Men were exhausting.

This wasn’t news to her, by any means, but Winter had long been convinced that mercenaries, in particular, had a tendency to be some of the most dramatic, but she also hadn’t thought she would be stuck in the middle of … whatever this was.

Syn had gone quiet, lost in his head the majority of the time unless she, specifically, needed him, which didn’t make her feel any better.

And Răzvan …

She wasn’t sure where they stood, especially after his surprise visit earlier, and the thought of reaching out to him now when she didn’t know the reception she would get didn’t sit well with her.

Delaying the inevitable hadn’t helped her at all. If anything, it had only seemed to make things worse, but it was done now, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She left her bedroom, heading for the kitchen to grab a bottle of Gatorade before returning.

A handful of minutes had passed at most, but once she was back, she was no longer alone.

The man sitting in the swivel chair next to her window made her jump nearly a foot in the air.

“Maybe we got off on the wrong foot,” Fang suggested with a casual shrug of his shoulder as if it was completely normal for him to be inside her apartment when he wasn’t invited.

“So you break into my place to tell me that?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest. “Could’ve called or sent a text, you know, like a normal person. You mercenaries have no concept of boundaries.”

“Some things are better said in person, and we both know I don’t play by your mercenary rules.”

Of course, not. He and his brothers didn’t think of themselves as mercenaries.

“Well.” Winter gave an illustrious wave of her hand as she sat on the edge of her bed facing him. “I haven’t been threatened enough in the past few days, what’s one more?”

“Not a threat. We both know what Răz would do to me if he knew I was here.”

Yes, she did.

“But that’s just it, isn’t it? He’s one of the most loyal bastards I know.” Fang reclined back, tucking his hands into his pockets as he glanced out the window. “The orphanage, he told you about it?”

Just the mention of the place made her stomach turn. “Some, but not everything. He …” She paused, not sure if she should share this with Fang, but because it was Fang, she figured he had to know already. “He has nightmares.”

“Night terrors.”

“What?”

“Not nightmares. Night terrors.”

She frowned. “I’m assuming there’s a difference?”

“I didn’t think so at first.” Fang shook his head. “Not until later. He didn’t always have them, you know—not until we’d spent weeks at the orphanage and the torture began.”

“I don’t understand,” Winter whispered. “Why would he torture you? Any of you? You were only children.”

“Power corrupts the corruptible—power shows you who you really are.”

She couldn’t help but think of The Kingmaker, wondering what it meant to him. How had power changed him …

Fang cleared his throat. “Răz doesn’t know the reason the professor removed his vocal cords.”

Winter wasn’t sure she wanted to know either. “He said it was because he cried a lot.”

“That’s part of the reason.”

“Why are you telling me this, Fang?”

“Someone has to.” He took a breath. “People who suffer from night terrors don’t remember having them.”

“Invictus told me that.”

“Back at the orphanage … back when he had a voice, it didn’t matter how he thrashed, or the fucking blood-curdling screams. Nothing. During those nights, Răz was dead to the world. He remembered nothing, but it didn’t matter that he didn’t recall, we did. He was loud and woke us up the moment he whispered no.”

She could still remember the sight Răzvan had made as he screamed in his bed, muscles straining, fear and agony etched across his face.

“Sebastian did what any of us would have done. He waited until Răz went quiet to start making his own noise, and by the time the guards got to us, they thought it was him.”

Fang sighed as he shook his head, his gaze haunted. “It worked, for a while, until they realized the screams weren’t coming from him. Of course, it was the professor who found out the truth actually. The screaming was keeping him awake, so he made it stop.”

It felt like a rock had lodged itself in her throat, preventing her from speaking even as tears blurred her vision.

She didn’t know what to say, and even if she had, she would have rather said it to Răzvan and not Fang.

It wasn’t Fang’s pain she wanted to apologize for.

“He might have been able to sleep after he took Răzvan’s voice, but I couldn’t. I knew they were still there. I knew he still suffered. And there’s nothing quite like watching your best friend suffer in silence.”

“I—”

“But it’s not just the orphanage that gives him night terrors,” Fang interrupted, leveling his gaze on her.

“What else is there?”

“Did he ever tell you how he came to be at the orphanage?”

“I assumed his parents died,” she whispered, thinking about his father, the baker.

There was always such fondness when he talked about his father. She’d doubted the man would have given him up willingly.

“His father did, but the cunt he was married to … she’s still alive as far as I know.”

“I don’t understand. Why did she hate Răzvan so much?”

“Because he was a bastard. His father had an affair with an American woman, and Răzvan was a constant reminder of that.”

That explained the blue eyes.

It explained a lot without explaining anything at all.

“The worst thing,” Fang went on, “was that he didn’t know about his father when his stepmother dropped him off at the orphanage—he’d assumed he was being punished. I watched him sit and stare out the window, waiting for the moment his father came back to get him—every day for over a year. It wasn’t until we started working for the Society that we learned the truth. Believe it or not, it made him feel better. He stopped thinking his father had willingly abandoned him. I’ve said all this to say—I’m not going to wait for him to start that shit because you’ve decided to take up with that fucking Brit. I promise you that.”

“So it’s not me you’re here to threaten—it’s Syn.”

“Răz is sentimental. He loves you and wouldn’t kill him because he knows it would upset you. I, on the other hand, don’t give a shit about your feelings.”

“Syn is like my brother.”

“Răz is my brother.”

For a moment, they stared at one another, the weight of his words hanging between them. “Let me see if I got it. Either I be with Răz, or you’ll take out the competition for him?”

Fang actually nodded. “In so many words.”

She should have been angry with him—outraged even at what he was suggesting—but a surprised burst of laugh left her, the sunken feeling in her chest easing a bit. “How the hell are all of you going to get along if you keep threatening each other?”

“Don’t worry. Your mercenaries are safe from me until they threaten one of my brothers then alliances shift. Remember that.”

“Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good.” Fang clapped his hands, easing to his feet. “Glad we had this chat.”

“Pretty sure you did most of the talking.”

“Fair enough. Now, you riding with me to the loft to put him out of his misery, or no? Mariya is making dinner, and I have no intention of missing out.”

It would have been easy to say yes. “No,” she said, instead, catching him off guard. “I have something to do first.”

Something she should have done a long time ago.

“And Fang?” She waited until he was looking at her to continue. “There was never a choice to make.”

* * *

“For fuck’s—”

“To be fair, I didn’t break anything the last time I was here,” Winter said thoughtfully as she stepped inside The Hall and Dismas glared at her from his position behind the bar.

“Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind,” Dismas returned dryly, jerking his chin in the direction of the other end of the bar where Syn was sitting with a pint glass in hand.

How many times had she run to him over the years, eager and uncaring of the world around them?

“Come to break the news to me gently, eh?”

People always thought Syn was unfeeling—that he was unaffected by the things he had to do as a cleaner for The Kingmaker.

They didn’t know him like she did.

They saw what they wanted to see.

If anything, Syn felt things too much.

“London,” he continued after a moment. “I never explained what went wrong.”

Even if it wouldn’t change things now, she still wanted to know. “Tell me.”

He wouldn’t look at her, not when she took the seat next to him, or when she put her hand on top of his to get his attention.

“My mum despised me,” Syn started softly, throwing back the last of his drink before setting the glass down. “Always harping on about this and that. She never admitted it, though, not even when I strangled the life out of her.”

She couldn’t help but wince at the callous way he spoke that truth. She knew his relationship with his mother had been complicated and horrifying, but this wasn’t a story he had ever shared before.

“Feral. That was her favorite word for me. Her, ‘feral little bastard.’ I hated the bloody name until I embraced it.” His smile wasn’t one of happiness. “After I left the East End and joined up with the Wraiths, I went from being feral to being unstable.”

He rubbed his temples as if his head pained him, and not for the first time, she wished she could ease the pain inside him the way she could for Răzvan.

Worse, she didn’t think she had ever seen him look so haunted.

Anger, elation, and mania were normal, but not this melancholy.

“There were a lot of bodies in those days—too many fucking bodies. Sometimes, they were all I could see, even when I was in a room full of people.”

“I know,” she whispered, remembering so many nights when the ghosts caught up with him.

“Then one night, there you were, hiding under a table—smallest thing I’d ever seen. A kid.”

He reached out, lost in a memory as he fingered a piece of her hair, his gaze vacant. “The innocent never see the sins, do they? They see the good in you. And you … you never saw the monster.”

“I just saw you.”

“You smiled at me. Laughed, even. You weren’t afraid. I would’ve done anything to keep you looking at me like that.”

Including slaughtering the men who’d killed her uncle and threatened to do the same to her.

“I promised to do right by you,” he went on, dragging her back out of her thoughts. “Protect you as much as I could, but you can’t keep a flower in a box without it dying.”

Sometimes, his love could be stifling, but she had never minded before.

She found comfort in it and in him.

“There are some lines you just don’t cross,” he said after a moment, finally looking at her, his gaze ghosting over her face. “London was—”

“A mistake,” she finished, acknowledging a truth she had tried to forget about.

Syn nodded. “Your body is different. Shite, your voice is different, but as soon as the alcohol burned off and you said my name—”

“You saw the eleven-year-old girl you needed to protect.”

Even now, she could still remember the horrified expression on his face when he’d woken up the next day that had sent her fleeing back to the States.

It was why they’d never work.

He would always see the kid sitting beneath the table—she would always try to prove she could handle him and his darkness.

“I’ve always loved you, Synek.”

“And I love you, Winter.”

But not in the way she loved Răzvan.

Syn cleared his throat, tapping out a cadence on the bar top. “Going off with that Romanian, then?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Fucker can throw a punch.”

Winter smiled. “I’ll take your word for that.”

“If he ever hurts you—”

“You’ll erase him off the face of the earth. Yep, got it.”

He stood and pulled her into his embrace.

And as she slipped out of The Hall, heading for the loft, she had no regrets about her choice.

* * *

This feeling curling in his gut was the fucking worst.

Răzvan had never thought he would feel the same level of devastation he’d felt when he finally accepted that his father was never coming back for him.

Was it wrong?

Was it fucking selfish for him to compare the death of his father to the possibility that Winter might not come back to him?

He was wracking his fucking brain constantly about her and whether he would accept if she actually wanted that Brit.

Could he accept that choice, or would he drag her back and make her stay?

And after the way he treated her earlier, that probably didn’t help at all.

Fuck, he was a mess.

Dragging a hand down his face, Răzvan climbed out onto the fire escape outside his bedroom, resting his forearms on the railing as he watched the rain.

In the rain, he could pretend he wasn’t drowning under the weight of a decision that had yet to be made.

If—

He blinked, not sure he was seeing correctly, but there was no mistaking the blur of movement at the edge of the gate and the shock of silver hair that came into focus.

Winter was looking at the bikes, counting them, he thought, before she happened to look up and found him looking down at her.

She looked curious a moment before she smiled. “Well, this feels dramatic. You know, I’ve always wanted to be in one of those cheesy 80s romance movies, but I totally thought I would be the one getting serenaded.”

—I’ll serenade you if you come up here.—

Her eyes scanned over the fire escape. “You want me to climb up this thing? Are you sure that’s a good idea? You could always come to me.”

He didn’t hesitate.

She watched his descent, not caring at all that she was getting soaked, even standing under the slight alcove.

—Do you ever check the weather before you get dressed? —he asked, looking over the fitted black dress she wore down to the matte black Docs.

“If I had, I wouldn’t have been able to wear this dress, and if I hadn’t worn this, you wouldn’t look like you’re ready to eat me alive.”

Oh, but he’d definitely do that if he got his hands on her, which was why he kept distance between them and balled his fists to resist the urge to touch her.

“You could,” she said a moment later. “You could eat me alive if you wanted.”

Răzvan shook his head. —That’s only temporary.—

Spiky lashes framed silver eyes, silver eyes that were currently brimming with emotion. “Then what do you want, Răzvan?”

—You. I’ve always wanted you.—

“I …” She blushed. Blushed like she didn’t know what she meant to him. “I came to talk to you about us.”

Those words were like a kick to his chest.

—Give me tonight.—

“Tonight?”

—To show you I’m the better choice.—

“Răz, don’t say that.”

Then he was right.

She was here to end this. End them.

“I should have told you about Syn, about our relationship. I also should have told him about you. I don’t ever want you to think it’s because I was embarrassed by you or wanted to keep you a secret. I was—”

—If this is you letting me down gently, you’re doing a shit job of it.—

“I—what? If I was leaving your dumbass, I wouldn’t be out here in the rain where I could catch pneumonia and die.” She rolled her eyes as if he were exasperating her. “This is my dramatic declaration of love.”

Her expression softened, becoming a bit unsure. “As if I could ever leave you, Răz. Would it be too cheesy to say you complete me?”

That was all he wanted—all he needed to hear.

She didn’t move as he stepped toward her, only turning her face up to better see him when he curled his fingers along her jaw.

“I love you.”

The words were air.

No resonance, or cadence, or bass.

But he said them and meant them.

“I love you too, Răzvan.” She clutched his shirt in her hands. “I’m also pretty sure this make-up sex is going to be great.”