Chapter 13

Seren

"Rome? What the hell time is it?" Seren groaned into her phone. She had a bad habit of keeping it on her nightstand, and she never remembered to turn it to vibrate overnight.

She should have known there would be no end to his surprises. She wasn't a hater when it came to the unexpected, but with Rome, she was learning his version of unexpected wasn't what anyone would like to have sprung on them.

"Six minutes after three."

"Thank you for being so precise." She blinked the sting out of her eyes and sat up, curling her knees into her chest and hugging them. "Why are you calling me at six minutes past three in the morning?"

What she should have immediately said was, "No, thank you, this wasn't in the contract. I owe you nothing." She shouldn't have even answered, but that had just been a fumbling, blind reaction. The words were there, horrible and sticky, to demand extra for whatever this favor was going to be, but then she saw Rome bent over on that metal and wood bench at the hospital again, pale and sick, bleeding and broken, and not even the meanest part of her could force her to make that demand.

The meanest part of her clearly wasn't very mean at all. It liked being walked all over like a pathetically worn-out rug, apparently.

"I need to drop Waverly with you. There's something I have to go do. I can't call her sitter in the middle of the night. She's a teenager. There's no one else I can get her to on short notice."

He was commanding her. He wasn't asking. Had it even occurred to him that it might not be appropriate to do this? Yes, likely, but what did he care? "What? I don't understand."

"I'm at your front door."

"Oh my god! You can't just keep—"

"Please come and open it. Not for me, but for Waverly."

Seren scrambled off the bed, racing through her bedroom and down the stairs. Her condo was about the same size as Rome's, essentially, but taller and skinny, on two levels where his was just on one.

She always slept in a t-shirt and leggings in the summer. She only changed it out for sweats in the winter. She'd always had a thing against pajamas. She hated the fuzz, the looseness, the feeling of being so bare underneath. Her cotton leggings were tighter. It was weird because most people were the opposite. At least her t-shirt was oversized.

She was glad for it when she threw the door open. Rome's eyes immediately took in her mussed hair and sleepy, unguarded appearance. She wrapped her arms around her chest, hiding her braless state.

"We're not a thing," she whisper-yelled, conscious of the limp form of Waverly, fast asleep, in his arms.

He was clearly dressed for wherever he was going, his black long-sleeve t-shirt, black work fatigues, and black boots giving him the look of someone either about to burgle a place or kick serious ass. No one wore white when they were planning on spilling blood. Black was for sure the go-to color for less clean up.

She was pissed that the first thing she noticed after Waverly and the endless black was the bulges of Rome's muscles and her art on the backs of his hands. He didn't show up at her door like a lover in the middle of the night and make her feel safe.

Safe wasn't even in the realm of what he made her feel.

He turned her body into a dangerous weapon he could use against her at his whim. She'd been having dreams for the past few nights that were so real that she woken up, her thighs buzzing, lungs pumping, pussy throbbing and empty. The sex wouldn't just be hot with Rome. It would be an inferno.

"You can't do this."

She didn't give way and he didn't force her to step back and let him in. He stood there, under the clear assumption that he was indeed doing it and she was going to let him get away with it. That worked her up further, squashing the heat of attraction and firing the heat of anger. It made her want to dig in and fight.

"Let me in, Seren."

Why? Why did he have to ask in that velvet smooth baritone, and why did she have to step aside and let him push past her?

He went straight to her living room and set Waverly gently down on the couch. She didn't wake up. He spotted the knit blanket, black with bright rainbow bursts in the middle, on the back of the beige coach and pulled it down, gently laying it over the tiny girl.

Seren stood there useless and gaping, as per usual, completely at a loss for anything to say. She didn't have to do this. She should not be allowing this man to interrupt her life this way. It was bad enough she couldn't purge him from her thoughts and dreams.

She stared him down, but she knew her look wasn't stony or unforgiving. Instead, it probably felt like a caress against the brutal line of his jaw. Technically, she'd started this. She'd brought the shovel to her own grave.

Rome reached into his back pocket and unfolded a brown envelope. He held it out for her.

"No." Like fuck she was going to take that and get herself in even deeper. There was zero chance that could be anything good. Knowing Rome, it was probably full of poison and razor blades, just like him.

He threw it onto her vintage coffee table, a lovely mid-century modern one she'd found at an antique fair. "If something happens to me, I need you to get Waverly to my family. Everything she'll need is in there."

Her mouth dropped open. She hated doing the stunned, stupid deer thing and letting his cold black eyes paralyze her into it. "If something happens to you? Are you insane? What are you—where are you going?" It wasn't like he was going to answer. He literally turned and acted like he was going to leave. She rushed after him and stopped short of grabbing his arm. "Rome!" Her angry tone tore through the room. "I'm not letting you leave here until you tell me."

"The less you know, the better."

"Nope." She popped her lips on the P. "That's not going to cut it."

He speared her with his gaze, giving her every bit of that swordlike intensity. She swallowed hard, feeling it in her spine, but also between her legs. What was wrong with her that she found the total absence of any decency and human affection attractive? She'd never been someone who could just easily have sex and move on. For her, it meant nothing unless there was affection and a measure of permanence.

And then there was Rome.

She'd never even contemplated touching herself to anyone but a straight up fantasy before. Book boyfriends or a character in a show or movie she liked. It wasn't the man himself. It was always, always the personality. The storyline. She hadn't actually pulled the trigger on the Rome thing outside of his evil office and the dreams she couldn't control.

She thought he was going to just walk out on her, but he changed his mind. "One of the guys from the garage used to be in with a bad crowd. They let him go, reluctantly, but they haven't severed all ties. He wasn't up front about this until yesterday. This gang wants to use him when it's convenient and saying no isn't an option. Moving some product for them here and there wasn't above his paygrade to keep them out of his life for the most part, but they're escalating. That shit stops tonight. They're humans. They've never dealt with a pack of angry wolves before. When we're done with them, there won't be any left to harass anyone."

"A-a gang?" she spluttered. "In Casper?"

"They're a mother chapter, located elsewhere, but they have ties here and everywhere. Don't discount small cities. They're ripe for profits when it comes to drugs, women, and clubs."

She wanted to argue with him, but it was difficult. For a wolf, loyalty was paramount. He was going to war for another wolf, a brother. They were a pack of sorts, those wolves at the garage he ran. Had he gathered them to him, started it, made a home for them, a pseudo pack for the packless.

Loyalty and the fact that gangs who were hurting and killing people deserved zero sympathy aside, what he was planning was still murder, and that was no less evil for possibly being deserved.

"You can't do that! Not as humans and not as wolves."

Darkness moved through already impossibly dark eyes. It was beyond clear that Rome was a man who would burn down the world if he was wronged or someone he cared about was threatened. He'd told her as much, but seeing it in action was entirely different.

She should look away from such a level of horror. He was telling her straight up that he was going to do this. He'd brought Waverly to her and made plans in case the slaughter went wrong. He felt no shame over it. He stood there, giving her an unrelenting stare down that said he felt no guilt at all. The worst part was, even now, he was beautiful. He was so beautiful that she was transfixed. She couldn't stop looking at him.

She had to fight for him. Fight for him not to go, but all she could get out was, "Please."

"We'll be fine. Back in a few hours. I'll take Waverly to see that sunrise, like my sister suggested. You can come with us. She'll think it was part of the plan, to come here and get you."

"Jesus Christ—"

"Is full of opinions that I've never overly been very much interested in. Plus, I've heard he'll forgive me anyway, in the end, so I'm not too worried."

She wasn't going to let him rattle her with his purposefully shocking blasphemy. She wasn't even religious, and it was still offensive. "Then listen to my opinion. Waverly needs you. That's not negotiable."

He laughed harshly. "What she needs is stability. Goodness. A family. A pack."

The urge to reach for him was so strong she balled her hands in her shirt. "You're talking like you're going there to get yourself killed. You're not allowed to do that. We have a contract. Who will I owe my soul to if you're not around?"

"It's in my top desk drawer. It was only ever between you and me. You're free to go."

It was everything she wanted, but not like this. Not at this price. Her heart started to hammer so loudly it overtook every other sound in the room.

"I refuse." She needed to stay calm. Rome needed her strong right now, not on her knees "I'm not the kind of person who doesn't pay off a debt. I gave my word. You had best be around to let me make good on it."

"Careful. It sounds dangerously like you care." His mocking smile peeled off gleaming white teeth, but there was a note in his voice that had never been there before.

"I absolutely care!"

He wasn't expecting that. A small light flickered on in his eyes, but it was enough to throw him and the rest of the room into shadow in comparison. What would it be like for those eyes to come truly alive? For them to look at her protectively, with want and need, with emotion that drove it and echoed it in his soul? What would those eyes look like brimming with life and love instead of the resolute acceptance that he was already lost, already damned, already dead, so the things he did didn't truly matter?

"For Waverly," she said thickly. "I've met your family. They all love you and would be devastated."

"I went down to Arizona and personally executed one of the nastiest wolves I have ever met, not to mention an entire group of Rangers. I'm not worried about this."

Why did he kill those Rangers? He'd said it was because they took something that belonged to him, but what was it? It was a shock, how he stood there so calmly, admitting to terrible sins like that. Casually, not proudly, like it had to be done and he'd done it. It did more than shock her now. It broke her in half.

She hurt for him. He didn't seem like the kind of person who enjoyed killing and violence. It was like it was obligatory like this. He was going to help his brother. The Arizona thing happened because that wolf threatened his family and his pack. He was already out of it, but he'd risked his own life to save theirs. He was like a vigilante, handing out justice where it was needed, but that wasn't excusable.

"You could get shot or stabbed or—"

"That all heals."

He was so calm it was maddening. So cruelly handsome it was a perpetual douse of cold water. He was resolute above all. She wasn't going to change his mind. He wouldn't stay for Waverly, and he wouldn't stay because she asked him to.

Of course. She meant nothing to him, and he meant nothing to her. That was all there was. She had zero right to feel so enraged that every muscle in her body tensed and her heart threatened to implode because it beat to such a wicked drumming.

"Have fun with your gore and carnage and violence," she snapped. "Vampires might drink blood, but I've never met anyone who craved it as badly as you do. You seem to need it to survive."

Rome's hand shot out. He broke his own rule again, but they weren't under contract at the moment, so maybe it didn't count. His fingers wrapped around her throat. He could have squeezed the life out of her easily. Broken her neck with a single twist. She was so much smaller than him. Weaker. The fact that her nipples pebbled under her t-shirt and her leggings got wet said that her brain was again way the hell off, sending her the faultiest of signals.

Her nostrils flared and she stared up at him defiantly, tilting her chin up and leaning back so his fingers tightened. He held her like that, too hard and too near. She breathed too hard, drinking in the masculine spice of him. He smelled like fresh laundry, like he'd put on clean black clothes to go out and commit foul murder, and that made her want to laugh in an unhinged way.

She'd signed a contract for her body, but she was losing her fucking mind because of this man.

The pressure increased, cutting off her air. All she could do was stare up into his face, into those black eyes that refused to glitter or glint. The light was gone. There was only dark, shadow, night. The far depths of all the realms of torture and despair.

"I don't belong to you," he growled. "I don't have to answer to you. I'm the least fit person for Waverly. Better that she go to my family. You once said so yourself."

He released her without honestly doing any damage. She wasn't gasping or choking. She was breathless for entirely different reasons. "Don't you dare throw that back at me!"

He shrugged. The arrogant fucking bastard. She heated how she wanted to fly at him and beat him with ineffectual fists. She wanted to shift and take him down, to bite him and make him bleed just to make him feel. She hated how at the same time she wanted to put her arms around him and hold him, plead with him, get him to see that he wasn't beyond redemption if only he'd stop. She'd touch him and she'd make him touch her. She'd force

him to endure the same flames that licked up her body and made her irrational and useless.

"I'm leaving. I'll be back in a few hours. If I'm not here by seven, you know the way to Brooke's, but just in case, I've left my family's contact numbers in there." He pointed at the coffee table.

"You're an asshole!" she yelped, nerves frayed beyond the point of being childish. "A ball sack of an asshole. You can take your black soul and damn yourself straight to hell for all I care."

"Already accomplished, darling," he chuckled, using that term of un-endearment so easily. "See you in a few."

He walked out her door like he owned her home. Like he owned her body and her heart and her soul. Like he had every right to enter and exit her life and to consume all the hours in between.

She watched him get into his stupid black sedan and drive away. She stood at the window, her own heartbeat drowning out the sounds of her breaths, of Waverly's even, sleeping, childish snores on the couch, of the night and the city and the entire world around her.

Seren didn't doubt Rome's ability to survive. The worst kind of people had an uncanny knack for it. The fear that licked through her veins had everything to do with his breaking point. Where was the line, the brink, the final moment where he surrendered the tattered remains of his soul? She'd kept asking herself what happened to make him the way he was, but that was the wrong question.

It wasn't what's turned him into a monster ,

but what kind of monster can he yet become?