Page 61 of The Beast's Broken Angel

“You're being an idiot.” She entered without invitation, settling into the chair across my desk with imperial grace. “But that's hardly unusual. What is unusual is punishing Noah for having the audacity to save your life.”

“He drugged me.” The words came out petulant, childish even to my own ears. “In the middle of an operation. He compromised?—”

“He loved you enough to choose your life over your revenge.” Sophia's interruption was gentle but implacable. “And you're too much of a coward to admit that terrifies you more than Harrison ever could.”

“I don't?—”

“Spare me.” She waved away my protest with one elegant hand. “I've watched you for weeks, Adrian. The way you look at him. The way you soften when he enters a room. The way you've let him past defences no one else has breached since the fire.”

“Those defences exist for a reason.”

“Yes. To keep you alone.” Her voice gentled. “To keep you safe from the pain of loss. But darling, you can't lose what you never allow yourself to have.”

I stared at the tactical maps, unable to meet her knowing gaze. “Harrison?—”

“Will still be there tomorrow. And the day after.” She rose with careful dignity, pausing at the door. “But men like Noah? Men who'll walk through fire for you, who'll betray your trust to save your life? They're rarer than you think. And they don't wait forever.”

She left me alone with that truth, and I hated her for it.

I found Noah by accident. Or maybe by design. I’d been avoiding the east wing for days, telling myself the shoulder would heal on its own. It wouldn’t. The stitches were too tight, the skin around them hot and aching. Infection wasn’t something I could out-stubborn.

I followed the sound of laughter. Not Noah’s—lighter, feminine.

It led me to the conservatory Sophia had converted into an art studio last winter. The light slanted gold across the tiled floor, catching on the edges of stacked canvases and ink-stained glass jars. And there they were.

Noah sat beside Isabelle’s wheelchair, both of them hunched over what looked like medical textbooks. But no—closer now, I saw the pages were anatomy plates. Antique. The kind you didn’t find in hospitals. The kind you inherited or stole.

“The detail is extraordinary,” Isabelle said, tracing a finger over a dissection. “Look how he captured the muscle striations. This isn’t just documentation—it’s obsession.”

“Disturbing obsession,” Noah said, his voice warm with the kind of curiosity that made my chest clench. “Beautiful and terrible at the same time.”

They moved around each other like this was normal. Comfortable. Easy. Like grief and darkness hadn’t shaped them both. Watching them made something inside me twist.

Why the hell was she here ?

“You didn’t tell me she was visiting,” I said, my voice low as I stepped into the doorway.

Noah looked up. The smile slipped off his face like a mask. “Sophia arranged it. The hospital’s upgrading the air filtration in her wing. One-day visit. Nothing strenuous.”

“You brought her here?” I said, sharper than I meant to. “To Ravenswood?”

“She wanted to see the studio. Sophia approved it.”

I looked at Isabelle. She didn’t flinch.

“How much does she know?”

“Enough,” Noah said quietly.

I narrowed my eyes. “She knows what this place is?”

“She knows what you are,” Isabelle said, her tone flat.

The air went cold.

“You told her?” I asked.

“I didn’t need to,” Noah said. “She figured it out on her own.”

Isabelle wheeled herself a few inches closer, gaze steady on me. “I’m not na?ve, Adrian. I grew up in hospitals and back rooms where people talked like patients weren’t listening. I saw the way your men moved. I know the difference between security and control.”

“You shouldn't be anywhere near this.”

“Maybe. But here I am.”

I looked at Noah again. “You trusted her with this?”

“I didn’t give her anything she didn’t already understand,” he said. “She’s not afraid of you.”

“She should be.”

Isabelle let out a soft, derisive laugh. “Please. You’re terrifying, sure. But Noah isn’t. And I see how he looks at you. That tells me everything I need to know.”

Noah tensed beside her. I saw it. Felt it.

She turned to him, gathering her sketchbook with sharp movements. “And you. Stop looking like you’re about to argue. He saved your life. You saved his soul, or whatever’s left of it. You chose him, Noah. And he’s punishing you for it because he’s too scared to admit it goes both ways.”

The words dropped like bricks.

Noah’s knuckles went white on the edge of the table. My throat locked.

Before either of us could respond, the door creaked open again. Sophia entered, elegant as always, carrying a light jacket.

“Isabelle,” she said gently. “The garden’s ready.”

That was all. A prompt. No judgment. No smile.

“Try not to emotionally implode while I’m gone,” Isabelle muttered as she rolled past us. “Or do. At this point, a dramatic argument might do you both some good.”

She wheeled herself out without a backward glance. Sophia followed with a final, unreadable look in our direction, and then the door closed behind them.

Silence.

“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Noah said, but he wouldn’t look at me.

“Is she wrong?”

He finally met my gaze. And for a second, I saw it—everything he wasn’t saying.

“You gave me a reason,” I said, stepping closer. “When I asked what Harrison would want with you. You said you'd do anything for your sister. That family came first. But that wasn’t why you saved me.”

Noah stood there, too still. The silence was louder than a scream.

“No,” he said softly. “It wasn’t.”

“Then why?”

His voice cracked a little. “You already know.”

I did. Christ, I did .

I crossed the space between us before I could stop myself, backing him up against the wall in one clean motion. Not with anger. With need. Desperation. Clarity.

“I should hate you,” I said, my voice low. “You took my revenge. My choice. Everything I waited decades for.”

“I know.” His hands rose to my chest—tentative, but there. “I’d do it again.”

“I know.” I swallowed hard. “That’s what terrifies me.”

“Adrian.” Just my name, but weighted with everything we couldn't say. Wouldn't say. Not yet.

I kissed him instead of speaking, pouring twenty years of loneliness and rage and need into the contact. He responded instantly, desperately, like he'd been drowning and I was air. Maybe we both were drowning. Maybe we always had been.

When we finally broke apart, both breathing hard, I rested my forehead against his. “This doesn't change anything. Harrison still dies. The war still comes.”

“I know.” Noah's hands fisted in my shirt, holding on like I might disappear. “But you'll let me keep you alive through it?”

“You going to drug me again if I say no?”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “Probably.”

“Then I suppose I don't have a choice.” But we both knew that was a lie. I'd had a choice from the moment he walked into my life. I'd just been too much of a coward to admit it.

“Your shoulder really does need treatment,” Noah said after a moment, professional concern mixing with whatever this was between us.

“In a minute.” I wasn’t ready to let go yet, wasn’t ready to return to the cold reality of war planning and revenge. I pressed my face into the curve of his neck, breathing him in. “Tell me about those anatomy texts first. Why were you and Isabelle studying them?”

Noah pulled back slightly, something shifting in his expression. “ When we mentioned the illustrations to Isabelle, she immediately recognized the style—Victorian-era, focused on nerve damage and pain response. She thinks they might have belonged to?—”

“Dr. Edmund Thorne.” The name tasted like poison. “Victorian asylum doctor who disappeared after his 'experiments' were exposed in the 1890s. His work supposedly ended up in private collections, used by intelligence services during both world wars.”

“You know about him?”

“I saw one of his books in Harrison's library once.” The memory surfaced unwillingly. “Wondered what it was doing there among all the legitimate medical texts. Now I understand he wasn't just collecting historical curiosities.”

“Now you think he was studying those methods,” Noah finished.

“He groomed me.” The realisation hit with sickening clarity. “From the moment he pulled me from that fire, he was shaping me into what he needed. A weapon pointed at my own family's interests while he played the loyal advisor.”

“Adrian.” Noah's hand found my scarred cheek, thumb tracing the ruined tissue with gentleness that still surprised me. “He underestimated you. You're more than what he tried to make you.”

“Am I?” I caught his hand, holding it against my face. “I've killed more people than I can count. Tortured men for information, for punishment, sometimes just because I could. I'm exactly the monster he created.”

“You're the man who protected my sister when you didn't have to. Who built a criminal empire on loyalty rather than just fear. Who let me close enough to hurt you.” Noah's eyes held mine. “Monsters don't do that. Men do.”

I wanted to believe him. Wanted to be the man he somehow saw beneath the scars and blood. But Harrison was still out there, protected by powers greater than any crime family could match. And I was still the same damaged weapon he'd forged in childhood flames.

“The war's going to get worse,” I warned. “Harrison has government backing. Military resources. He'll come for everyone I care about.”

“Then we'd better make sure we're ready,” Noah said simply. Like it was that easy. Like choosing to stand beside me wasn't signing his own death warrant.

“You're either very brave or very stupid,” I told him.

“Probably both.” That ghost smile returned. “Now let me look at that shoulder before it gets infected and I have to sedate you again.”

I laughed despite everything, the sound surprising us both. “Threats already? We've been reconciled for all of five minutes.”