Page 32 of Sleep With Us
Zee groaned. “We’ve talked about this. Seb is a me problem. Back off.”
“I can’t,” I replied softly. The truth hurt. “I can’t Zee.”
Zee sighed and pointed a sharp, glossy nail at me. “We made a deal over mac and cheese. Mac and cheese is sacred.”
“I know . . .”
“Then this won’t work.”
“This?” My heart thumped. “You mean us.” I couldn’t lose him. I’d do anything to keep him. If I lost him, then what was the point in all this? Why was I even trying to make this life work if I had nothing to live for?
“If you can’t back off, then I can’t be here. If my life touches this place, it’s all fucked. That I can control.”
I leaned in. “Zee, you don’t need to protect me.”
“And I don’t need you protecting me. Or His Lordship protecting me. Especially Fancy Daddy. Why aren’t you getting this?”
“Drop your glamor.”
He recoiled. “Excuse you?”
“Drop your glamor.” I checked the bar. It was still early, and nobody was here. Just me, Reynard, and Tom, who was prohibited from revealing secrets to anyone anyway. “If what he’s doing to you is fine, and you’re okay with it, drop your glamor.”
Zee clenched his jaw and stared back. “That’s not fair.”
I knew what I’d see. Friction marks, bruises, or worse. I could help him, could help them all. I’d made him see Adam Vex as the harmless human, but now I needed him to unsee just a tiny bit of that lie, and understand I was a whole lot more than the mask I wore.
“General Copernicus. Do you know where he is?” I asked.
All the humor and lightheartedness vanished from Zee’s face. “Copernicus?”
“How can we find him?”
“You’ve seen my contract?”
“Tell us where he is.”
Zee’s eyes sparked with fury. “I can’t tell if I’m pissed off or turned on by your bossy voice, Kitten. But I know you and that vampire are going behind my back, trying to find my general, when I told you not to.”
My heart raced now. I was in the wrong in some things, I knew that. I’d kept things from him. I’d gone against his wishes, but it was for the right reasons. I needed him to hear me. I needed him to fight back, like I knew he could. “You don’t want to be under Sebastien, I know you don’t. Zee, please. Look at what we did for Shadow. We gave them a sanctuary. We stood against the vampires, you and me. We stopped Gideon, for now. I will find a way to end Sebastien. We will find a way, all three of us. Trust me in this. Trust that I will not break. And trust I will make it so you have a choice. Don’t you want that? A choice?”
His gaze skipped back and forth, reading the conviction on my face, and I stared back, unblinking. This wasn’t a game to me like it was for Sebastien. I wasn’t ever going to use Zee and toss him away. He meant more to me than anything else in this world. He’d saved me when I’d lost everything and everyone I’d ever known. Sebastien would kill him, eventually. I wasn’t going to let that happen.
Zee huffed, slumped back, and flicked his fingers in front of his face. His image shimmered, glamor peeling away. I didn’t want to look, but it was already too late. A patchwork of bruises spread across his jaw. A split cut into his lip. Purple thumb prints speckled his neck, and claw marks scored across his shoulder. And that was just the visible.
The rage came out of the dark, visceral and real, and its terrible swell almost tore through the curse holding me together. A small, sharp hiss filtered through my teeth, then a sob tried to follow. I swallowed hard, pushing everything back down.
Reynard’s simmering presence was suddenly beside me. Beside us.
“It won’t be bruises next time,” Reynard said to Zee.
Zee slowly raised his gaze. “When it’s me he’s fucking up, it’s not them.”
He was protecting his friends, his fellow warriors. I wanted to pin Sebastien down and tear his wings off. A tingling sparked the air, tensions building, the wards firing up around me. I very much meant to harm Sebastien, and the wards didn’t know he wasn’t in the room with us, just that I meant to hurt someone. Worse than hurt, I’d destroy him.
Zee’s gaze slid to me. “Kitten?”
Reynard took a step back. “Adam?”
