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CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

R onin’s leg bounced beneath the dining table in Mireille’s apartment. He was more nervous about tonight’s outcome than he was about Cassandra’s appeal.

Cass herself paced before the fireplace despite Tristan’s calm presence beside him.

Ronin wanted to know what Tristan had found in those ledgers. What Cassandra had seen in that memory. But most of all, he wanted Mireille to walk through that door.

Right fucking now.

Creator, if that scarred, blond-headed fuck had put his hands on her in any way, Ronin would?—

The bell tinkled, and Ronin released a relieved sigh at the same time as Cassandra breathed out, “Thank the High Gods” and raced for the apartment door.

She whipped it open and Mireille strode in, refusing to look at him. She pulled her cloak tighter. “I need a shower.”

Ronin wanted to flip the table and slam his fists through the wall.

Twenty minutes later, Mireille was seated next to him, her eyes a bit less dead and glazed—a small mercy.

“Signys,” Cassandra pronounced from Tristan’s lap. “The dragon’s name is Signys. And not that I want to feel any kind of sympathy for Aedelmar, but what Arran Zephyrus did to him, what your father did to him—” she looked at Tristan “—was pretty awful. He has a daughter who survived. I jumped into her present at the end of the memory, but she was asleep. Mireille pulled me out before I could see where she was.”

Tristan tapped the cuff on the table. “I’ll contact Cael right now.”

“What did you find in the ledgers?” Ronin asked, bracing himself.

Tristan speared him with a hopeful glance. “Her name wasn’t anywhere in those ledgers, Matakos.”

Adrenaline surged through Ronin in a heady rush. He wanted to speak, wanted to ask another question, but he couldn’t make his mouth work. Could barely hear his own thoughts over the agonized howling of his wolf.

“What does that mean?” Cassandra asked, her voice miles away.

“It means,” Mireille said, “that Selene may have been arrested.

“But she was never sent to Tartarus.”

After a blocks-long chase through moon-slick streets, Mireille finally found Ronin’s colossal white wolf atop the wall at the city’s edge, howling at the stars.

She shifted back into her Fae form, then ambled over to the wall. “Please come down from there.”

His white muzzle swiveled down to her. Shadows hid his face, so she couldn’t see his expression as he executed a three-story jump that would have injured a smaller creature. He walked toward her, claws clacking on the cobblestones.

Despite the hour, other prisoners roamed about, sending furtive glances their way.

The white wolf settled onto his haunches before Mireille, then lay down fully, resting his head on his paws.

Moonlight crawled over his scar, no longer hidden behind the patch Ronin wore in his Fae form, and Mireille sucked in a sharp breath.

It was vicious . A jagged, silver slash devoid of fur where his eye should have been.

She ran a tentative finger across it and the wolf whimpered, but made no move to retaliate.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice choking with emotion. “I’m sorry I did this to you.”

White fur rippled, then Ronin himself stood before her, one eye red-rimmed and the patch once again covering the other.

“She was never here,” he croaked.

“I heard,” Mireille responded. Pointlessly. She didn’t know what else to say. She almost wished he’d stayed in his wolf form.

He staggered over to a bench and flopped down, dropping his head into his hands. Mireille sat beside him, close, but not touching.

“I’m the reason she’s gone,” Ronin whispered, so quietly that Mireille wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly.

“What?”

Ronin sat up and leaned against the bench, tipping his head back and rubbing at his patch. “I’m the reason she was arrested.”

Mireille didn’t respond. His tone was penitent. And she had a feeling he wasn’t done confessing.

“She didn’t tell me.” Devastation crumpled Ronin’s face, years of guilt and regret. “I had no idea she was going to be there. If I had, I never would have… I would have been the one to… It was the only way to protect my cover within the Imperial Defense Council. I gave up the name of the rebel cell’s location and Selene was… She didn’t have time to escape before they caught her. It’s all my fault.” He turned to face Mireille, his sensuous mouth twisted into a grimace. “I threw myself into Tartarus for nothing.”

Mireille closed her eyes against the blow.

She’d already endured so much. Two centuries within this Creator-foresaken place, all those Harvest Nights she’d survived, the endless, unrelenting captivity. Not to mention what she’d done earlier. Putting her body and scars on display for those asshole Brethren, letting the Koenig himself paw her, kiss her…

Ronin’s words were worse than all those atrocities combined.

She felt flimsy. Brittle. Bright hot. Like molten glass that might shatter at the smallest tap before it had a chance to fully harden.

And all she wanted to do was hurl the shards at him. To use what she knew of his and Selene’s history to wound him as much as he’d just wounded her.

“Maybe if you hadn’t been coddling Selene for her whole life, she might have had a chance of escaping that raid.”

Ronin went preternaturally still. “What the fuck did you just say?”

She pushed the hood of her cloak back and shoved a finger into his chest. “You left her there in that cottage in Denevrae by herself for years. Living in her little bubble.”

“That was her choice!”

“Was it?”

Ronin’s hand was immediately at her throat. He dragged her off the bench and into a dark alley, slamming her into the wall.

Exactly the reaction she’d been seeking. Her thighs clenched even as her wolf whined, This might not be the smartest way to get what you want.

I thought you liked him dangerous and savage , Mireille responded.

Yeah, dangerously, savagely sexy . Not murderous .

Mireille huffed a laugh. Same difference .

He snarled, gnashing his fangs so close to her throat that they grazed her skin. “Say that again. I fucking dare you.”

Mireille didn’t back down an inch. Pressed her neck against his hold. She loaded her gaze with every ounce of her hatred, of her longing, of her hurt and anger. His fingers jumped with her pulse.

Pushing down her feelings, pretending they’d been nothing to each other, wasn’t working.

Time to blow it all to fucking pieces and see where they landed.

She narrowed her eyes. “After two hundred years, you came here for your sister.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. She didn’t care that he saw it. “Not me.”

She felt wretched and stupid and selfish and pathetic that she was jealous of Selene. A female who, by all accounts, was a good person. A kind person.

Far kinder than Mireille had ever been.

Sorrow cracked her voice. “Did you ever think about me? Even once?”

Ronin squeezed her throat harder, cutting off her breath as he leaned in closer.

His answer was a serrated blade, ripping through her vital bits. “I thought about you every minute, of every hour, of every fucking day. Kind of hard not to after the damage you did.”

Salty tears dripped over her lips. “I told you I was sorry about your eye, Ronin, I?—”

He slammed her into the wall. Hard.

“It has nothing to do with my eye!” His roar shook her bones. “You broke my heart , Mireille.” Softer. Shattered. “You broke my fucking heart.”

The words echoed off the cobblestones at her feet, the brick at her back. They died somewhere deep within her, buried beneath her ribs.

She lifted her chin, pushing her throat into his hand. Giving herself over to his wrath, she whispered, “Punish me for it.”

His golden-blue eye blazed with rage and that simmering lust she’d seen so often this past month. His claws punched out, piercing her skin, and blood trickled down her neck onto her cloak. “Is that what you want, little she-wolf?”

“Yes,” she breathed as her eyes slid closed.

His savage chuckle shivered across her limbs. “I don’t think you have the faintest fucking idea what you’re asking for. I won’t be gentle with you. I don’t give a shit about your pleasure. I’ll take whatever I want, and you’ll be a whimpering mess when I’m done with you.”

Creator save her, liquid heat gushed between her legs. “Then do it.” She wielded her words like a dagger. “You fucking coward.”

He snarled and spun her around, shoving her face against the brick. It caught her cheekbone, splitting skin, and she welcomed the pain. He tore off her cloak, ripped down her leggings, then sliced a claw through her panties. The ruined silk settled at her feet.

Brisk night air cooled her bare flesh as he snatched her wrists in a single hand, then drove them up over her head. Metal clinked as he unfastened his belt and she began panting against the wall.

No one she’d been with had ever understood how much she needed this. How roughly she wanted to be treated. But Ronin had always known. Even now, at his mercy and with his foul threats ringing in her ears, her core was molten. Aching for this.

Aching for him .

She bit her lip to cage a groan as Ronin rubbed the swollen head of his cock up and down her slit from behind. He pushed in slowly, too slowly, hovering just inside her entrance.

“ Please ,” she begged.

He licked up her throat, then bit down on her earlobe, his hot breath tickling her sensitive skin. A shudder pounded through her body as he growled a command into her ear, “Don’t you dare fucking come until I say so.”

He thrust into her. Hard enough that she nearly passed out at the delicious pain. She had just enough breath to support the moan that blasted up her throat.

“Louder.” He set a bruising pace, then latched his fingers into her mouth, fish-hooking her cheek. Saliva spilled down her chin. “Fucking louder . Let the entire city hear you howl for me.”

The fingers of his other hand dug into her hip as he bounced her off his cock, using her body to get himself off.

But this was not about pleasure. This was about possession. Ownership. Ronin staking his claim to what had been rightfully his for centuries.

Her clit throbbed at the thought, and she slipped her fingers between her thighs. He snatched her wrist and smacked her palm against the bricks.

“Don’t,” he snarled, pumping into her in time with his commands. “I told you—” thrust “—not to—” thrust “—fucking come.” Thrust. “ This pretty cunt is mine. I’ll decide if she gets what she needs.”

Footsteps of the city’s night owls echoed beyond the alley. Maybe some were even lurking out there, watching them. Watching Ronin use her body. Her nipples tightened beneath her shirt and part of her wished he’d stripped her totally naked. Let everyone see her shame, see how wet and needy she was for the male who’d killed her father. The male who’d left her in this prison to rot.

The male who’d broken her heart as well.

Ronin’s hand on her hip tightened, and his thrusts became frenzied. He was nearly there. He coasted a hand up her spine and grabbed a fistful of her hair. “Tell me you hate this.”

“I hate it,” she moaned, palms flat against the wall, hips canted to let him in deeper. “I hate you . So fucking much.”

So much that she didn’t hate him at all.

“I hate you, too, love,” he whispered, then latched his fangs to the back of her neck, holding her in place as he drove into her.

He circled a gentle fingertip across her tender clit and she exploded. Came so hard that the entire alley disappeared. And moaned his name loudly enough that every prisoner within a hundred-foot radius likely heard her.

A strangled groan tore past his teeth, heating her neck as he spilled into her. He collapsed against her back, and she rested her face atop her folded hands on the wall.

The gossamer-light caress of his lips across the back of her neck was so gentle she wasn’t even sure it was real.

He pulled out of her, a long, luxurious slide, and shoved away from the wall, his seed oozing down her inner thigh.

She didn’t turn as he pulled up his pants, refastened his belt, then tossed her cloak against her back.

He slipped out of the alley, leaving her to stew in the mess they’d made. The mess she’d asked for.

She glanced down at her feet, at the ruined silk shreds that used to be her panties.

Once upon a time, she and Ronin had been two fractured souls who’d found comfort in each other’s damage.

But how could they ever find comfort in the damage they’d done to each other?