Page 92 of Dead Drop

"Some of it," I admit. "Some of it is instinct. Some of it is the fact that I'm here, and the child is here, and getting rid of it would require me to be someone other than who I am."

"So you're keeping her."

"Yes."

Petra reaches out and takes my hand. Her palm is warm. There are calluses on her fingers I don't remember—new scars from the Cages, the proof of what her hands have been through. "Then you're okay."

"I'm not okay. I'm choosing. That's different."

"That's what I was hoping you'd say." She squeezes my hand once and lets it go.

The ribs that don't sit right. The thin whistle of her breathing, the sound of something that healed crooked and will stay that way. I trained her. She held the wall when I wasn't there and she's carrying the cost of it in her chest, and I can't go back to that night, can't stand on the wall when the Ordained came. I can't unbreak what the Cage broke.

My hands want to do something. There is nothing to do.

I hold the image of her—too thin, too scarred, still bright in the eyes—and carry it with me out of the corridor.

The day's work is done. I leave through the breach.

The afternoon light is long and gold when I clear the settlement wall—the kind of light that makes the canopy look like stained glass, the leaves burning amber at the edges where the sun catches them. The fighters on the wall see me go.

And then they see him.

Corvin is at the settlement edge. Not in the canopy. Not hidden in the mid-level branches the way he usually waits. He's standing on the ground below the tree line, in full light, at the exact point where the settlement's cleared land meets the first canopy trees. Nine feet of red muscle and crown horns, his wings half-spread to catch balance, his amber eyes on me.

I know the fighters on the wall are watching. I can feel it the way you feel a held breath.

I walk to him without slowing. My knife on my hip, his climbing hooks on my belt, the fur-lined collar warm at my throat. The ache of the day—the council's doubt, Petra's ribs that don't sit right, the smell of the settlement that is no longer my smell—all of it lifting with each step.

Corvin's tail uncoils from his waist and reaches for me when I'm still ten feet away.

The tip finds my wrist. Pulls me in.

He lifts me the way he always does—one arm under my thighs, my weight nothing, my face arriving at the level of his throat before I've finished the thought of reaching for him. His scent floods me on the inhale: mineral warmth, the deep canopy green, the smell that lives under the corner of his jaw and belongs to no one else.

The wall is behind me. The settlement is behind me. Whatever they make of what they just saw—that's theirs to keep.

He carries me back to the aerie.

I don't let him set me down.

I take his mouth instead, my hands on his jaw, my weight shifting in his arms until I'm facing him—my legs around his waist, his cock stirring against me through the loincloth, his wings spreading involuntarily for balance. He makes a sound against my mouth: low, caught off guard. Not the rut's certainty.

This is mine to direct.

I unbuckle the loincloth while he's still trying to catch up. His cock springs free beneath my hand, thick and flushed, flexing toward me before I've finished wrapping my fingers around him. His jaw tightens. His wings fold forward, instinctive, closing us in.

"Ada—"

"I know." I stroke him once. "Let me."

He lets me.

His back finds the aerie wall and I work him with my hand—slow, deliberate, watching his face the way he watches mine when he has me. The brow ridge creasing, the pupils blown wide, the muscles in his throat cording as he fights to hold still. He has the strength to flip me at any moment, drive into me from above, take the lead the way his body wants to.

He doesn't.

He holds still against the wall while I learn the shape of his want on my own terms.