Lead Heart (Seraph Black Book 3)

by Washington, Jane

  I shrugged. “I haven’t spoken to him in a while, I wouldn’t know.”

  “Because you bonded to my brothers?” Noah didn’t draw back, but turned his eyes from Danny to me, giving me the full weight of his skepticism.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Because I was busy being locked up and starved by Dominic Kingsling, and then kidnapped by Weston, Kingsling and my dead father—who isn’t dead or my father.”

  “So you were still dating Danny even when you were bonded to my brothers?” Noah pressed, completely ignoring the point of everything I had just uttered.

  “Yes.” I sighed. “But they weren’t dates. Well, the first one maybe, but not the second one.”

  “And Silas didn’t kill him…” It wasn’t a question, because we could both see Danny with our own eyes. Happy, healthy, and very much alive.

  “No,” I confirmed.

  “Right,” Noah drawled out the word sarcastically.

  “Why didn’t you tell Amber the truth about Kingsling?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

  “I wasn’t there, was I.” He folded his arms, leaning back in his chair to regard me.

  “You don’t trust Miro? I’m sure he told you what happened.”

  “He might be protecting you.”

  “Shut the hell up, cousin,” Poison appeared behind Noah, her book bag knocking into the back of his head as she passed him.

  Noah didn’t seem perturbed, but he did reach out as she passed, grabbing the back of her bag and yanking, hard. It slipped off her shoulder and her books tumbled out, some of them hitting the table, some falling to the ground. Poison only grumbled in retaliation, which was a testament to how strong Noah truly was. Even Poison didn’t want to pick a fight with him.

  Me, on the other hand…

  “What the hell was that for?” I snapped, standing to help Poison with her books. She waved me off and I turned on Noah instead, shoving against his chest so hard that his chair ground against the floor in an attempt to slide backwards.

  He smirked and then stood, grabbing a hold of my wrist. “Hand over their timetables,” he said, shaking my wrist a little to stop me from trying to wriggle it out of his grip. “Now. We have somewhere to be.”

  “I don’t have anywhere to be with you.” I tried to ignore the way my body leaned toward his, the tight grip of his fingers sending a pleasant shiver down my arm.

  I knew that feeling.

  The strain was back.

  Perhaps it was because I had used one of my abilities for the first time in months. I had possibly even overused it.

  “Yes you do.” He pulled again, causing me to stumble sideways. He turned a little, pulling my arm behind his back and catching me against his torso. He leaned down, his voice sounding in my ear. “Give her the timetables. You really don’t want to pick a fight with me right now. Keep in mind that you’re remaining with us because of me, Seraph. Cabe wanted it, so I’m allowing it. That doesn’t mean that I won’t change my mind and drag you straight to the Klovoda if you push me too far, because I will.”

  I nodded slightly, despite how badly I wanted to hit him again. I wasn’t going to call his bluff. Not when he was in the mood he seemed to be in. I quickly handed over the timetables to Poison, who was keeping herself uncharacteristically quiet. It seemed to be a theme of hers and Clarin’s: they didn’t hesitate to make it their business whenever anyone else tried to mess with me, but they refused to interfere whenever one of my pairs was involved. Perhaps it was an unspoken Zevghéri rule.

  Noah dragged me away, pulling his phone out of his pocket and sending off a text. I assumed that he had messaged Cabe and that I was about to be cornered by the both of them, but I was surprised when we ended up in a full lecture hall. Cabe was leaning up against the back wall, out of sight of all the students, who were facing the front as they listened to…

  Quillan?

  Quillan’s steady speech halted, his eyes tracking us as Noah dragged me over to Cabe, before he quickly gathered himself and continued speaking. Noah walked me down to the back row of seats, sitting down and pulling me into the chair beside him.

  Cabe followed, sinking into the chair on my other side. “Are we putting this to the test?” he whispered.

  Noah grunted quietly. “You read my mind.” And then his hand was on my knee.

  I glared at it until Cabe put his hand on my other knee, and then I understood. At the front of the room, Quillan was still trying to ignore us.

  “Can you two please stop molesting me?” I asked calmly.

  “Do you feel molested?” Cabe replied, his eyebrows arching up in question.

  I wanted to say yes, but his hand had inched up higher, his long fingers brushing lightly against the material covering my legs. I swallowed instead, forcing down the rush of feeling that the strain had whipped up inside my chest. It felt like his skin was on fire, and the fire should have been singeing through the material to burn my skin. There was the barest tremor in Cabe’s grip, but Noah’s hand was heavy and firm.

  “Why are you trying to get a reaction out of him?” I asked instead, hating that my voice sounded so raw.

  “He says you’re his Atmá.” Noah leaned in, switching his hands so that his free arm could snake across the back of my chair. His other hand gripped my knee tighter and pulled slightly until my right leg was turned out, pressing into his. “We don’t believe him. You won’t show us your mark, so we’re going to force a reaction out of one of you.” His bright eyes glimmered for a moment, travelling over my face. “Either him… or you… do you know the kind of pain it causes a pair to see someone touching what belongs to them?”

  I could feel the frown pulling down the corners of my lips, but I didn’t turn away immediately. I wasn’t going to let Noah bully me. I raised my chin, narrowing my eyes on his. He inched closer, and then paused. He was too close now for me to continue meeting his glare, so I flicked my eyes lower. There was a muscle ticking in his jaw… he wasn’t as unaffected as he pretended to be. I felt the pinch of his fingers tightening on my leg and then the brush of his exhalation against my lips. I swung my head toward the front of the lecture hall, my eyes widening and clashing with Quillan’s. He shook his head imperceptibly, his mouth hooking into the smallest of grimaces—and all the while, he kept speaking as though a student wasn’t getting at least semi-molested at the back of the hall. I hadn’t known Quillan for anywhere near as long as Noah and Cabe had, but even I knew that if this was truly upsetting him, he would have called us out by now. Maybe he was pushing Noah and Cabe just the same way they were pushing him.

  “You want a reaction?” I ground out, scanning the backs of the heads in front of us.

  The students all looked older, so it made sense that I wouldn’t recognise anyone, but it didn’t matter. I jumped out of my seat, leaping over the empty row directly in front of me before Noah or Cabe could grab me. I made it out into the aisle as people started to notice me, but I didn’t attempt to escape the hall. Instead, I walked quickly down between the seats, stopping beside the biggest guy that I could find—not out of personal preference, but because I was worried that one of the three people in the room supernaturally tied to me might break him for what I was about to do.

  I grabbed the front of his shirt and he turned to me, startled. His notebook slid to the ground, his phone and pen following it. The pen scattered down a few steps and the sound echoed around the suddenly silent room. He was nice-looking, with hair that half-flopped, half-curled around his face and almond eyes of the same darkish hue… but it didn’t affect me in the slightest. I had enough boyfriends to deal with.

  I’m not a damn instrument, I thought to myself as I perched on my victim’s lap. You can’t just pick me up and play me whenever you feel like it.

  His hands landed on my hips lightly, surprised and unsure whether to hold onto me or push me away. I could feel the strength radiating from his body, and I decided that I had picked well.

  And then I dipped forward. />
  Really, all I had done was tilt my head at a convenient angle to allow my hair to shield what was really happening as I pressed a chaste kiss to the guy’s cheek, close to the side of his mouth, but I knew what it would look like. His hands moved from my hips to my biceps, clearly intending to push me back, but I quickly dug a hand into the hair that curled around the nape of his neck, punishing his reluctance. He made a sound that was halfway to a laugh, but ended on a surprised grunt when I gave his hair another warning tug. There was another guy sitting beside him—who had the perfect vantage point to bear witness to the fact that I wasn’t really making out with anyone—and he grinned at me, apparently understanding what I was doing.

  I was making someone jealous.

  Or, more specifically, I was giving Noah and Cabe the reaction that they needed. Their own reaction.

  “Seraph!”

  Quillan had finally spoken up, and I quickly scooted away from the guy, giving his shocked head a pat as I stood and straightened out my clothing. Quillan was standing in the aisle right beside me, Noah and Cabe close behind him. Noah looked decidedly more furious than he had after finding me and Quillan by the side of the road the day before. Even Cabe seemed to be on the edge of ranting at me, his dark brow pulled into a fierce scowl.

  “Sorry, Professor,” I said, though my tone was bland. Quillan winced. “It seems I’ve got the wrong lecture hall.” I started to walk past them, pausing beside Noah and Cabe. “Don’t you hate getting things wrong?”

  I didn’t wait to hear their response, but hurried up the aisle, fleeing the room.

  “You know, you guys really don’t have to take turns watching me,” I grumbled, pulling myself up in my bed to stare at the silhouette of Cabe, who was sitting in a chair against my bedroom door.

  I wasn’t getting any sleep. Having him sit so near to me without being able to touch him in any way to sooth the strain was killing me.

  He glanced up from the novel that he had been pretending to read—I knew that he wasn’t really reading it because I hadn’t heard him turning any of the pages—and I saw his head tilt to the side in the darkness.

  “I know that, but Noah said that he’d sell my Lexus to a family of Mexicans if I didn’t start taking half of his watch-dog shifts.”

  “Why Mexicans?”

  “Not just any Mexicans. He was talking about one Mexican family in particular. We had this nanny when we were younger and she came around to borrow Tabby’s car to pick her kids up from the airport. We haven’t seen her—or the car—since. Well, actually, that’s a lie. We saw pictures of her on Facebook. She was back in Mexico.”

  “Is that why Tabby doesn’t have a car of her own?”

  “She still thinks Janua is bringing her car back. She’s waiting.”

  I turned my face into the pillow to muffle a laugh, but it only seemed to encourage Cabe, who moved to sit on the edge of my bed, his arm appearing on my other side as he leaned over me.

  “You think this is funny? Noah even looked up Janua’s son—has his number saved and everything. He’ll sell my damn car in a heartbeat, which means I’m your new shadow. At least every second day of the week. The rest of the time you can have the grumpy one.”

  I remained where I was, my laughter dying off already. “I already have two shadows,” I moped, pulling myself upright again.

  I couldn’t see Jayden’s men from where I sat in my bed, but I knew that they were lingering somewhere outside. If I walked to the window, I would probably be able to search them out. Cabe was no longer a silhouette and I could make out his features in the bare moonlight filtering in through the open window. He was staring at me intensely, his eyes a curious shade of brown, lit with an emotion that seemed to teeter halfway between a dance of mischief and a plummet of gravity. It was always easier to see Cabe in the half-shadow of night rather than the full relief of day. Darkness brought out the truth of him. Some people were like that; nocturnal, in a split-personality kind of way. Cabe’s body woke up in the morning, with the sun; but his mind woke up at night, with the moon.

  “What are you staring at?” I asked him gently.

  “You,” he replied instantly, without reservation or self-consciousness. “Always you. Why is that?”

  “I’ll tell you someday.”

  “Keeping secrets?” He smirked, one of his hands twitching in my direction—an unconscious movement. His smirk faded instantly and he leaned back, trying to put distance between us.

  It was excruciating. I shoved my hands beneath me so that I wouldn’t reach out for him. I had always hated the way he and Noah used to swaddle me up in blankets so that I couldn’t use my hands when I was straining, but I would have given anything to have them lying either side of me like they used to. A strangled sound escaped my throat as Cabe shifted to lean even further away from me, apparently battling his own thoughts.

  “I… I… I need to go,” I spluttered, suddenly pushing back the covers and springing from the bed.

  The floor was cold as I rushed for the door, and I shifted uncomfortably on my bare feet as Cabe pushed in front of me, plastering his back to the door and folding his arms, casting a frown down my way. The polished floorboards seeped ice up over my feet, tingling at the base of my calves. Coupled with the slight breeze that tickled through the open window to stir strands of hair against the back of my neck, I was cold enough to inch closer to Cabe’s warmth instead of stepping back as I should have.

  “Where could you possibly be going at this time of night?” he asked.

  “Miro’s room.”

  His frown deepened as he shook his head. “No. You don’t do that. We would have noticed.”

  I was seconds away from losing it and I wasn’t even sure how that would manifest because the strain was now filling me with a righteous anger to match the overwhelming yearning. I needed my pairs; I needed their closeness, their comfort, their strength; and they weren’t giving me what I needed.

  I planted a hand against Cabe’s chest, pausing only a moment to marvel at how the softness of his shirt felt against the hardness of his body before I bunched the material up into my fist and yanked on it, a simultaneously satisfied and angry sound bursting from my throat as his face was pulled down to loom over mine.

  “I’m his Atmá, Cabe, why wouldn’t I visit his room at this time of night?”

  He stared at me for a long time before he moved, bracing me between his hands: with one fist twisting into my clothing the same way mine had his, pulling at the stretchy nightshirt that I had worn to bed. The other hand landed between my shoulder blades, making me feel immediately trapped. He hauled me forward, and I relaxed my grip, smoothing over the wrinkles that I had made in the front of his shirt. He straightened up, but used his new grip on me to lift me to the tips of my toes, until I was leaning into him.

  “Are you?” he whispered, searching my face for something.

  “You want the truth?” I goaded faintly, unable to muster enough anger to put an edge to my words. “I’m a lot of things. I’m a daughter, but I have no real parents; I’m a sister, but I have no real siblings; I’m an Atmá, but do you see anyone claiming me?” I continued, not allowing him to answer. “The truth is… nobody owns me. My family is mine to choose. My heart belongs to me. Stop concerning yourself with who owns me, because nobody ever will. I will choose my partners in life, bonds be dammed.”

  “You can’t go against your bond,” Cabe warned me, even as his eyes flicked downward and his forehead drew tighter into the frown that had been slowly forming. I wasn’t sure if he was staring at my mouth or simply trying to look away from my eyes, but I could suddenly feel his attention prickling over my lips.

  “I can,” I whispered. It tasted like a lie, so after a moment, I amended the statement. “I could. I might.”

  “Why does that sound like a threat?” he inched closer, and suddenly I could feel more than just his attention. I could also feel the sweep of his breath.

  “It is.”

  H
e backed away slightly, his face creased in pain. He lowered me, his hands falling away, and I thought that he was simply pulling away as was his habit when we got too close, but instead, he was stumbling. He struck backwards against the door, clutching at his head, moaning low in his throat.

  “Cabe?” I tried to reach for him but he thrust out a hand, keeping me away.

  “It’s nothing. Just a headache…”

  I frowned, twisting my hands together instead of reaching for him again. “You didn’t have a headache a second ago.”

  He started to straighten, pulling his hands over his face and then through his hair. His brow was still creased into a painful expression, but he side-stepped me, and I watched as it slowly cleared the further away from me he got.

  “I just… when I think about…” He shook his head, taking another step away from me. “Never mind. Go to Miro.”

  “You get a pain in your head when you think about something?” I pressed, making no move for the door now that my path was clear. “When you think about what exactly?”

  He laughed, and the sound was sarcastic enough that my forehead crinkled up in question. He clenched his fists by his sides as though bracing himself and then he stalked back to me, raising a hand and laying it against my chest, right between my breasts, smoothing over the stretchy material that still bore the punishment of his grip.

  “You want to know what I was thinking about when my hand was nestled right here?” he asked, his voice as dry as his laugh had been. “When you were leaning into me like a starving person in the desert about to drink water right from my mouth?”

  I opened my mouth to object, but I was doing it again. I knew I was doing it again, because his hand was now pressed between us, and he sucked in a sharp breath, a small tendon popping out in his neck. He was in pain again. The hypnotist—Jayden—wasn’t infallible. Just like me, his ability wasn’t all-powerful; it had its limits; it played by its own rules. Cabe was fighting back against the memory block. I wanted to push, to break apart that barrier altogether, but I knew instinctively that this was a delicate battle. I might break the barrier, but I might also break Cabe in the process.