Page 111 of Claimed

‘Tavish Drennan.’

‘Briarhook.’

The names form a chain between us. And for the first time since this entire nightmare began, it feels like a solid direction.

Valentin zips away, returns with my hunter attire and holds it out.

I take it, surprised. ‘No more argument?’

His gaze drops to my throat. ‘There will be many arguments. I am prioritising.’

The sheer domesticity of it showers my insides with warmth I push away. ‘How evolved.’

‘Do not grow attached to it.’

I slide into my things, revelling in the still-warmth from his hands, while I fight the weakness sapping my limbs. Because no way am I divulging that all the mind-probe and bleeding and fucking have worn me out.

He watches me until I hook my belt. The hunger in his eyes remains, but the fury has found a target beyond me now.

That should make me feel safer. It makes me feel like the storm has simply chosen a road.

Valentin’s voice enters my mind as he turns towards the door. Stay close to me.

I answer before I can think better of it. Always seems dangerous.

His head turns, and my breath catches to see that the king has dropped away enough for the immortal man underneath to look at me. Then be dangerous with me, tesoro mio.

And with the shuddering exhale, I allow my insides to melt into a puddle, then stop fighting the intimacy of this thing between us. Stop searching for snark, evasion or laughter to make this smaller before it becomes something I have to carry.

I’m already carrying it. Falling beneath the weight of it.

So when he holds his hand out to me, I slide mine into his. He raises our joint hands, kisses the back of mine.

And I follow Valentin Moretti.

Because Selphine has finally left a footprint.

And this time, I intend to step on it hard enough to make her bleed.

19

VALENTIN

Briarhook looks exactly like the kind of district men with secrets choose when they want the city to forget them.

It’s a warren of old canal routes, bricked-up transit mouths and warehouses with black windows and dead signage. The faint rot of river water under stone attests that money has not cleaned this part of New York because the city understands, at some instinctive level, that certain filth is useful.

Ten of my Twelve move through the shadows around us.

Aaron and Gideon remain nearest. Iskander and Cassian take the eastern approach. Severin and Bastien vanish into the upper floors across the street with enough elegance to make even surveillance look aristocratic. Rook disappears so completely that even I must focus to locate him. Nikolai and Orion hold the canal exit below while Luca, denied the pleasure of immediate violence, sulks behind us like a blade forced to wear manners.

I do not allow the absence of Malachi or Draven to alter my pace.

Eira walks beside me in black leather and quiet fury, Widow’s Fang hidden beneath her coat, hair bound back from a face that looks too pale for my liking and too determined for my sanity. I’m aware that I greeted her insistence on coming with the sort of grim calm that invited argument and then sharpened knives for the pleasure of winning it.

Aware that while I should have left her in the Tower, I much prefer her where I can see her. That the echo of her pain through the bond while one of my Twelve tortured her would remain etched in my memory until the moment my undead heart is ripped from my chest.

The heart I fear has given itself into my hunter’s snarky little hands when I was not looking. Or perhaps when I was looking but deceiving myself of reality.