Page 73

Suddenly, Verity is there beside us, her eyes—a shade of green I could pick out of a lineup—pin me with a defiant stare. “We’re still more yours than anyone else’s. Me, Lex, Wicker,” snagging my hand, she rests it on the swell of her belly, “andthe baby.”

She can’t mean that.

There’s no paper to tell Lex the data.

There’s no shiny secret about it, traded to Wick in a dark, dusty room.

There’s no long, entwined, shared history with her.

All the anger has rushed out of me, leaving a heavy, hollow feeling. “I’m not a creator,” I tell her, unable to shake this abrupt awareness that her son has nothing of me. “All I have to offer any of you is… this.” I nod at the monitors, thinking of long nights spent watching over them all, knowing this is my place.

Lex is the body.

Wick is the blood.

I’m just the empty, watching eyes.

She follows my gaze, mouth going slack. “Is that why you’ve been so on edge these past few months? Pace, you’re more to us than justthe security guy.” She turns to me, the look on her face so achingly sincere that it makes my gut clench. “You’re my Prince.” Resting her hand over mine, she insists, “You’re his father.”

Wicker’s looking at me like I just slapped him in the face. “You’re my brother.”

I hear the words, but I can’t reach them. Can’tfeelthem. The panic is rolling like a rogue wave through my veins. “We only work as a family because we don’t have anyone else,” I tell him. It’s how it’s always been. We’re the discarded remnants of Royal flukes. Stones that have been eroded into misshapen fragments that somehow lock together.

“Wick,” Verity whispers, brimming eyes sliding to him. “Show him.”

Before I can wonder how he could even begin, he has a handful of my shirt collar, hauling me into him. It’s closer to a punch than a kiss, his mouth slamming into mine. There’s an edge of pain, and then a familiar warmth, his tongue demanding against mine.

Without having to think about it, I grab his face in response, meeting his kiss with the sort of aggression I’d never inflict on Verity. It’s bruising and consuming, and when Wicker tears himself away, his eyes burn like fire.

“You’re right,” he says, bending to pull that knife from his boot. “Blood matters.”

The sight of him cutting into his wrist is somehow more confusing than the kiss, although it shouldn’t be. How many times have the three of us done this? Promises and pacts—on my blood—it’s the first part of Wicker’s Baron heritage he ever embraced.

I stand still as he grabs my hand, exposing the ladder of scars made in dark, quiet places. These were etched to track the passage of time, and grasping my wrist, Wicker bisects them with a clean cut. “Family, always.”

I barely feel the sting.

Verity gasps, watching as he clutches my forearm, the wounds meeting.

“Onourblood,” Wicker says, which isn’t how the promise goes. It’s supposed to be made onhisblood. On Lex’s blood.

Onourblood?

Swallowing, I grasp his forearm, knowing it’s a stupid ritual. A Baron ritual. A ritual Lex has always hated but tolerated.

But it’s still ours.

“On our blood,” I promise, squeezing.

The only thing that breaks me away from his gaze is the flash of crimson I see in my periphery. Immediately, I drop Wick’s hand, sucking in a sharp hiss. “What the fuck are you doing?” I knock Wicker’s knife out of Verity’s hand, wondering when she even took it.

The blood trickles down her pale skin—shallow cut, thank fuck—but when I snatch her wrist, she just turns it in my grip, those obstinate green eyes trapping mine. “This is how it goes, right? Now our blood is yours?”

When she strains up to brush our lips together, my fingers flutter over the curve of her belly. “Don’t,” I whisper when we break away, resting my forehead against hers. “Don’t take himaway from me.” She doesn’t ask who I’m talking about—our son or Wicker, maybe even Lex too—which is good, because I couldn’t give an answer.

I just know that I’m nothing without all four of them.

She responds by touching my cheek, the scent of blood and old rain heady in the air between us. “Never.” She breathes, “On our blood.”