Amara was officially off the radar.
As Morana looked at the lake and hills surrounding it at barely six in the morning, she worried about that. It had almost been a week and she didn’t know what the hell to do.
Her morning had been pretty bizarre as well. Tristan had received a call and he’d been out the door in less than five minutes like his ass was on fire, telling her to track his phone if he didn’t come back in an hour. How he knew she had a tracker on his phone in the first place, she didn’t know. But he had left and Morana had busied herself dressing and clipping the extra gun he kept in the living room drawer to her jeans and watched the time while standing out on the porch.
At this hour, the hills were misted with a dense cover of fog, the sunlight muted but cutting through it. The cold wind played through the strands of her hair and the scent of early morning dew and flowers permeated her surroundings. She had never been in a place like this. For a moment, she felt transported back in time to another era, the sight before her ancient.
A shiver traveled down her spine and she clutched to the modern technology in her hand, her phone, and reminded herself not to get spooked. She looked down at the screen, at Tristan’s tracker, and saw his dot about half a mile away from her location.
Exactly after fifty-three minutes since he’d left, her phone vibrated with a text.
Tristan: Come to my location. Quick.
Morana: On my way.
She locked up and followed the navigation, heading into the woods on the other side of the cottage. Though he was just half a mile away, Morana followed the path that felt longer, her breathing better than it would’ve week thanks to her training with Vin daily.
After about a few minutes of no sounds except the wind on water and birds chirping, the tall trees gave way to a small clearing at the base of the hill, the cottage hidden behind the thick foliage.
Morana saw Tristan standing there, his arms folded across his chest, talking to a man she wouldn’t have recognized but for his size.
Dante.
Covered in beard and wearing a shaggy, loose grey shirt the old Dante wouldn’t have been caught dead in, his hair messy around his face, he was barely recognizable as the once perfect Dante Maroni. Before Morana could stop it, her feet were flying across the clearing as she crashed into the man she’d thought she’d lost, the man who had become important to her.
Big arms wrapped around her in a bear hug unlike any she had ever experienced and she hugged him tightly, smelling hints of his spicy cologne contrary to his appearance, and had to smile despite herself. You could take Dante Maroni out of the clothes but you couldn’t take the clothes out of Dante Maroni.
“Good to see I’ve been missed,” Dante’s smiling voice rumbled as he slowly patted her back in reassurance. Morana pulled back, blinking up at him with eyes that burned even as she couldn’t stop smiling.
“Are you okay?” she asked, looking over him. Though he was smiling, his usually warm brown eyes were, not cold exactly, but off.
“He’s fine,” Tristan said from behind her, his voice slightly off. “Stop fussing over him.”
“Go stand with him before he decks me, Morana,” Dante rolled his eyes, his tone deliberately light. “I’d hate to bruise his pretty mouth, out of concern for you of course.
A laugh burst out of her. God, how she’d missed him.
Stepping back, Morana didn’t turn, just stared at him. “You sure you’re okay?”
A genuine smile grazed his lips under the beard. “I will be.”
Morana nodded. “Any leads? Should you be here?”
Dante shook his head, pushing his hair back over his head and Morana watched it fall back again. “I’m working on something but can’t tell you much. Have you talked to Amara? Is she fine?”
The wind whooshed around them as Morana considered him seriously. “No, I haven’t. She hasn’t been reachable since she got the news.”
“She thinks I’m dead?” Dante asked, his eyes narrowing.
Morana shook her head. “No, but she disconnected. I’ve been giving her space but it’s worrying me now.”
Dante looked up at the sky as though asking for patience, muttering something like, “the things I do for her,” before looking at Tristan. “Find her while I get this shit done.”
“On it,” the man behind her said.
Morana looked at both of them before Dante squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll see you guys soon.”
Nodding, she watched him silently move and disappear into the woods, a man his size moving with the grace one wouldn’t expect from his body. She looked around the place she stood in, before turning to her lover.
“What is this place?”
“This is where I used to escape sometimes,” Tristan said, his head tilted to the side. “Dante followed me here one day, stubborn bastard, and it became our spot.”
Morana tilted her head to the side, eyes locked with his. “Did he seem a little off to you?”
“He’s in the zone,” Tristan spoke quietly, taking a step closer to her. “Listen, I have to go out of town for a few days. It’s a lead and I’ll tell you if it pans out.”
Oh, she didn’t like this. Didn’t like the idea of him going away at all.
He was on the same page. “With Dante gone, I don’t trust anyone here. I want you to check into a hotel for the night.”
Morana saw the seriousness in his eyes, blinking. “I’ve slept alert for years before I met you, Tristan. I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t doubt that,” he rubbed his thumb over her lips, his eyes intense. “But I need to be able to focus on my task and not worry about you.”
“You’ll worry about me?” Morana asked, her voice cracking. She forgot sometimes in the flood of her own emotions that he felt for her too.
He didn’t say anything, just pressed his lips to hers, answering her without words. “Check into a hotel anonymously. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Vin will drop you off.”
Morana nodded, preparing herself mentally, an ugly feeling unfurling in the pit of her stomach.
“If something happens to you, caveman,” she told him, looping her arms around his neck. “I’ll kill you myself.”
She saw a flash of his dimple before her eyes closed and her mouth got busy.
The hotel she checked into was the same one she’d stayed at the first time she’d come to Tenebrae to kill Tristan weeks ago. Smack in the center of the city, it was a tall, luxurious building that catered to the wealthy and vetted every guest that checked in. Booking herself a room was a breeze for her.
Walking into the opulent lobby, her heels clicking on the polished marble floor, a red wig hiding her dark locks, Morana dragged her small suitcase behind her, holding a few clothes and her tech stuff.
“Trina Summers,” she introduced herself, giving her false name confidently. The lady behind the reception smiled and handed her the key card. One stay at this hotel was going to put a dent in her savings but once things calmed down, she was sure she’d be able to work again. While she knew Tristan had money, she wanted to be able to pay for her life herself.
Keeping her eyes alert, Morana looked around the lobby inconspicuously and saw all the people, so many of them clueless about the underbelly of the criminal world she lived in. A few suspicious-looking men lingered here and there, and while she kept her eyes on them, she didn’t pay them too much attention.
Walking to her room on the eighteenth floor, Morana wondered about how it had only been weeks since her life had been thrown into chaos, since everything she had known had crumbled. She was in a strange city with no anchor except the one man who had once hated her, the one man who was slowly beginning to trust her now. That was big for him. She knew, because to him, the fact that she was staying with him mattered. He’d been abandoned and left behind all his life by those he’d loved. It made sense why he would be wary of opening up but damn if she wasn’t determined to sneak her way there.
Lost in her thoughts, Morana reached her room and called up room service. Setting up her laptop and router, she ate her noodles while surfing the darknet. Searching for information on the Syndicate was like looking for a specific needle in a needle-stack. Now that she had the codes, she was more relaxed and less burdened about the information. She still had questions but the urgency had left her and honestly, it made her much more productive.
She browsed through conspiracy theories and articles about both the Alliance and the Syndicate, spent hours poring over them and finding quite a bit to make her own theories. She knew enough to theorize that the Syndicate was involved in flesh trade and the end of the Alliance had been connected to it. Was it because the parties hadn’t wanted to partake in the trade? Given everything she knew, she surmised there was a high chance that the girls who had gone missing had somehow been masterminded by the Syndicate. It would make sense.
Over the next two days, Morana spent her time checking her phone for a message from Tristan (which didn’t come and that really worried her), trying to call Amara and not getting through (which worried her even more), and trying to find more clues. She mostly stayed in her room, going down to the hotel restaurant in the evening to have dinner and people watch, making sure nobody could recognize her even if she saw someone familiar.
On the third night sitting at the table and eating her chocolate fondue, a waiter brought her a note.
Morana opened it.
Come to the empty warehouse on the Riviera on Tuesday at midnight. It’s time we meet. Come alone. You won’t be harmed.
– The Reaper
Morana whirled around in her seat, trying to locate who sent it. The lavish restaurant was half-empty. Locating the waiter who had delivered the note, she questioned him about it.
“A man left it at the counter for you, ma’am,” the young man informed her.
“What did he look like?” she asked him, her heart racing.
“Well-dressed, ma’am,” the waiter tried to remember. “He had a dark beard and wore glasses. Oh, and he had a cane.”
A cane. Was it the same man from the funeral? What were the odds?
Morana gave the waiter a small smile, thanking him, and quickly paid the bill, hurrying to her room. Once inside, she sat down on her laptop and hacked into the hotel security system, zooming into the footage at the restaurant in the last hour and watching closely near the counter, adrenaline fueling her.
She saw, on the black and white grainy feed, as a lean man limped over to the counter, leaning heavily on his cane. He handed over the note to the woman behind the counter and watched Morana for a few minutes, before he turned to leave, his face wincing with every step.
Morana zoomed in on his face, trying to remember if she’d ever seen him before, but unable to place him. Something on his hand caught her eye and she zoomed in there, zooming in. It was a ring. A skull ring? She watched the footage multiple times, before finally giving up and getting ready for bed. Wearing her new pajamas, the checkered shorts and ‘nerdy is the new sexy’ t-shirt that was extra soft, she slid under the covers and thought about this man and why, if he had found her with her disguise and her anonymous name, hadn’t he come and talked to her tonight. She’d been just a few feet away, eating and she’d been alone. He had considered it but hadn’t. Why? That was what confused her.
Things were getting very interesting.
It was a body sitting down beside her hip that woke Morana. She turned in bed, a scream leaving her throat at the large form looming over her.
“It’s me,” the voice of whiskey-and-sin poured over her, immediately calming her racing heart. Without another thought, Morana launched up at him and wrapped her arms around his neck, her relief at finding him okay overpowering anything else.
“I missed you something fierce,” she murmured against his neck, her nose nuzzling into that happy spot, inhaling the musky scent of his skin. Her first indication that something wasn’t right came when his arms didn’t come around her. Over the last couple of weeks, he’d gotten good with her surprise hugs, always a little taken aback but tentatively returning them.
Turning on the lamp beside her, she pulled back slightly, looking up into his face.
That was the second indication.
His face was haunted.
She’d never seen him like that.
Morana’s heart slammed in her chest, her eyes searching his. “Tristan?”
“Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t ask me anything right now.”
As much as she wanted to, Morana listened. She had to get him out of whatever dark place he was in. Nodding, she slowly unbuttoned his shirt, only to have his hands come up to stop hers. She looked at him in question.
“You shouldn’t touch me right now,” he told her, his blue eyes so dark and so pained she felt her throat tighten.
“Trust me,” she whispered back to him in the same voice, asking him for the entirety of everything she had given him. He waited for a beat, his eyes on the pulse in her neck. Letting her hands go, he gave her assent to continue.
Morana breathed in and slowly opened his shirt, realizing that he wasn’t looking at her. She could work around that. Pushing his shirt off his torso, she quietly got up from the bed.
“Lie down on your stomach.”
He hesitated, before toeing off his shoes, putting his gun on the table, and taking off his trousers, lying down on his stomach in the middle of the bed.
Morana looked at his back for a second before taking out a bottle of one of her favorite unscented oils from the drawer. She had no idea why he was like this but she had to do something. Had he ever let go in his life? Had he ever simply been told it was okay to not be okay? Ever felt the gentle touch of a loved one in all these years?
Climbing on behind him, spreading her legs and straddling his beautiful ass, Morana took in the view of his entire muscular back laid out before her. He had come to her – broken and messed up, he had found her. The fact that he was there and not at his house, that he’d found her even in this headspace and not headed to the cottage, told her enough.
Without a word, Morana poured out a generous quantity of the oil on her palms. Rubbing them together to warm them, she leaned forward and slowly spread it out over his shoulders, telling her through her very touch that she saw him, accepted him, loved him for who he was, however he was.
A shaky breath escaped him in a rush and Morana continued to slide her hands over him. The tight knots of his muscles there were rigid. Working them out gradually with her thumbs, she heard another breath leave his chest before he could help himself. Her heart hurt, imagining how he had never had this before. His bruised body had never been shown affection, his bruised soul had never been told it was beautiful.
Pressing her lips to his wolf tattoo in a wordless declaration, Morana felt her way down each and every muscle on his beautiful back. She saw a few scars littered here and there, the stories of which she was sure she’d find out someday, but for that moment, she worked silently.
“It was bad,” he said into the pillow, his voice muffled. “I shouldn’t have been there.”
Morana wondered what he had seen that got to him so bad. She let him talk, kneading the muscles at the base of his spine, digging in with her thumbs.
“I want to hurt something right now,” he growled. “And I don’t want it to be you.”
She felt her heart stutter. “You won’t hurt me, Tristan.”
He let out an ugly laugh, suddenly flipping so she landed on the side of the bed.
“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” his eyes were ablaze. “I killed my own father. Shot right here,” he pointed to the middle of his forehead. “Do you even realize what that does to you?” his voice escalated.
Morana watched him, her eyes widening. “Tristan-”
“And that was just the beginning for me,” he leaned in, trying to intimidate her. “The things I have done, the blood on my hands will never wash off. What the fuck are you even doing here? Just cut your losses and walk away.”
Morana felt her breath hitch, not understanding what the hell was going on with him but very, very scared of the way he was walling her out. She took in a deep breath, fighting to keep calm. He was unraveling and she needed to keep him together right now, for both their sakes.
“And if I walk,” she tilted her head, keeping her voice even, “you’d let me go.”
The stark pain in his eyes told her everything she needed to know. “Then, shut up.”
He sat back on his knees, his hands holding his head. “I never meant to kill him,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “I need you to know that. I just saw you and saw what he was going to do. I only meant to stop him. I didn’t know, I didn’t-”
Morana moved, her heart bleeding for him. Placing her hand on his arm, she straddled him, pulling his face into her chest and his body started to shake. “She left me alone with these monsters after that. She left me to fucking fend for myself with nobody. I wasn’t a monster then. I was so fucking lost-”
He broke.
Morana held him through the pain, her own eyes tearing up as he cried in her arms. She didn’t know what had caused him to break, didn’t know what had triggered him into heaving like the little boy who had been left hurt and alone in a world too cruel for him. She didn’t know and she didn’t care about anything right now except he had sought her out. He needed her acceptance. He needed her unconditional love to heal like his own was healing her. She doubted he even realized that he loved her, or that every action of his cemented that fact in her very soul.
Clutching him to her heart as his body shook in her arms, she rocked him silently, holding him as he had never been held, whispering sweet, soothing words to him, telling him she was there and she was never going to leave him.
The sounds coming from him broke something inside her, the rush of fierce protectiveness engulfing her so acute. She didn’t know if she held him for minutes or hours, if the night had passed or still remained. She just held him, pressing soft kisses to his head, loving him as he deserved to be loved, as he should have been loved for so many years.
“What if she is dead?” he asked into her collarbone, his voice rough and so agonized she doubted it would ever be completely gone. She knew who he was talking about.
She tugged his face back, and looked at him. His eyes, his beautiful, electric blue eyes, were red-rimmed and swollen, the tears in them precious gifts he’d shared with her.
“Do you truly believe that?” she asked him, stroking her finger over his eyebrow, wiping away an errant tear.
He shook his head tightly.
“Then we will find her.”
His jaw trembled again, everything he was feeling in his heart naked in his eyes, and Morana softly pressed her lips to his, accepting every word that hovered on them but couldn’t make it out. He wasn’t there yet. She didn’t know if he would ever be there. But she knew. And that was enough for her.
“Have you ever been made love to, Mr. Caine?” she asked him softly, knowing she would have to lead him. He wasn’t strong at processing emotions, never had to be, and her mere existence in his life was forcing him to slowly confront so much he had buried for so long. Expecting him to understand emotional nuances and express them would be wrong. The damage to his psyche might be something he never recovered from. Morana knew that. And she would be there for him, every step of the way like he was for her with his little touches that anchored her in moments of doubt, with his little chocolates she found throughout the day that warmed her heart, with his little looks at her when he thought she wasn’t aware.
“No,” he answered, swallowing.
“Then, allow me,” she whispered, slowly pressing her mouth against his, taking a hold of his lower lip between her teeth and tugging at it. His hands speared into her hair, holding her face in place as he kissed her, pouring everything he felt into that one kiss. Their lips met, tongues tangled and parted. Her oiled hands slid down his chest to rest on his racing heart, feeling the strong beat under her palm.
She pulled back, looking him right in those blue eyes and telling him the words he should have been told a long time ago.
“I’m in so love with you, caveman.”
She saw his eyes flare slightly, his hand coming to rest around her neck, gripping her firmly. “You can’t take that back,” he warned her fiercely.
Morana shook her head, not breaking their gaze. Taking out his cock from his boxers, she pushed her panties to the side and rose on her knees, letting his tip enter her folds. Even though she wasn’t as wet as she should’ve been, this moment wasn’t about the sex. It was about more. It was about acceptance.
She took him inside her, her mouth opening slightly as her walls clenched and unclenched to accommodate him, burning slightly, her eyes never once moving from his. His hand squeezed her neck slightly, holding her even as he held on to her.
“I’m not going to take it back,” she told him, her breathing heavy as he seated himself inside her completely.
“I mean it, Morana,” he threatened her, his eyes so alive she felt buzzed. “You cannot take it back. Do you understand me?”
“I won’t,” she reassured him.
He moved her ass, the position placing him so deep inside her she couldn’t stop her breath from rushing out. Hip to hip, chest to chest, heart to heart. The hand on her neck never moved. Neither did his eyes.
“Tell me again,” he demanded, jerking her again.
Morana looked into his gaze, seeing the lost boy and the lovable man, both of whom he kept hidden from the world, and told him. “I’m in love with you, Tristan Caine. I don’t expect you to say it back. I don’t need you to. I just need you to keep on loving me.”
He pressed his forehead to hers as she rotated her hips slowly over him, their bodies, their beings, their minds so connected in that moment they were the same.
The night continued, and he showed her everything he felt that he couldn’t say.
