Lead Heart (Seraph Black Book 3) (42 page)

Maybe he hated me now.

Or maybe it had all been an act…

“So?” he prompted. “Where are we going?”

I swallowed, my courage disappearing, my attention diverting back to his chest. I shouldn’t be thinking about my fear of Silas—especially with all of the more pressing threats occupying my mind… but no, that wasn’t right. I wasn’t afraid of
him
. I was afraid of
us
. I was bonded to all of them, yes. There were expectations that I might get involved with all of them, yes.

But…

I knew that Silas didn’t like it. He didn’t like our forced connection and he didn’t like my connection to the others. I wasn’t sure which he hated more, but I was beginning to think that it was the latter. He didn’t want them touching me. He wanted to own me, the same way he felt that I unfairly owned him.

It was the wrong time to be agonizing over it. I needed to set it aside.

“We’re going back to Le Château,” I mumbled at his chest. “We’re going to draw Danny away from these guys so that nobody else gets hurt. Le Château is so isolated and as far as the others are concerned, anywhere near Weston would be the last place that we’d go right now, so it seems like a good location.”

Silas nodded thoughtfully, the promise of a looming fight working to dampen his intense mood. He dug a hand into his pocket and pulled out a phone; it couldn’t possibly work anymore, not after being submerged in the water. He tossed it to the ground and reached for the pocket of my borrowed jeans. To his apparent surprise, the pocket was sewed shut—as though it was simply a decoration pocket.
I could have told him that
. He frowned, reaching behind me, his fingers skimming the back of my jeans, searching for another pocket. I froze, my breath halting in my chest. I could have told him that there were no pockets back there either, but I couldn’t seem to summon the words.

I also didn’t want to tell him where my phone
was
hidden.

His fingers skimmed further down, unnecessarily following the slight crease in my jeans at the tops of my thighs that hugged the curve of my butt. His hands ended up at my sides as he examined me carefully. He wasn’t searching for my phone anymore. He was searching for something in my eyes—some kind of telling tick in my expression. I had no idea what, but I couldn’t stand the intensity of it all. I lowered my eyes.

“Don’t.” The command was projected lowly. “You don’t hide from me. That’s not what you do.”

“What do I do?”

“You open up.” He pressed me back against the car, one of his legs edging between mine, his hands curling around the outsides of my thighs. “I press, and you let me in.”

“Maybe things have changed.” I didn’t want to acknowledge what was happening, but I
knew
… I was having trouble coming to terms with everything that he had done. I was having trouble reconciling it all in my head. I wanted to draw him close and shut him out all at once.

He had killed Gerald. He had almost killed Cabe. He had lied to us. He had tricked me. 

“I’ve realised something.” His fingers twitched, tapping thoughtfully against my thighs, his eyes heavy on my face, his intensity weighing down on me. “I can’t pull you away from them. I can’t pull myself away from you. We’re connected, we’ll snap, and snapped, we’re no better than dead.”

“I know.”

“I meant what I said, before, angel. I won’t leave again. I won’t ever punish them for touching you.” He sucked in a breath, as though the admission had pained him. “That leniency doesn’t extend any further, though. You need to know that. If you’re ours, I’ll break the next person outside of
us
that touches you. I don’t mean I’ll break their fingers. I’m mean
them
. Their whole person. I’ll break their connection to this world.”

I could hardly breathe, and it wasn’t because of his violent threat. He was ready to commit to something that none of us had even properly agreed on. I had thought that
I
had been the strong one all of this time; the mature one, accepting the bond and moving forwards. I had been strong enough to realise that my expectations had been reversed—that the very unsettled nature of my bond had been the reason for my reluctance with the other three, and that my
true
feelings had been the jealousy, the need, and the vulnerability that I had been desperately ignoring for so long.

But of course… nobody was as strong as Silas.

While I had accepted the truth of everything that I had done and everything that I had felt, he was vowing to go against his very nature. He would share. He would allow a bond—something that he had no control over—to dictate his life. He would relinquish control. For
us
.

Things would never be the same again—not with him, or with the others. We had all done terrible things. I had stolen them, and they had each betrayed me in their own ways, with the exception of Quillan. But Quillan had his own issues; I was sure that the death of his previous girlfriend was a contributing factor, but I also knew that he was hanging onto some kind of misplaced sense of duty. He felt responsible for me, and that sense of responsibility warred directly with the non-platonic nature of the bond. We had all hurt each other, betrayed each other, lied and manipulated each other… but we kept finding our way back. We couldn’t help it.

“I’ll never leave again.” Silas delivered the promise to something deep inside me, his chest pressed to mine. I could feel the mesmerising skip of his heart and the regret that hovered over him… but I could also feel the solidness of his promise. He meant it. “I’m all in,” he whispered, shocking me further.

I had no words for him… but I also knew that he didn’t need my words. He was right in what he said before: he pushed, and I let him in. It was the way we had always been. It was natural. I lifted my eyes back up to his face and released the careful barrier over my heart and emotions, softening against him with a sigh. His dark eyes flared, his body tightening against mine, and I could suddenly feel his attention on my lips. Just like that, I was lost; lost in need and relief and the feeling of
home
that didn’t quite make sense.

“Later,” he growled, reading it all on my face. “I need your phone.”

I fit a hand between us—pausing when his eyes narrowed—and grabbed the phone tucked into the waistband of my borrowed jeans. He lifted it from my fingers and backed off me, tossing it on the ground as he unlocked he car. I scrambled for the passenger seat, needing to have something solid beneath me before my legs collapsed. He slid into the driver’s seat, waiting for me to click on my seatbelt before skidding away from the curb. I pulled the little zip-lock bag out of my bra, where I had stashed it after figuring out that Sophia’s jeans didn’t have real pockets, and quickly swallowed the pill Jayden had given me. Silas didn’t ask about it. I wrapped my arms around my legs, hiding my face between my knees as we drove. I needed to focus. I needed to drive every panic-inducing thought from my mind until only a singular purpose remained.

Protect
.

This wasn’t about revenge. This wasn’t about doing the
right
thing, or finding the
right
solution. Danny was a threat that couldn’t be allowed to grow. I could have found out his identity earlier, with persistence, and consequences… but I had always felt that
knowing
would lead to
acting
, and I was barely ready to face him as it was. I didn’t want Silas to be there, but I couldn’t chance his reaction to me running off on my own. He and Weston were the only variables that I considered dangerous in this situation, and if I got all of the variables together in one place, it might lend me a little more control.

“You can’t attack him,” I cautioned softly, my voice muffled by my knees. “You can’t touch him. I don’t know how you managed to lock him up in the first place, but he isn’t locked up anym—”

“Of course he is.” He spoke as though it should have been an obvious fact.

I jolted upright, my head whipping to the side. “What?”

“Their
escape
would have been an impossible task without help, and Danny knows you better than you think. He knows we’re coming to him. He hasn’t moved from the prison I put him in,
despite
Takeo trying to break him out.”

“Despite… Takeo…
what
?”

“Takeo is a traditional man from a traditional culture, and an even more traditional family. His father split from the Zev community in an attempt to deny his Atmá her second pair member. He wanted her all to himself, and he got her that way… but at a price. She was never allowed to use her power, she was never allowed to see the other member of her pair, and their entire family was expelled from Zev society. Takeo was raised under his father’s significant influence because he was born with a mark but not a power—indicating that he was a member of a pair himself. When he met Alice, she was already a member of the Klovoda. It would have been impossible for her to split from the Zevs to pursue a life with him, so he cut off communication with his family and followed her to America, where he was welcomed into the Zev fold. A year later, they stumbled across Adie. Takeo attempted to take her away as his father had taken his mother away, except that Alice refused to cooperate. He refuses to be in a romantic relationship with her anymore, but he’s still
here
.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s helping Danny.”

“Not necessarily, but he is.”

“Why would he do that? What does it accomplish?”

“They both believe that you should be stripped of your pairs. Takeo wants to accomplish it on you, so that he can repeat the same process on his own Atmá.”

“Oh my God… but he has Alice right now!”

“They’ll be long gone by the time we get there, but they’re the least of our problems right now.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“I’m Silas.”

“That’s not a reason.”

He didn’t extrapolate, so I hid my face between my knees again, groaning softly. Weston and Danny needed to be our focus right now, especially if Takeo had said anything about my bond in front of Weston. I didn’t look up until we were parked directly outside the main house, so I wasn’t sure how Silas had managed to get past all of the guards. Maybe they all liked him better than Weston, or maybe they simply recognised his face and assumed that he was allowed inside. Maybe Weston hadn’t bothered to ward against him.

“Why did you kidnap Weston?” I asked, climbing out of the car and pulling my sleeves over my hands to ward off the chill in the air.

Silas glanced over at me, slamming the driver’s side door closed. “You turned yourself over to him; it was my only option. He would have found out about you, about what you are.”

“You should have left it. You should have left him. I had it under control.”

“You didn’t have anything under control. Weston thinks you’re important, but
nothing
is more important to him than making sure that Miro doesn’t bond with anyone. Compared to that, you’re just a little girl, advertising the perfect face to catch a bullet.”

“Don’t mistake this for a tantrum,” I grumbled, pushing past him into the giant marbled walkway and heading in the direction of the ‘lived-in’ part of the multi-tiered mansion. “I get what you’re saying, I see the sense in it, but I had to get you away from Weston and I’m not going to apologise for—” I broke off, staring at the marble beneath my feet. “What the hell is that?”

“Blood,” Silas informed me, his tone bland. “What does it look like?”

“Why is there blood on the floor?”

“Don’t know. Wasn’t me.”

“Small relief.”

He turned to smile at me—a half-smile that swept me up in a brief, exhilarating moment of hope—and then he was walking. I followed him through several different sections of the main house, each new room revealing an extra layer of dust, until eventually, he paused before a door.

“This is Le Château’s prison.” He set his hand against the handle, which didn’t even appear to have a lock, and rested his eyes on my face.

“This?” I peered at the door, and then looked around. We were standing in a fancy—albeit dusty—sitting room. “We didn’t even go underground. Aren’t dungeons supposed to be underground?”

“I didn’t say dungeon. I said prison.”

His half-smile appeared again as he pushed the door open, standing aside so that I could see beyond him. I gasped, my feet drawing me forward until I was in the center of the doorway, the solid press of Silas’s stomach against my right arm. It was less a prison and more a giant aviary. Glass-walled boxes were set intervals apart in a garden setting, the sky open and gaping above us. The sun was already beginning to set, casting an eerie, fiery glow over the concrete pathway before me and glinting off each pane of glass until it seemed that the entire courtyard was simmering with muted flames.

“There’s no one in there,” Silas muttered, gently pressing against the small of my back to encourage me forward.

“Are you sure?”

The glass boxes were empty, but the surrounding plants could have provided cover for anyone wanting to hide.

“Positive.” Silas pointed to the top of the door that we had just walked through, where a small panel right below the door jamb was flashing two miniscule red dots. “Those are our heat signatures; the room is just picking up on us now. The panel was blank before we came through. There’s no one else here.”

I walked more confidently, then—though I should have been frustrated that we hadn’t encountered the people we had come to confront.

You’re not ready
, a tiny voice whispered inside my head.

I shoved it away. I would
have
to be ready. There wasn’t any other option.

Silas strode past me, moving to examine each of the glass boxes.

I trailed after him, ignoring his question. The strange, transparent boxes were easily the height and breadth of a grown man, and were peppered with breathing holes in the ceiling, with no other breaks in the glass visible.