laughing silently against me afterward while half his clubhouse stood outside giving him shit about the bed.

And underneath all of it, that one thought I can’t seem to shake.

I wanted to stay.

I still do.

“Nope.” The chair scrapes against the floor as I shove myself upright. Sitting here pulling apart every feeling I’ve developed in the last few days is clearly a terrible-fucking-idea, and I need something to do before I start assigning emotional significance to the way the man sleeps.

I dump the coffee into the sink, rinse out the mug, and leave it on the drying rack before heading out of the kitchen.

The clubhouse is only beginning to wake up. A couple of voices drift from somewhere upstairs, and I pass one bleary-eyed prospect heading in the opposite direction who gives me a sleepy nod before continuing toward whatever caffeine source he’s hunting.

My feet carry me toward the garage without much thought, probably because I’ve spent enough time in there over the last few days that it’s starting to feel familiar. Definitely not because it smells like Carnage, feels like Carnage, and contains a motorcycle that belongs to Carnage.