Page 73 of Guardian Falling
Not to overwhelm me.
But to stand with me.
I don’t move from the chair that I’ve been in all day. My body doesn’t particularly want to leave it, and none of the men in this room seems to expect me to. Rogue gathers them around the hearth, around me, and I watch this collection of supernatural men who rode out here at dawn for a vampire they only met briefly, and they thought she was a threat.
“Why are you helping me?” My voice comes out smaller than I intend it. “I’m nobody. I don’t have anything to do with your club or your world. I didn’t ask to be in this situation, I didn’t ask for your help, and I have no idea why I could possibly be worth this kind of…” My throat works around the rest. “I’m nobody.”
Silence holds the room for one full breath.
Then Rogue’s voice cuts across it, rough and absolute, the decision already made and not up for debate. “You’remine.” His gold eyes find me across the distance, and the warmth that moves through the invisible thread between us is something Ihave stopped pretending I can’t feel. “That makes you pack.” He pauses, and his gaze sweeps the brothers around him before coming back to my face. “And pack doesn’t abandon each other.”
The silence that follows is a different kind, full rather than empty.
Scorch tips his chin once, short and unambiguous. Hades inclines his head with that same untroubled serenity. Dread meets my eyes and nods, the weight of his power absent now, nothing but the man behind it looking at me steadily. Oracle’s light pulses warm and golden across the distance. Grizz, already returned to his place by the fire, doesn’t move or gesture, but the steadiness of his presence says everything a gesture would.
My chest cracks open along a line I didn’t know was there.
Rogue crosses the room and stops beside me, close enough that the warmth of him reaches through the cold that lives under my skin now and presses against it. His voice drops, quiet and private, meant only for me. “You ready to stop fighting it?”
The hunger is still there, a low, patient pulse beneath everything, but it no longer claws at my thoughts. Dragonfire burned away the panic. Hades’ stillness hollowed out the noise. Oracle’s words sit in my chest like a truth I haven’t decided whether to accept yet. Grizz’s presence lingers, steady as bedrock beneath my feet.
Something in me feels…different.
Not healed.
Sharper.
I roll my shoulders back, the motion slow, deliberate, and when I lift my gaze, it feels like stepping fully into a version of myself I’ve been circling all day.
There is a line behind me now.
I know it.
Rogue does too.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice low, steadier than it has any right to be. “Let’s stop fighting it.”
The words don’t sound like agreement.
They sound like a vow.
Charlotte Harris is dead.
This is the new me, and I am going to fight like hell to keep her alive…
Well, the undead version of alive!
Because now I have a life to fight for, a man to fight for, and a club willing to fight for me, so I am going to fucking fight like hell!
Chapter Thirteen
ROGUE
Day Six
My eyes open on the dark ceiling of the cabin bedroom, a howl pulling me out of sleep before my brain has the chance to identify it. The fire in the main room has burned low, its warmth barely reaching through the gap in the door, and the pre-dawn air carries the cold of a sky still an hour from graying. Outside, the forest has gone still, like something is listening for what comes next.
I lie still for three seconds and let the pack bond tell me what my ears already know.
