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The silence was almost loud enough to dance through the room with a pair of fucking pointe slippers on.
“All right, well, I won’t ask questions about whatever it is that’s going on between the two of you. It obviously has some history on it.”
I grit my teeth. You could fucking say that.
“There’s a problem with this…” Cash murmurs, his finger working his upper lip. He’s grown his hair out a lot, with it now needing to be tied into a pretty little bun.
“And what’s that?” I run my tongue over my teeth before baring them like a fucking wolf.
“Well, there’s a color that we have to call, you know, to let others know that she’s off-limits. So I’ll ask since no one else has the balls to do it. Are you gonna soak her in your blood so that the rest of the wolves know she’s claimed?” He even went as far as explaining why we call it “red.”
A menacing chuckle rocked through me while leaning back in my chair and keeping my eyes on his. Locked on his pretty blues, I don’t falter until the blacks of mine drown his. “I’m not calling red on her because it’s not like that.”
“Then she’s going to be fair game if she starts hanging around like I fear she may be. I mean, we all know what happened with—” Cash pauses when a loud click cracks through the air.
My eyes shoot straight to the head of the table where Bishop has his Desert Eagle pressed right against Cash’s temple.
Cash doesn’t unlock his eyes from mine, though his smirk is cocky enough for Bishop to see.
My lip curves up, because I already know why he’s landed himself in shit.
“—say her fucking name, motherfucker, and King or no King, your brains will be sprayed over the walls.” Bishop is bluffing, he wouldn’t actually kill a King. That’s never happened, with the exception of Lucan.
I can’t hold in my laughter, and my head hits the back of the chair as I flash a god-honest authentic smile right at Cash. “Ahhh, you were saying?”
Cash rolls his eyes. “You know what happened to she who shall not be named and Tillie. No one called it on them for a while. There were almost two ‘throuples’ that happened. It’s in our history books that this happens.”
There’s another long stretch of silence before I start flicking that same Zippo around between my fingers. “No one will touch Saint,” I say with calm assertion.
“You know this?” Cash fires back, and I have to stop myself from reaching over the table, latching on to his throat, and tearing it straight from his spine.
“Fact, I know it.”
“How so?”
My lip curls. “Because fucking with a girl who is owned by me is far scarier than fucking with someone who has been drowned in the blood of her lover.” I pause, tilting my head while keeping my eyes trained on his. “Care to test that theory?”
Cash blows out a loud inhale of breath, flopping backward onto his chair and shaking his head. “I swear to fuck, you’re all crazy.”
“And you’re not?” I quirk a brow.
Cash winks. “Not that crazy. I’m sure you’re right…” We all relax a little when Bishop tucks away his gat. Trigger-happy Bishop. He’s just like the old Bishop, only more wounded.
“That still leaves one thing,” Bishop says from the head of the table. “She needs to know about me and Tillie. About Hector, Brantley. It’s safer for her to know, and on top of that, we have outside threats that will most likely be after her if it has gotten out that after all this time, Hector had himself a little” —deep breath and then slowly through gritted teeth—“Swan.”
Brantley
Fourteen years old
Dea was what I called her when she walked into our house for the first time. She was a child. Toddler. But different. Her voice had a tone that I had never heard. I sometimes wondered if it was because of her first years being spent in some fucked orphanage.
“Brantley? Are you home?” There was a knock on my door, but my mouth slammed closed, my fingers flexing in my palm. I didn’t hate her, but I should.
Fuck, I should hate her. She’s a Swan.
The door opened, spilling the hallway light into my room.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to. My body was aching, blood spilling from my nose, leaving the toxic taste of metal sticking to the back of my throat.
What the fuck did she want?
If I don’t answer, she’ll obviously go away.
But she didn’t. She took the few steps into my bedroom and kicked the door closed behind herself, cutting off what light was coming through.
I held my breath. Did she know I was in here? Probably not. What the fuck is she doing.
The mattress sank beside me. “Can I sleep in here?”