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Chapter Seven

Roland

There are only two truths I’m sure of in this moment: I’m stupid obsessed with Vanessa fucking Theriot, and I’m absolutely going to kill something.

I weigh the two realities, calculating how my obsession will be affected by the murders I’m about to enact, and unfortunately, I don’t much care for the math. I need to keep them alive, keep them alive, keep them alive. Don’t kill the reporters. Not in public, anyway. They need to look like accidents . So I spiral, imagining a host of deaths, each one clandestine and utterly spectacular.

Standing on a raised platform, a sea of reporters staring up at me, I can handle. What I’m struggling to swallow are the nerves emanating from the woman standing to my left. She isn’t speaking yet, but she has agreed to, and she’s a nervous fucking wreck. We stand side by side watching the Margerie woman field questions from reporters like she’s dodging bullets—impressive—but Vanessa’s on next.

Vanessa. My girlfriend.

My cheeks heat at the thought and then, when I glance down at her, heat some more. Even if they are making her uncomfortable, the reporters have to live. Vanessa likes her job. I can’t fuck this up for her.

I clench my teeth so hard, I wonder how my jaw doesn’t crack, and of course Vanessa takes that moment to look up at me and meet my gaze, her pretty dark-chocolate eyes widening. I watch her pupils shrink and bite back a curse at the wild fear that flashes across her face. I’ve put fear in her eyes before, regardless of whether I meant to do it, and I do not like it. I need to get my shit together.

But I can’t.

Because—and see exhibits A and B—I’m obsessed with Vanessa fucking Theriot, and because she’s literally shaking next to me, I’m going to kill something.

Everything.

I force a smile to reassure her that I’m not pissed with her, but I can tell it doesn’t work when she quickly snaps her focus forward to Margerie, who continues fielding reporters’ questions about the COE’s newest Champion —the Wyvern. Me.

The reporters want to know about the contract’s worth (obscene) and how this affects the balance between good guys and bad (I’m the tipping vote, making the two sides even). I know that the COE bought me simply so the villains couldn’t have me, which pissed the villains the fuck off if the Marduk’s assault on the COE headquarters is any indication. Money didn’t have anything to do with why I took the contract, though.

I glance again at Vanessa and watch her shuffle her note cards in a way that keeps my fists flexing. I have to fight the desire to rip those stupid cards out of her hand and get her the fuck out of here.

Never thought twice about a human before I walked into that conference room and saw her standing there, looking so surprised to see me, it was as if she and I had already met. I literally never gave two shits about any of them. Didn’t care when I was with the SDD morons at their facilities. Didn’t care when they put me with a host family who tried to get me to celebrate Christmas. I don’t read their letters now. I’ve never sent a response. I’ve spent my entire life—that of it that I can remember, anyway—bored and unable to escape the feeling that I’m waiting for something ...

I think I might have found it. And I’m not letting her go until I’m sure.

They call me hero now, but I’m a bad fucking dude. I want to kidnap her. If she hadn’t agreed to let me move in with her, I might have had to.

Because there’s something about those cards and that perfectly neat, tiny handwriting and the way she wears her hair big enough to disappear into that gives me a fucking headache and fills my whole chest with this hollow ringing sound, a gong in an empty temple. I don’t know what to do with the feeling—haven’t known since I laid eyes on her. Freaked out, I’d tried to get rid of her. Hadn’t set us off on the right foot exactly, so right now I just shuffle mine and try to keep it together.

My fingers tap against my thigh, feeling the cold weight of my brand-spanking-new COE cell phone in my new sweats. I stick my hands into my pockets, feeling like a jackass as I’m caught off guard again, this time by an unfamiliar bout of self-awareness.

I knew I should have dressed up for this when I woke up this morning, but I didn’t even know where to start. I’ve never dressed up for anything before in my life. And now I’m out here in sweats representing my girlfriend and her business—her company, a company that’s worth millions and that she owns —like a goddamn slob.

Fuck.

I haven’t shaved. Didn’t cut my hair. Meanwhile, hers is all glittery in the sunny day, big curls like clouds around her soft, slightly rounded cheeks, hiding her too-small ears, two clips on either side of her part. Lavender. Like her shirt. It’s a simple lavender button-up sweater paired with light-blue jeans. I don’t know which of them officially dressed her, but it was a ludicrous fucking choice.

It makes her look young . I know she’s got to be over thirty, running her own firm and all, but she looks twelve, and I’m gonna look like a goddamn pervert standing next to her, staring down at her note cards, which are way too close to her tits. It’s gonna look like I’m staring down her shirt in the photos. It’s modest, but still, she’s got ... her tits, they’re ... proportional, I mean. They’re not so small that it would look like I was staring past them, is all that I mean. That’s all.

Fuck this, maybe I should just kidnap her, I think, rubbing my jaw.

She stiffens suddenly, and I flinch, worried I mighta said the thought out loud. When I look up though, I see Margerie gesturing for Vanessa to approach the podium studded with a dozen different microphones and swathed in plexiglass. Bulletproof plexiglass.

Vanessa leaves my side, and I glance out at the crowd, eyes narrowing, gaze assessing every single fucking person and then expanding out toward the security perimeter the COE has set up. The gong in my chest is ringing again softly, just enough to grab my attention and make me want to grab her and wrench her back against me.

I don’t know what it is, but when I first saw her, every instinct in my body told me to do one thing: protect her. I feel that again now.

I can feel fire in my mouth and smoke wafting from my nostrils as I take a step, but Margerie, damn the woman, deftly veers away from where she’d been headed. She hooks my elbow and gives it a menacing squeeze as she passes in front of me to take the space Vanessa just vacated. She makes a face that’s frankly terrifying, lips peeling back from her teeth like she’s going to lurch forward and take a bite out of my cheek.

“What are you doing?” she hisses, spinning around with a smile on her face. She lets go of my arm after giving it a final bruising pinch. A threat.

“This is fucked,” I say, keeping my teeth clenched.

She smiles brightly and speaks to me in a closed-mouth grimace. “We’ve barely started. You can’t ruin this yet.”

“She’s scared. Pull her.”

“She’s tough. Don’t cut the legs out from under her.”

Heat burns through me, hot and impulsive, but her words have their intended effect and keep me grounded. I scan the skies one more time before returning my attention to Vanessa as she reaches the podium, using a small step stool to put her in the right place at the mics that Margerie hadn’t needed to use with her heels and her height.

I don’t think the Marduk would be up for an attack two days in a row, not in the shape I left him. I managed to burn him badly from ankle to groin. I wanted to take his cock for being such a pain in my ass, but the bastard managed to throw me off before he took off. He’ll heal fast—all of us Forty-Eight heal faster than humans—but we don’t heal instantly . I don’t doubt he’ll be thinking of me over the next week every time he goes to take a piss.

The unofficial head of the VNA, the Marduk is a big blond bastard with a thick beard and gruesome tattoos inked from his neck to his wrists—his kills. He’s got over twenty of ’em. Never bothered me before, but now, if I see him again within a hundred yards of Vanessa, I’m gonna rip those tatted arms off and beat him to death with ’em.

I hadn’t expected him to seek revenge after I rejected their bid—at least, not so quickly. Granted, I’d all but signed on the dotted line agreeing to join them and had also maybe even agreed to entertain the COE proposal only as a means of gathering intel on the COE headquarters—more specifically, how to break in. When I contacted the Marduk to let him know I was out and that I wouldn’t give him jack shit about what I’d learned, he was a little put out.

Yeah, I guess I should have expected the hit.

And that my response to it would be violent. I don’t like things touching her. Only me. And only with consent. I didn’t like the way it felt when she recoiled from me. I liked the way it felt when she swooned toward me after the Marduk attack, seated on Mr. Singkham’s desk. Whether she was aware she’d done it or not, I wanted her to do it again.

I rake my hand over my face roughly and then drag it back through my hair. For fuck’s sake, what’s happening to me?

The gong in my chest is gonging, Margerie is glaring, I’m glowering right back, COE security is circling, drones are buzzing overhead, the reporters are champing at the fucking bit to ask their questions, and Vanessa, goddammit, is making me see red.

She has a tiny little Band-Aid on her forehead—clear so reporters won’t be able to pick it up easily in photographs—as well as two on her neck and six on her arms and hands. Her fingers are fumbling the cards in front of her, and I tense as she drops one and it’s immediately swept away in a turbulent breeze.

“Fuck,” I hiss.

“Fuck,” Margerie repeats through clenched teeth. Margerie yanks at my wrist, and I can feel the bite of her hold briefly before she moves ahead of me and picks up the two—now four—cards Vanessa let fall.

“You got this,” I hear her whisper to Vanessa, too low for human ears to hear. What I don’t hear is Vanessa’s response. She just stares at Margerie like she’s about to beg the taller woman to grab her around the waist and whisk her out of there.

Margerie can’t do that, but I can—already would have, if Margerie hadn’t returned to me with a look on her face and hissed, “Give her a chance.”

Give her a chance. I rub my chest where it aches, not soothed at all when Vanessa speaks into the microphone in a voice that’s way too loud at first. “Hello. I’m ... sorry. Sorry. I, um ... I am Vanessa Theriot. I know many of you may have seen me in the video ... oh no. That’s not the right one.”

She flips through her cards, searching for whatever she’s searching for, all that neat little handwriting utterly worthless in the face of her fumbling. I’ve seen this woman’s proposals. Heard how she talks to her team. Her competence makes me wanna perform hara-kiri because I know I’m not worthy and then shove my organs back into the slit of my stomach just to perform the ritual all over again knowing that I’m the reason she’s in this position. I forced her to be here.

She said no to the proposal. But then she changed her mind. I still don’t know what happened to make her agree. It wasn’t the Marduk attack; she said she’d take on the Lois Lane contract before that, when I was busy being an asshole. Why’d she agree? I’ve been a dick. And she’s been a clumsy, perfect little thing.

Fire shimmers across the backs of my hands. I roll out my wrists and force calm.

“Come on,” Margerie hisses beside me.

“I’m ending this,” I say, louder this time.

“Wait—” Margerie grabs the back of my hoodie as I take a step.

Vanessa must hear the commotion because she turns and takes a sideways shuffle that has the edge of her foot tipping off the step stool—a small, easily corrected mistake that she resolves by flinging the cards out of her hands like they’re covered in snakes. They hit the glass barrier, some hit the ground, and one gets picked up by the wind and tossed into the sea of reporters, who all reach out to try to grab it.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. The microphone makes that terrible squeaking sound, and I grimace. “I’m a little nervous.” Her words get her a responding chuckle from the crowd, but she doesn’t laugh, and it no longer feels so much like they’re laughing with her but at her. Her hands clutch the top of the podium, her forearms bracketing the mic. The wind pushes her hair in front of her face, and she doesn’t bother to brush it back.

“I, um ... I was a little nervous on Friday, too, in case it wasn’t clear in the photos.” She gives an awkward little chuckle, but this time no one laughs with her. A journalist in the front shoots her hand into the air, taking advantage of Vanessa’s pause. Give her a fucking minute . These reporters are goddamn cannibals.

“I, um ...” Vanessa clearly spots the journalist. Her arm waving in the air encourages several other journalists to raise their hands too. Vanessa’s stutter gets worse. “My company’s s-small, and I was pretty sure we wouldn’t—shouldn’t—even be considered for the bid with Roland’s and my r-r-r ...” She’s not gonna be able to get through the word. She tucks her hair behind her ear. Her fingers fumble over the podium as she searches for the nearest note card. She fumbles that too.

“Are you trying to say relationship ?” the journalist who shot her hand up into the air first shouts without prompting.

Beside me, Margerie lurches forward half an inch. Her bottom jaw juts out, and she’s baring her teeth again, and I take that as the final signal I need.

“All right, enough,” I hiss. Margerie grabs my arm, but this time I shake her off, look her dead in the eye, and say evenly, “I got this.” I can hear the rapid increase of drones’ tempos as they whoosh closer, frenzied by my sudden movement as I halve the distance to Vanessa.

“Are you suggesting that you and the Pyro are in a relationship?” a reporter shouts.

Vanessa makes a soft sound that guts me and nods.

“And that’s why you threw up on him?” another journalist stupidly blurts.

“I ... no ... of course not ...”

Vanessa doesn’t hear or see me coming, so she doesn’t step off the step stool as I reach it and bracket her arms with my own, lining her back with the front of my body. I slam one fist onto the edge of the podium and let it erupt in flame as I point at the last journalist who spoke.

“Don’t ask my girl stupid fucking questions.”

I field question after question, shooting reporters down and getting them off her back while she rigidly stands there, refusing to lean even one inch of her back against me. And when it’s all over and we’re back in the safety of a quiet conference room in the COE building, Vanessa turns to me and looks up at me with those big doe eyes, a single note card still nervously clenched in her right fist.

She says, “Thank you, Roland.” I feel the fabric of my being shift. And that’s it. It’s decided. She’s mine.

I’m gonna grab her, steal her, take her away so nobody can fucking find her again ...

No. That’s what a madman would do. My hands flinch and react toward her in menacing, kidnappery pulses that she doesn’t seem to notice, and I know that if I stay here another second, she’s going to make a villain out of me. So I do the only thing I can do to avoid committing a crime as everything within me says to snatch . Kidnap kidnap kidnap.

I take a step back, get the fuck away from her, and take to the sky.