Bound by Bloodline

CHAPTER 5

Day 2 → Night 3 – 2:17 a.m.

The house never truly went dark; it simply traded one kind of watching for another.

After the explosion they had spent the rest of the day like soldiers on patrol: clearing rooms, cataloguing exits, prying open every vent cover and ceiling panel they could reach. They found thirty-seven cameras on the main floor alone. Cassian smashed twenty-nine of them with the butt of a hunting rifle. Eight were wired into the load-bearing beams (rip those out and half the roof came down). They left them blinking like malevolent red eyes.

By midnight the temperature had dropped to fourteen degrees Fahrenheit inside the master bedroom. The generator had clicked off at 11:59 on the dot, as programmed. The fire was down to sullen coals. Their breath hung in the air in slow white ghosts.

Cassian had dragged the mattress off the bedframe and onto the floor directly in front of the hearth. One mattress. Two pillows. One blanket that barely covered them both if they stayed pressed together.

Evie sat on the edge of it in borrowed sweatpants and two of his thermals, knees drawn to her chest, watching the dying flames like they might tell her the future.

Cassian came back from the bathroom shirtless, burn cream glistening on his left forearm, a .45 tucked into the waistband of his sweats. He’d found the gun vault behind the library panel exactly where she said it would be. He hadn’t asked how she knew the code.

He dropped to the mattress beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched. Heat rolled off him in waves.

“Get in,” he said.

“I’m not tired.”

“You’re shaking.”

She was. She hadn’t stopped since the explosion. Adrenaline crash, cold, or the dawning realization that someone in this house (or outside it) had already tried to kill them once today and would absolutely try again.

Cassian reached over, hooked a finger under her chin, and turned her face to his. The firelight carved sharp shadows across his cheekbones, the scar through his eyebrow, the new blister on his arm.

“Look at me.”

She did.

“I’m not letting anything happen to you tonight,” he said. Low. Steady. The same voice he’d probably used in Fallujah or Kandahar or wherever the hell men like him learned to sound like certainty itself.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she whispered.

“I don’t.”

He pulled the blanket up, slid an arm around her waist, and dragged her down with him until they were lying face-to-face on the mattress, noses almost touching. The .45 rested on the floor within reach of his right hand.

Evie’s pulse hammered so hard she was sure he felt it against his chest.

“Body heat,” he said, as if that explained everything.

She should have shoved him away. Should have reminded him of rule one. Instead she found her leg sliding between his, her forehead dropping to the hollow of his throat.

Minutes bled into an hour. The fire settled into dull red embers. The house creaked around them like an old ship.

She thought he was asleep until his voice rumbled against her hair.

“Tell me something true.”

“What?”

“Something you never told anyone. Not your father. Not a therapist. No one.”

Evie closed her eyes. The dark made it easier.

“When I was twelve,” she said, so quietly the flames almost swallowed it, “I used to stand on the balcony of our penthouse and count how many steps it would take to climb the railing. I never did it. But I needed to know I still had a way out. Even if the way out killed me.”

His arm tightened around her waist. Not comfort (anchoring).

“Your turn,” she whispered.

Cassian was silent so long she thought he wouldn’t answer.

“I’ve killed seventeen men with my hands,” he said finally. “Sixteen of them deserved it. One of them looked at me right before I broke his neck and said thank you. I still don’t know what he was thanking me for.”

The confession hung between them like smoke.

Evie’s fingers found the raised scar just under his ribs (shrapnel, maybe). She traced it once. Twice.

“I hate you,” she said against his skin.

“I know.”

She tilted her head up. Their mouths were a breath apart.

He didn’t move. Didn’t take. Just waited, jaw clenched so tight she saw the muscle jump.

Evie closed the distance.

It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t sweet. It was teeth and fury and the kind of kiss that felt like surrender and declaration of war at the same time. She tasted blood (hers or his, didn’t matter). His hand fisted in her hair, angling her head exactly where he wanted it, and she let him because for three seconds she wanted to be wanted more than she wanted to be in control.

When they broke apart they were both shaking harder than before.

“No feelings,” she reminded him (herself) on a ragged exhale.

“Never,” he lied.

Outside the shuttered window, the wind screamed across the mountain like it knew what they’d just done.

Inside, the last coal in the fireplace flared bright, then died.

Above them, the surviving camera caught every second in perfect 4K.

Somewhere far away, the betting pool tripled overnight.