First Debt

If he was Kestrel, then he might be my only ally. I couldn’t afford to piss him off—not while I lived in a nest of reptiles. If I could befriend him—make him care—he might be my ticket to freedom.

What better way for a Weaver to escape than for a Hawk to open her cage?

Back in the dining room, Kes had been the only one who’d looked at me with…compassion. He’d seen my struggle, and even though he’d treated me the same as all the rest, he’d been chivalrous in a strange, fucked-up way. Unlike his brother, who’d made me come—stripped me of my rights and privacy and given me a gift I’d never been given before.

Bloody Jethro.

Needle&Thread: I’m sorry. I’ve been through a rather big change in the past few days. My temper is a little short.

Kite007: I’ve noticed. So…you going to tell me how you found a pair of balls?

Needle&Thread: No, I don’t think so. You wanted no personal details…remember?

I sat biting my lip, my fingers poised to cast my first web. How could I phrase a question to make him give away his identity: do you live in the country? Do you ride motorbikes? Did you happen to taste a woman yesterday along with twenty of your gang brothers?

Kite007: Shoot me down, then. See if I fucking care. Enough talking. Let’s get back to a subject we both enjoy. Touch yourself. Tell me how wet you are at the thought of me spanking you. Because you deserve a spanking. A fucking hard one.

Needle&Thread: I don’t believe I’ve been anything but good. I don’t deserve anything of the sort, seeing as you whipped me last night.

Kite007: What’s with the whip fantasy? Why not my hand? I want to feel your skin burn while I punish you. I want equal pain in my palm as you scream and beg for my cock.

I stopped.

My heart switched from burning to frozen. What sort of response was that? Equal pain? Shared pain? Was that what pleasure-pain was all about? Equal measure of obedience and trust?

Kite007: You’ve gone quiet. Fine. You want a whip. I’m hitting you with a whip.

Needle&Thread: No. Actually…I would prefer your hand. I want to feel you touch me. I want to be stroked, caressed by you, all while you do whatever you want to me.

I swallowed the tiny thrill at the thought of Kes spanking me and quickly sent another message before he could reply.

Needle&Thread: Where are we while you hit me? Bedroom? Forest? Countryside? Across your motorcycle?

His response was instant.

Kite007: How the fuck do you know I have a motorcycle?

I threw my phone away as if it had electrocuted me.

I couldn’t breathe.

Oh, God. It had to be. The strange connection. The glint and secretive smirk on Kestrel’s face. Even the two words were similar. They’re both birds of prey.

I’m so stupid!

All this time, I thought Kite stood for the winged paper craft decorated with bows and string, when in reality it was another bird of prey.

Don’t believe it until you can prove it!

My internal dialogue went unheard.

I couldn’t shake the overwhelming knowing.

My world ended again, and the one person who I trusted to be impartial and grant me strength to get through this was the vilest liar of them all.

Kite was Kestrel.

Kestrel was Kite.

He’s a Hawk.

I DIDN’T GO to Nila for two days.

Two long fucking days.

She’d successfully done what I’d sworn never to let happen again. She’d made me lose control. Bad things happened when I lost my ice. People got hurt. Possessions got broken.

Things did not go to plan when I stepped from the comfort of my arctic shell.

There was a reason people called me distinguished and shrewd—a carefully groomed perception. To be cruel but firm was the ultimate calmness—the persona that smoothed out my violent life.

I’d lived in the cold for so long, it’d become a part of who I was, yet all it’d taken was a silly little girl to burn cracks in my carefully designed control.

Those two days were a reprieve. Not for me, but for her. For my family. For every goddamn soul who had to live with me.

She thought I was a monster? Ice wasn’t a monster—it was unyielding and inviolable—a perfect cage for something like me.

She thought she understood me?

I laughed.

She would never understand. I would never permit her to.

I made sure food was sent to her morning, noon, and night. I spied on her with the bedroom cameras to make sure she didn’t do anything idiotic like break through a window or try to slit her wrists with a piece of crockery.

Two days I left her in the room of death, only to see the girl I’d taken evolve into a sexual creature who glowed like a beacon.

She spent most of the day on her phone—texting, reading, surfing God knows what. Sometimes, her face would fall. Sometimes, her lips would tilt into a smile. Sometimes, she’d pant, her small chest rising and falling. The flush of sex on her skin drove me fucking insane with jealousy.

Jealousy.

An emotion not permitted in my snowy world.

The second day I abandoned her, I went for a hunt. I let loose the hounds and thundered after a herd of deer. I stalked the poor creatures, and shot a quivering arrow through some feeble herbivore’s heart. Some things still functioned correctly in my world, even if most of it had been bulldozed into ruins.

The bloodlust was sated. Calmed.

The cracks that’d formed froze over.

Rationality and tranquillity returned.

That night, my father and brothers had a family dinner—just the four of us. The deer I’d shot graced a stew, roulade, and roast.

Dinner talk was sparse, but an undercurrent of anger hummed between us. Daniel smirked with his insane arrogance. Kes smiled occasionally for no good goddamn reason, and my father...

Shit, my father.

I was a fucking twenty-nine-year old man. I had blood beneath my nails and ice around my heart, but still I wasn’t good enough. Still, I lacked. I had something inside me that he’d tried to kill, but despite his best efforts, it survived.

I’d learned how to hide it.

But Nila…fuck.

She had the power to expose it.

I wanted to rage. To step into the truth and show my father who I truly was.

But I wouldn’t. Not yet. That would be weak.

And I wasn’t fucking weak.

I was one year away from inheriting it all. I had my own Weaver to play with. The power shift had begun—all the brothers of the Black Diamond knew it. My relatives knew it. The world fucking knew it, but my father…he wasn’t happy with the change.