Wildblood

Chapter 49

49

Twenty hours left.

They were running out of time, and Kai doubted Zverev granted extensions. After exhaustion pulled Caelan into a listless sleep, Ripper at her side, Kai, Miya, and Ama sat in silence, bled dry of ideas. Eventually, Ama came to the same conclusion that Kai had: one of the girls had to die.

“Gavran saw something,” Miya said as though it were a rebuttal. “Right before I killed the leshy, I swear he saw something.”

Yet she couldn’t impart what, exactly, the damn bird had seen. He’d kept that nugget to himself and was nowhere to be found, an inky blob lost in the night sky. Ama seemed about as optimistic as Kai’s deflated lung. Secrets were like shiny bobbles to the raven; if he decided to hoard them, even the devil couldn’t pry them from his greedy little talons.

Gavran withheld information for a reason, obscure as it might’ve been. Perhaps he’d gleaned a way to save Alina and free Caelan, but the cost was too high in his calculation. Gavran was a pragmatist. He loved only Ama and the Dreamwalker, and Kai wagered he’d let the whole world burn to spare either woman an ounce of discomfort.

Whatever solution he’d found wasn’t one he thought worth pursuing.

After several hours of puttering, Ama changed and left for the King of Spades, bracing for a scolding from Crowbar, and later, probably Bastien. Kai angrily yanked the pullout free and changed the sheets. When Miya emerged from the bathroom with her day clothes discarded, her forlorn expression seized him like a rabbit snare. She’d shed her armor, all pretense of toughness, and as her gaze caught his, he found himself staring at her shame.

Eyes rimmed with tears, she swallowed a whimper before wiping the moisture from her face.

Shit. Fuck. Shit.

“Sorry,” she said through a chuckle, sensing his panic. “I just feel a bit raw.”

Limbs stilted beneath her oversized T-shirt, she joined him in the living room. He wrapped both arms around her, and she pressed her cheek to his bare chest, a line of fresh bruises mottling his ribs and sternum.

“You almost died because I fell asleep.” The whisper was a self-indictment and a confession.

“You’re worse than a Disney princess,” he cracked, relieved when she snorted on a laugh, her warm breath tickling his skin.

“I don’t know how I’d live with myself if?—”

He pulled back and took her face in his hands. “It’s not the first time I’ve sparred with death.”

“It’s the first time I’ve conked out in the middle of an emergency,” said Miya. “How stupid would that be? If you died because I couldn’t stay awake?”

“Pretty stupid,” he admitted, then smirked. “But not half as stupid as some of the shit I’ve pulled.” He patted her cheek. “Stop tenderizing yourself, Lambchop.”

She nodded, and he reluctantly let her go. He knew there’d be no mollifying her guilt, but he could at least inform her that it was self-inflicted. Kai didn’t hold grudges, least of all against Miya. They half crawled under the covers, though neither made to lie down.

“Since you already had a nap today”—Kai grinned when she shot him a lethal glare—“I figured you could spare a few minutes to talk.”

She perked up against the couch’s backrest, her curiosity palpable. The weight of the last few days had grown too heavy. No matter what he’d endured, some burdens couldn’t be borne alone—didn’t have to be.

“Mikhail Zverev…” His gaze dropped to his hands as he turned his palms up—always calloused, always marked by hardship. “My own goddamn ghost.”

Miya was silent as he recounted his conversation with Ivan, the memory that’d threaded through his bones, the fact that Mikhail Zverev had died in the woods with his parents.

That day, Kai Donovan was born.

“So, the nightmares…” Miya ventured.

“Repressed shit from my past, I guess.” He shrugged. “Not all mine. Some of it’s…I don’t know, ancestral?”

“How do you know?”

Kai scooted down on the mattress and tucked a hand behind his head. “He recognized me,” he said of the man on the train.

After a protracted moment, Miya crawled over him, caging his waist with her knees. “There’s a lot inside you. Not just your past, but your family’s too. You never got the chance to work out what their lives meant—what they gave you. It becomes this…thing in the corner of your eye, always there but just out of reach.”

Kai quirked a brow. “You sound like you know about it.”

Miya shook her head with a tepid smile. “I’m no expert, but I see it in people’s dreams. We all inherit things that don’t belong to us. For you, it’s a history you were severed from when you stopped being Mikhail Zverev.”

The air flowed easier in his lungs now, and he skimmed his fingertips up her thighs. “Want to make me a promise?”

She nearly malfunctioned, unaccustomed to such solemn requests from him. “Um, sure.”

He smiled wryly. “No laws will be broken.” Kai rarely asked for anything, and it wasn’t admirable. He’d glimpsed that same unsavory quality in Caelan, who would rather die than be a liability. The only reason she’d sought Kai’s help—if it could be called help —was because she’d sensed the same pattern in him. She thought he’d understand, and shamefully, he did.

“Come find me.” Mahogany met murky green, imploring. They both knew what he meant, what awaited him on the other side of consciousness. Miya wove her fingers with his, and he brushed his thumb over the back of her hand.

“Next time I’m in hell,” Kai said, “help me get the fuck out.”