Chapter 38

Chapter Thirty-Eight

She swayed into him, unconsciously expecting him to hold her steady when her legs failed. Strong arms looped around her waist as he braced his legs a little farther apart.

“Petra.” He said her name with such a peculiar inflection that she really couldn’t tell if it was a growl or a whine.

“I’m fine,” she rasped. She took a moment to scrub her eyes against her shoulder. “I’m fine. This just really— It caught me off-guard, but I’m good now. No guns, no bombs. Just… bodies. Okay. Yeah.”

He looked at her like she was the crazy one. Maybe she was. Sure, she’d put herself in some bad spots since her uncle died, but letting herself fall in love with Shade, the monster under the bed of the UTA’s criminal underground, was probably the most outrageous thing she could have done.

Can a man like him even love someone? The thought was a shot of ice water in her veins.

She knew he could care. She felt it. But could he love? What would her life be like if he simply wasn’t capable of it?

“No guns, no bombs,” he repeated, eyeing her like she was the unpredictable one. “Are you really okay? Because I’ve got other shit to tell you, but if you’re gonna cry again I’ll…” His brows drew together as he apparently struggled to find the right words. “I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll make you stop.”

Petra’s chest went all achingly, pleasantly tight. “Tears are natural, Silas. I’ve been through a lot recently. That means I might just start crying sometimes, especially if you use that tone with me. You’re going to have to get used to it.”

“No, I won’t.” Every line of his expression went razor-sharp. “I don’t like it when you cry. I don’t want it. How do I stop it? Do you need me to say sorry for my tone? I’m sorry. I won’t do that again. Did that work?”

“Typically, the answer to not making someone cry is… make the person happy? Be nice, maybe?” Even as she said it, Petra thought it sounded trite — especially in light of her own feelings. Falling in love with a man who didn’t even understand that tears were normal didn’t exactly bode well for her future happiness.

Silas didn’t mock her, though. Instead, he seemed deadly serious when he replied, “I can make you happy.”

Petra’s tongue tied itself into a knot. All she could manage was a strange, noncommittal sound.

Something dark lurked in Silas’s eyes. In an instant, Petra was back in The Broken Tooth what felt like a lifetime ago, squaring off with a predator who looked like he was weighing the benefits of eating her now or later.

“You don’t think I can.” He sounded very calm. It was an unsettling contrast to the look in his eyes.

“I think that… this thing between us is very new and volatile,” she managed to say.

“New and volatile.” Silas said it so silkily, so softly, that it actually alarmed her.

It turned out she was right to be worried, because not a moment later he picked her up, swung her around, and deposited her on the edge of his desk.

Wedging himself between her legs, he planted both palms on either side of her hips and leaned in until their noses bumped. Petra nearly went cross-eyed in an attempt to maintain eye contact.

“Listen up,” he growled, silky drawl ground down into pure grit. “You and me— we’ve got some shit to get straight, right here and right now.”

“Silas, I didn’t mean?—”

“No, you said your bit earlier and now I’m gonna say mine.” Petra’s mouth shut with an audible clack. “You say you want us to be a team, but for that to work, you need to understand something: you’re mine. You’ve been mine. You’ll always be mine. I’m obsessed with you. If you don’t like that, if you’re not happy, then I’ll fix it. I can fix anything. I can give you anything and I can be the monster you need me to be.”

He nearly vibrated with tension when he continued, “I’m showing all this to you, telling you everything, because this is it for me. You’re mine. I’m yours.”

No way. A nervous, fluttering sort of certainty began to rise in her, but Petra couldn’t stop herself from whispering, “What are you saying, Silas?”

“I’m saying you’ve got to come to grips with this,” he answered, each word a dark, dangerous thing, “because we’ve got about a week before my rut hits, there are a lot of people who need killin’, and you’re my fuckin’ mate. I’m never letting you go.”

Even with her gnawing suspicions about his erratic, possessive behavior, the weirdness with his parents, and the shadow, she supposed it should have been a shock. It should have thrown her into another fit. It should have made the walls close in around her as yet another thing outside her control sent the world into an even faster spin.

But it didn’t.

For the first time in years, everything went still.

“...I’m your mate?”

“Yes.”

Silas showed her his teeth. One hand circled her throat. The shadows that clung there came alive in a way she couldn’t really understand. It was almost as if they were responding to that proprietary touch, reinforcing the claim. Petra recalled the shadows around Scott’s wrist and the way both of Silas’s parents hadn’t been able to stop looking at her throat.

Oh.

Her life had become so complicated and dangerous that it was an immense relief to be given the answers to a puzzle without pain, sweat, or tears. Every other problem was too big to be handled, but this… This she could make sense of.

It might’ve horrified a normal witch to discover she was mated to an unstable half-demon who liked to make money by murder, but compared to her other issues, it seemed delightfully mundane. Normal, even.

Unexpected matings happened every day. She’d blessed enough unions to know it better than most. There was an entire entertainment industry devoted to telling fantastical and tragic stories about mismatched or starcrossed matings. Dragons and orcs were notorious for that sort of thing, what with their predisposition for near-instant infatuation and kidnapping.

Witches rarely stumbled into matings with one another, but the gods knew she wouldn’t be the first to find herself bound to another by fate rather than choice. As far as she knew, demons didn’t get much of a say in their mates, so it really was just that — fate.

Petra let out a shaky breath. She’d suspected it, but hearing it confirmed made her wonder, Glory, what in the world are you doing?

“I’m your mate,” she said again, more for herself than for him. She scanned his tense features, memorized the placement of his beauty mark, the exact color of his eyes. “What does that mean?”

Before the vexed expression on his face could turn into a full-on tantrum, she quickly amended, “For you, Silas. What does that mean for you? How is this going to work?”

He stuck his chin out at a stubborn angle. Petra touched it, cradled the angle of his jaw in her palm, and assured him, “It’s okay to not have the answers right now. It’s just a question, demon, not a demand.”

“I thought you’d be angry,” he admitted, a touch suspiciously.

“About being your mate?”

“Yeah.”

“Anger was never on the table.” Petra rubbed his cheek with the pad of her thumb, her chest squeezing again. He tilted his head into her hand. “I can’t even say I’m surprised. I’m just… I think this is one of those things that I’m going to have to sit with before it really sinks in. But angry? No, Silas. Why did you think that?”

“Because you’re stuck with me as your mate,” he explained with heartbreaking frankness. “No one wants that.”

Petra sucked in a sharp breath through her nose. It was a surreal thing, experiencing the sudden and unreasonable urge to protect someone as terrifying as Silas.

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe you’re stuck with me, too? I’m not exactly a catch.”

Silas’s eyes glittered underneath the fans of his lashes. “Liar. Other people want you. Or did, anyway.”

“What are you talking about?”

Nodding toward the neatly lined up row of red leather cases, he said, “I took those from Vanderpoel. You know what I found in one of them?”

Petra’s attention immediately snapped to the cases. Her heart lurched. She’d glimpsed one of Antonin’s entourage carrying something red, but she’d been too distracted by the Protector to pay much attention at the time and assumed it was just more of his endless train of luggage.

“What’s in those?”

“Lots of things,” he answered in an ominous, measured way. “Files on just about everyone in the Temple. Passports. Off-shore accounts. Blackmail. Medical records.” He paused. A muscle in his cheek spasmed. “A marriage license. With your name on it.”

Petra’s skin crawled. It wasn’t out of fear of Silas discovering what Antonin wanted from her, but from the memory of the way the Protector had spoken to her, how certain he’d been that he’d be having sex with her after dessert.

And then there was the image permanently seared into her mind’s eye: Antonin pointing the gun at Silas’s head, his finger on the trigger.

He’s dead, she reminded herself as she tried to breathe past the echo of terror. He’s dead and he can’t ever touch you or someone you love again. Silas is safe. He’s okay. Antonin can’t hurt him now.

Swallowing around the lump in her throat, Petra closed her eyes and explained, “When Antonin visited the first time… just before he left, he said he’d decided I was going to be his wife. It wasn’t even a proposal. It was a— an order. He said he wanted to join forces . He said he needed a good woman by his side and an heir as soon as possible.”

Both the shadows and Silas’s hand on her throat tightened. Not enough to cut off her air, but enough to remind her they were there. As if she could forget. Rather than alarming her, the reminder helped her relax a little as she continued to explain, “He said he’d give me a few weeks to get used to the idea while he wrapped up a big project.”

Petra found herself leaning forward, until her forehead rested against the smooth skin stretched over his pec. Her voice got smaller, exhausted by the memory of the marathon she’d been running for so long. “I never said yes. I never said no, either. I knew I couldn’t. I’d tried every other avenue of getting to the truth and failed. I needed him. So I knew I couldn’t throw out the opportunity, even if it meant… I don’t know. When it came down to it, I wasn’t able to even pretend to give him what he wanted.”

Silas’s hand slid around to cradle the back of her head. His voice was a deep rumble from his chest when he confirmed, “He wanted your bond, too.”

“Yes.”

There was a long, tense silence. Petra waited for the shoe to drop, for him to accuse her of playing him. He’d be right. She had played him. Never in her wildest imaginings did she ever think she’d actually be standing there, committed to spending the rest of her life with him.

But she was glad it had worked out that way. No matter what came next, Petra couldn’t regret any of it.

At length, he asked, “When you went up to the belltower, what did you think was going to happen?”

“I thought you would do what I couldn’t.”

“And if everything had gone right, if I’d gotten away without you, what was your plan? What did you think he would do if he suspected you were behind it? What did you think he’d do if you rejected him?”

Something in Silas’s voice made her freeze. Petra tried to choose her words carefully, but there was no blunting the edge of her honest answer. “I figured that whatever happened to me didn’t matter as much as the truth.”

She didn’t need to spell it out for him. Silas was too smart for that.

An ugly feeling twisted up her insides when he pulled away from her. When she opened her eyes, she was disturbed to find his expressive face had gone preternaturally blank. A stranger looked at her with Silas’s eyes.

There was nothing there. No familiar, infuriating grin or boyish confusion. No rebuke or snarl. She sensed a great, scorching wave of something behind that blank mask, but she couldn’t see it.

He was angry with her. Really, truly angry in a way he hadn’t been before.

That mattered. It mattered more than she could have ever anticipated. Petra’s voice shook when she began to apologize, “Silas, I’m?—”

A hard, cruel mouth came down on hers. It was a mean kiss, all unyielding lips, teeth, and thrusting tongue. It wasn’t loving, but Petra clung to him anyway. She’d seen the vulnerable, confused part of him, understood that he’d given her his trust, and it ate at her that she’d betrayed that. A part of her wanted him to punish her for it, just so she wouldn’t feel the ugly guilt anymore.

It didn’t matter that what she’d done was justified, nor that she had no way of knowing he’d become someone so important to her so quickly. It didn’t even matter that her guilt lived comfortably alongside her lack of regret, the knowledge that she’d do it again if she had to.

What mattered was him.

Her monster in the dark, the terrifying Shade could be hurt. It was a horrible thing to know she’d been the one to do it.

When he broke the kiss, Petra chased him, her nails sinking into his chest as she leaned forward, seeking that essential connection. But Silas was grim-faced, his shoulders stiff with tension. Shut off.

He set her back and then stepped away.

His intonation was flat when he said, “Look through the boxes. I’m going to start getting the information from his computers decrypted. Hopefully you’ll find what you need.”

He turned to walk away. Those long legs carried him across the room so quickly, she barely had time to hop off the desk. “Silas, wait! Where are you going?”

His head turned to pin her with a glare so hot, so raw, that she recoiled from it instinctively. “Petra, if I don’t leave this room right now, I’m going to end up bending you over a workbench — after I give you the face fucking of your life for the shit you just told me. Be fuckin’ grateful I’m giving you a reprieve. Go through all the shit in the boxes while you have the chance and then make peace with the fact that I’m never gonna leave you alone again.”

Words escaped her. She watched in stunned silence as Silas’s head swiveled back around. The muscles of his back stretched and bunched as he stalked out of the lab and disappeared up the stairs.

His harsh declaration rang in her ears, almost painful in its impact. I’m never gonna leave you alone again.

She gripped the edge of a workbench, her shoulders rounding with the force of her relief. She couldn’t say it, but the scared little voice in the back of her mind dared to whisper, Thank you, gods, for sending me the mate I need.