Page 6 of Queen Crow
He might actually die.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Aodhan mumbles as he moves to wade into the fray, but Lips shuts him down with a stern look and a shake of her head.
"Ash, I will get involved if you can't control yourself. This is your last warning before I join in, and I'm not sure you want that."
He doesn't.
He really doesn't, because if there's even a tiny chance that she might get hurt, he'll lose his shit and none of us will be able to talk him down. It was her arms around his neck that had pulled him off of Aodhan without too much fight. I’ve always hated seeing him like this, mostly because I don't like seeing him getting hit, but there's something veryJoeyabout this complete loss of control over himself and that is terrifying. I know they're not the same, I know this is all for me and keeping me safe, but my brain just sees the manic need for vengeance and freaks the fuck out.
He hesitates for a second at her words, some sense finally filtering in, and Luca takes the opportunity to get out from underneath him, flipping him over and pushing up onto his feet again.
There’s another pause, like we’re all holding our breaths to see what will set him off next, but he pulls up onto his feet again, walking back over to pull me away from Aodhan and back into his arms.
Luca looks over at me and when I give him a curt shake of my head, he tips his own back at me, stalking out of the room to give us privacy once again.
For a second there, I’d forgotten I was in charge of all of this for now… until Atticus is back.
If he lives.
I feel like I can’t take a breath, my lungs will never fully fill again, and then the door opens again, startling me for a second before I realize that it’ll just be Harley and Morrison getting here a little too late to help.
“What the fuck happened here?”
I stiffen in Ash’s arms at the completely unfamiliar voice, and he growls under his breath as Lips snaps, “I told you to stay outside until I told you it was safe. You’re going to end up dead if you can’tlistenand follow instructions.”
I pull away from my brother to get a look at the guy who’s standing there staring around at all of the blood with a weird sort of detached interest. “Who the hell is that?”
Ash mutters back, “Another fucking Graves kid. Grimm owes us a fuckload of child support right now, because he’s a nightmare.”
The kid spins on his heel to grin over at Ash, and I get a proper look at him through the mass of dark curls on his head. It’s easier now to pick them all out because I know to focus on his eyes first. The smudges of kohl only make the bright depths of the blue even more striking. The rest of his face is different to Lips’ but there’s a little of Colt in him, maybe some of Senator Blakeley if I squint a little.
He looks young, some baby fat still in his cheeks, and there’s a faint scar running down one of his cheeks that’s still a little pink, not quite white yet. He’s more olive-skinned than his siblings and only a head taller than Lips, which makes him shorter than any of the guys in our family.
He’s also dressed in fishnet stockings under a pair of shorts with a tank top, wrists full of bracelets and leather cuffs, and a thin leather strap wrapped around his throat twice.
I have no idea who he is.
AninthGraves child? We need Grimm in a shallow grave and we need it to happen yesterday, before there’s a whole legion of children Lips feels responsible for.
I give Lips a look and murmur, “Where the hell did you find another Graves kid?”
She glances over at him and grimaces. “Meet Noah.”
Her words take a second to register before I blink back at her. “Noah. Your dead brother, Noah?”
“That’s the one.”
I turn to look at him again, but he’s so different from the terrible black and white photo I have pinned on my wall back at the mansion that I almost want to ask her if she’s sure. “What the hell happened?”
She groans quietly and rubs a hand over her face. “I found Wyatt, the cop. I spoke to him a little, but the second he heard I was from the Bay, he freaked. Wanted nothing to do with me. Fuck, I thought Harley was going to murder him for how he spoke to me. It took me a few days, and after I got back from sorting Colt’s problem out… he told me about Noah. He needed some help wrangling the asshole.”
Ash snaps, “We should’ve asked ourselves then if we really wanted to take him on.”
I shoot him a look, but Noah finally takes some interest in what we’re saying and rolls his eyes at us. For a second, all I see is the sassy teenager we’d had appear in Lips’ hospital room last year. Despite the age gap the resemblance between him and Poe, it’s uncanny.
“Am I supposed to give a fuck about drug lords and the slums of the Bay? This place isn’t to my taste.”
Lips rolls her eyes at him and then floors me by saying, “The only thing thatisto your taste is dick. Wyatt gave you to me to take care of; you can either shut the fuck up and live here nicely, or we can find you a nice basement to hide out in.”