Page 27

Chapter Twenty-Seven

BLAKE

T hree weeks.

That’s how long it’s been since our lives were flipped on their heads, shaken like a snow globe, and then, somehow, miraculously… allowed to settle. Not back into what it was before—I’m not that na?ve—but into something that resembles a routine. A rhythm. Nightmares have faded. Locks have held. Alarms haven’t blared. Threats haven’t materialized. The guards that Malachi stationed near our home have become familiar shadows I glimpse and then forget. At first, Charlie was glued to my hip every time we stepped outside. Now, she’s back to being a carefree child.

Everything about this new existence is strange, but not in the way I thought it would be. There’s still the stress of shows, of lighting failures, of dancers who miss cues and sound techs who are probably clinically allergic to punctuality. But my life doesn’t feel like it’s teetering anymore, ready to fall over with one wrong move.

After the break-in, Malachi had taken control of the situation with surgical precision. And for a few days, I resented that. I’m not used to relying on someone. I’ve been my own lifeline for too long. Charlie’s, too. Letting someone else take the reins of my safety—our safety—felt like admitting I couldn’t protect her. Couldn’t protect myself. But then he proved he could listen to me.

He’s stood beside me, steady and fierce, not as a jailor or commander or savior, but as someone who looked at both me and Charlie and chose to stay. Not out of obligation. Not to claim a prize. But because he wants to. Because we matter to him.

And that... changes things.

Kit seems to have apparently vanished off the face…of the earth. Malachi didn’t say it aloud, but I suspect that meant Kasar caught up with him. Or maybe someone else from the Nightshade’s clan. I haven’t asked. Part of me doesn’t want to know, not really. So long as it’s over, that’s all I care about.

What I do know is that things have been quiet. Blessedly so. No more creepy gifts. No more stalkers leaving bracelets or boxes or impossible notes. Malachi hasn’t said Kit’s name in two weeks. I haven’t let it cross my lips either.

We’ve built something like normal around the edges of the wreckage. It started simple: morning coffee and shared commutes when our schedules aligned, shared dinners when they didn’t. At first, it was just about practicality. He would pick up Charlie when something ran late at The Place and I couldn’t. Or grocery shop when I forgot something vital like mac and cheese or toilet paper. I pretend that something in me doesn’t twist with gratitude every time. Now, his toothbrush is in my bathroom. One of his jackets has made its way onto a hook in the entryway, and Charlie wrote his name on the magnetic chalkboard where we usually keep our meal plan.

“Mal— pancakes Tuesday,” spelled in pink dry erase, his name shortened by familiarity.

The board’s still that way two weeks later. To be fair, he’s actually really good at making pancakes.

He hasn’t officially moved in. Most of his things are still at the Clan House, and he disappears from time to time for business. But when he’s gone, he texts. If it’s going to be long, he calls. He’s consistent in a way that I’m not used to, and I don’t think I’ll ever be.

Even now, pulling my jacket tighter around my torso while dodging puddles on the uneven sidewalk, I can’t seem to stop smiling like some lovestruck idiot. It’s a crisp Saturday morning, early enough that the streets haven’t fully come alive yet. The Barrows always moves a little slower on weekends—more hungover musicians than tourists, more sleepy-eyed baristas than feral shifters post-heat cycle. I pass by a closed pawn shop, an empty laundromat blinking a single flickering red “OPEN,” and the sweet, yeasty bite with cinnamon sugar drifts toward me from around the corner. A second later, I catch sight of Shorty’s awning—white canvas riddled with raindrop stains and trailing ivy that’s stubbornly grown through every crack in the brick facade. There’s a chipped wooden sign bolted above the doorway with curling hand-painted letters that read: Shorty’s Corner.

A bell jingles when I enter, and warmth rushes up to greet me—sugary, buttery, and threaded with the scent of fresh basil and the herbal tea bar tucked into the corner. The sound of an espresso machine whirring to life buzzes softly in the background, layered under the gentle clink of ceramic and the low murmur of weekend gossip. The scratched, well-worn hardwood floor creaks in welcome. It’s perfect.

There’s only one table loud enough to belong to the crew I’m meeting.

It’s tucked near the window, where a slant of pale sun shoves its way past a struggling vine desperately clinging to the edge of the pane. Tonya sits at the head like some sort of brunch monarch, decked out in gold hoop earrings and a rust-red blazer that somehow matches her lipstick perfectly. Her sunglasses are still on, even though we’re indoors and not nearly bougie enough for that to be ironic. She’s stirring three packets of sugar into her double espresso with all the purpose of a woman about to conduct a war council.

Angela’s perched on one side, oversized cardigan attempting to swallow her whole while she aggressively types something into her phone with a grin so wide it borders on criminal. Penny, in a rose-print sundress and combat boots, is sipping from a massive mug that reads A Non-Zero Chance of Being Whiskey. Renée, the last to join this pastel chaos circle, has her pale pink hair pulled into twin buns and is adjusting her sparkling notebook against the table like she’s preparing to take sworn testimony.

“Ladies,” I say, sliding into the one empty chair and shrugging out of my jacket. “Do I need representation for this brunch, or can I plead the fifth preemptively?”

“You wish,” Tonya says, canceling out any sense of mercy by jabbing toward me with her stirring spoon.

“You’re fifteen minutes late,” Angela sniffs dramatically, without looking up from her phone. “I was about to stage a rescue mission.”

Renée slides the glittering notebook onto the table between us, where the cover sparkles with pitiless glee. “Operation Bite Me is now in session,” she declares, flipping it open. “Subject: Blake Taylor. Species: alleged vampire girlfriend. Status: deeply sus.”

“I cannot believe you brought your damn notebook,” I groan, pressing both hands over my face. “And ‘alleged’? Really?”

Penny snorts into her mug. “She’s deflecting. Classic vampire girlfriend behavior.”

Tonya grins. “It’s not every day my favorite girl has a glow-up courtesy of an undead mafioso with designer tastes and bottomless pockets.”

“He did not glow me up,” I grumble, sliding the laminated brunch menu in front of my face like it’s a shield. “I’m perfectly glowed on my own, thank you very much.”

“Blake.” Tonya levels me with the look. The one she gives unruly bouncers and especially dumb men. “No matter what a vibrator’s description says, it can’t make you look as well-fucked as you do right now.”

My mouth opens, but nothing—absolutely nothing—makes it past my tongue. I blink once, twice, then drop the menu to the table in surrender. The table erupts in a chorus of hoots and air-sucking laughter, Renée wheezing into her napkin like a drunk toddler and Angela beating out a rhythm on the table like she’s leading a marching band dedicated solely to my public humiliation.

“Confirmed,” Angela cackles, raising an imaginary stamp and slamming it down toward Renée’s notebook. “Stage Five Satisfi-vamp.”

I want to die. Or disappear. Or develop the ability to turn invisible. Then again, I’d miss this. Right here. My girls—loud and nosey and entirely too invested—and somehow exactly what I need. I can’t even pretend to be mad, because yeah…I do feel different.

Not just because of Malachi, either. Though, if we’re being honest, the man did rearrange my internal organs three times in the same night and still had the audacity to feed me breakfast like he hadn’t prayed over every curve of my body with his mouth.

But it’s more than sex. More than “boss and employee navigates complicated attraction.” It’s the way he looks at Charlie when she rambles about a building she saw while riding the bus. The way he keeps hot chocolate stocked in the kitchen for her, even when he’s not home. The precise moment he put a copy of my new house key on his key ring and said, “This isn’t because I think you can’t take care of yourself and Charlie. It’s because I need to know I can keep you safe.”

It’s how easy he fits into the rhythm of my life without stomping out the beat I’ve fought hard to keep alive.

So I take a breath… and I tell them everything.

Well, not everything .

I leave out the blood. The impossibly sexy fangs pressed to my neck. The way he’s fed from me and how it made me see stars in colors I didn’t even know existed. But I tell them about the break-in. About Kit. About how scary it all was, and how it hasn’t happened since. I tell them about Malachi showing up that night and how he didn’t ask me to be someone else—just helped me hold the line until I could breathe on my own again.

“Wait,” Penny says, leaning forward, coffee long forgotten. “So you’re telling us that after your stalker broke into your house, this Malachi—your vampire—showed up, handled the situation, and then basically moved in to play dad and watch trash TV with you and Charlie?”

I squirm in my seat, caught somewhere between defensive and flattered. “He hasn’t moved in.”

“Uh huh.” Angela cuts her eyes at me, scrolling on her screen again too smugly. “So he doesn’t have a key to your place?”

“If he has a toothbrush at your house, it counts,” Renée says, flipping a page in her cursed notebook. “If he has any clothes in your closet, it’s confirmation.”

“I’m with her on this one,” Penny murmurs. “Also, he sounds like the kind of man who calls you baby while he murders your enemies.”

I choke on my mimosa.

“He—he doesn’t call me baby,” I sputter, even though my face is heating up because he absolutely has. Softly. Once. Right before he pulled me onto his lap in his office and sank those wicked teeth into my neck again and—nope. Stop.

Tonya’s tone is soft with sincerity. “And Charlie?”

“She adores him,” I say quietly. “And not because he tries to win her over with stuff, though let’s be honest—he has done that too. But because he listens. And he never talks down to her. It’s like…” I trail off, searching for the right string to pull the thought free. “It’s like she feels seen. Like he respects her even though she’s twelve. And that means more to me than anything.”

Something cracks beneath my ribs. Not painfully. Just… wide enough to let more light in.

Tonya nods. “Sounds like he’s the real deal.”

“I think he might be,” I admit. The words lift something from my chest just to say them aloud, to acknowledge the truth of what I feel when he looks at me like I’m more than just some woman who pushed herself too hard for too long. Like I’m something worth fighting for.

By the time we leave Shorty’s, our bellies full of sugary carbs and mimosas, the morning has passed in a blur of stories, loud laughter, and warm reminders of sisterhood. We linger on the sidewalk, making promises to do this again next month—even though we all know schedules will get in the way and brunches might get pushed. Still, the promise feels real, grounding.

When I make it back home, I snort at the sight in the living room. Charlie’s already curled up on the couch with a bowl of cereal practically the size of her head. On either side of her are Eloise and Wren, both clad in different kinds of lazy weekend wear—Eloise in fuzzy purple pajama pants and Wren in what might actually be silk shorts and a matching camisole. I can hear someone in the kitchen, most likely Malachi.

I drop a kiss on top of Charlie’s hair and notice what the three of them are eating. “Is that Count Chocula?”

Malachi had filled me in on the silly revenge he takes against Lan, another vampire in the Inner Circle and Wren’s mate, when he annoys him.

“I have nothing to do with this!” his voice sails through the doorway between the kitchen and living room.

I raise a brow at Wren, the impossibly elegant vampire tech CEO. It still blows my mind that I’m getting used to having incredibly powerful people casually over at my house. For goodness’ sake, Eloise is literally considered the Queen of Vampires and she’s sitting next to my preteen giggling over some new dating show while eating cereal.

Wren has the decency to blush even though she rolls her golden eyes. She waves her spoon in the air as she clarifies. “He annoyed me. So he gets to deal with Emily all day and realize I took all of his favorite cereal with me.”

Eloise taps her spoon against her bowl. “He shouldn’t have messed with her calendar alerts. Now we all eat in victory.”

Wren takes another bite, then adds with a smirk, “Being mated to a vampire means accepting two things: dramatic retaliation and males who are obsessed with you.”

Charlie snorts. “Maybe you should have warned Mom. She blushes when Malachi kisses her neck in the kitchen in front of me.”

“Charlie,” I groan, my voice catching somewhere between warning and mortification. I drop into the mismatched armchair next to the sofa.

“What? You do!” she shrugs, clearly unbothered as she digs another spoonful from her bowl.

“Wren’s not wrong, though,” Eloise says, lounging deeper into the cushions like she’s settling in for the gossip hour. “He might not admit it, but Malachi’s been in full vampire mate mode lately. He installed that new security system, ordered you new blackout curtains, had your shower retiled?—”

“He what?”

“Oops,” Wren mutters around a mouthful of cereal. “That was a surprise, remember?”

Eloise waves a hand. “Whatever. It’s like he’s nesting. It’s adorable.”

I press my hands to my face. “I can’t decide if this is sweet or incredibly overbearing.”

“It’s both,” Wren replies without missing a beat. “But it’s also hot, and you should enjoy it.”

“He’s trying,” Eloise adds, voice softer now. “In vampire speak, hovering and making your life more livable is like… proposing. He’s not just keeping you safe. He’s trying to build something.”

That sobers me a little. He’s told me I was his, that he’d protect me and Charlie. This isn’t the first time Eloise mentioned the word mate, but Malachi hasn’t. An ache builds behind my sternum. Is that what he’s really doing? A vampire ritual or version of proposing for matehood?

Charlie looks up at me from the couch. “I like it,” she says simply. “All of it. Even if he still thinks pineapple doesn’t belong on pizza.”

I laugh, throat tight. “That might be his one flaw.”

From the kitchen, Malachi calls, “I heard that.”

Wren raises her spoon. “You were meant to.”

The laughter eases that ache in my chest, and it disappears completely when Malachi comes in to join us, carrying another box of cereal. He drops it off beside Wren before taking a seat on the floor in front of me, saying something about the sanctity of pizza.

My phone buzzes and I roll my eyes at the name on the screen. Whenever I think my life is too good to be true, Sam comes around like the pinch I need. Except I don’t wake up from a dream, and not even him asking to swing by and borrow money for his rent can ruin my mood. I even agree to loan him the five hundred, knowing that thanks to my new job I won’t be putting us at financial risk if he takes forever to pay me back.

“What do you think, Blake?”

Malachi’s tone is light and humorous and I ignore Sam’s reply in favor of the man responsible for turning my life upside down. Maybe he is doing a slow proposal, and maybe, just maybe, I’m considering saying yes.