He rose, wiped his mouth, and left them with nothing but the echo of his footsteps. Elara’s voice caught as she rose, excusing herself to hurry after him, sparing a single look toward her children before disappearing into the corridor.

Greyson waited until they were alone, the room shrinking around them.

“You shouldn’t have said anything,” he said, but without the heat he’d intended. “He’ll make you pay for it.”

Lira’s own voice was flat. “I don’t care, Grey. Not anymore.”

“You need to care. You need to let him think he’s won. He will hurt you, Li.”

“I need,” she replied, pushing her chair back with an abrupt scrape, “to get out of this family, before it eats me alive.”

Greyson watched Lira go for only a breath before he followed her into the corridor, catching up to her near the elevator. For a moment, neither spoke as they waited for the lift to arrive.

“If he’s not going to do it, we have to,” Lira started. “We have to find the Daggermouth that killed Brooker, and kill them ourselves. He deserves that much.”

He wanted to argue, to tell her that she shouldn’t get involved, but couldn’t find the words. She put a hand on his arm, just above the elbow, squeezed once, then stepped into the elevator.

Chapter fourDon’t Die

The warehouse chilled to the bone after sunset, sucking warmth from exposed skin until nerves went numb. Shadera had grown accustomed to it. It made her sharp, kept her from dulling around the edges.

The cold crawled over her as she sat on the concrete floor, knees spread, ankles crossed, guns and knives meticulously laid out in front of her, while she fieldstripped the Veyra-issued nine-mil. Each click, each metallic slide, was as soothing as another’s heartbeat. She let herself vanish into the work, until the rattle of the outer fire door knifed through the quiet.

She palmed the pistol one-handed, eyes on the crosshatch of shadow in the entryway. Only two people knew the passcode to her rooftop entrance. Jaeger and Jameson Vine. And Jaeger would rather walk on broken glass than show up uninvited.

Jameson’s tread was softer than most, but Shadera still heard the whisper of worn boots on steel stairs, the way the second step always betrayed the weight of him.

He didn’t knock, instead he shouldered through the door, letting it slam at his back. Jameson stepped into view and stopped, his brows pulling together as he looked at Shadera on the floor. He grinned at her, canines catching in the half light. He leaned against a steel pillar, his threadbare T-shirt stretching tight against the muscles on his scarred and tattooed arms as he crossed them over his chest.

“Shit, Shade,” he said, his voice amused. “You ever fucking sleep?”

“Sometimes,” she answered, twisting a silencer into place. “You look worse than usual.”

“You still think I’m pretty, though, huh?” he teased as Shadera’s eyes rolled to the back of her head.

He came to her in three long strides, then crouched by her side, elbows on his knees. “We got a problem. Jaeger’s boys just hit a Veyra patrol down in the sixth—”

“Not my sector. Not my problem,” she cut in, finally setting the gun down and reaching for a bottle on the floor beside her. She took a long pull. “I’m busy tonight.”

Jameson glanced down at her kill kit. “So I see.”

He let the silence hang, scanning her face for a crack in her armor, then snatched the bottle from her and gulped down a heavy swig.

Shadera quirked a brow at the gash on his forearm. “You here for something, or just to bleed on my floor?”

His hand moved to her face, slow and cautious, as if she might bite. Maybe she would. But she let him trace the line of her jaw, let him hook a thumb behind her ear and drag the elastic free from her hair. Auburn curls tumbled loose, spilling around her face.

He leaned in and Shadera didn’t pull away.

Their mouths met with the same violence as every other part of their lives—teeth knocking, lips splitting, tongues pushing past the barricades. His hands were everywhere at once. She bit his bottom lip, and it unlocked a noise in his throat, almost a groan.

The first time they’d done this, neither of them had undressed at all, just pressed into each other against an empty wall and fucked like the world was ending. Since then, the routine had gained only a fraction of tenderness on her part.

Her hands slid up the back of his neck into his silver hair, feeling the way the cropped sides bristled against her palms as the longer strands on top caught between her fingers.

“I missed you,” he breathed against her lips, but the words didn’t land anywhere.

“Don’t get clingy,” she warned, shoving him back, then rising from the floor.

Jameson grinned again as he looked up at Shadera with sharp green eyes, and rose to his full height. In the next heartbeat, he’d swept her off her feet and set her on top of her desk, hands greedy on her hips, lips pressed into the pulse at her throat. The force of it startled the desk chair backward, made it clatter against the desk, then tip sideways. Shadera let her head fall back, eyes closed, jaw working as he bit a line up her neck to the place she always kept a razor blade tucked behind her ear.

She arched against him, feeling the hard line of his body through both their clothes. He was already hard—he was always hard for her, like a dog starved for too long and afraid it would never eat again.

She cupped the back of his skull and twisted her fingers in his hair, pulling him off her throat, then pushing him onto the bed tucked in the corner. He let her have her way with him, he always let her. Because the part of him that was as broken as she was, liked it best when she played rough.

They landed on the nest of blankets, and she climbed on top of him with all the grace of a wolf mounting its prey as she dragged his shirt over his head. His own body was covered in wounds similar to hers, under his heavily tattooed flesh—stitches that never quite faded, puckered pink welts from Veyra shock batons, a ragged knife scar running from collarbone to rib cage.

In the next second, his hands were up her shirt, hot against her scars. He traced every raised edge like he was reading braille, mapping out the damage with a reverence that made her stomach knot. She grabbed his wrists and held them above his head, pinning him to the bed.

“Stop stalling,” Shadera hissed, and Jameson’s smile turned crooked.

“You always fuck me like you’re mad at me,” he said, voice muffled as she leaned forward and raked her teeth down his throat.

“I am,” she replied. “You came into my house without permission, again.”

She let his hands go, and he stripped her shirt over her head, mouth on her chest before the cloth even hit the floor. She felt his breath catch in his lungs as his fingers found an old bullet wound just under her ribs, the jagged oval where a Veyra officer had tried to end her three years ago.

“This should have killed you,” he whispered against her skin.

“They’ll have to do better than a bullet.” She pushed her hips down, and ground against him.

He pulled at the buttons on her jeans, and she lifted her body just enough for him to slide them down her legs. Jameson moved to touch her face, but she caught his hand and drove it down to her hip, guiding his grip exactly where she wanted it. He didn’t protest. Instead, he looked up at her like she was the only thing in the world worth dying for.

Shadera leaned down, auburn curls falling over her shoulder, and her lips met his. Her nipples brushed against his skin, hard and dark against his chest. The room was freezing, but her body ran hot as engine coolant.

She ground herself against the rough denim still clinging to his hips, then, growing impatient, reached down, and unfastened his belt with a single jerk. The button popped, and she slid his jeans down, dragging his briefs with them, leaving him fully exposed.