Caution to the Wind (The Fallen Men, #7)

by Giana Darling

To my readers for making my dreams come true.

But I remembered him. I always remembered him. He seemed like some kind of heathen god, big enough to kill a man with his bare hands, so broad through the shoulders it seemed like he could carry the weight of the world. The flashing lights of the carnival carved his strong features out of blue, red, and gold. His eyes shone in the shadows beneath his heavy brow, a blue-green as bright as oxidized copper. I watched as his massive hands, threaded through with prominent veins and tight cords of muscle, flexed on the rough wooden handle of the axe. He was one of the only men not wearing a cowboy hat, his burnished gold hair bright even in the deepening gloom of twilight, slightly over long and curling like ribbon ends over his ears and around his square jaw.

Rocky because I was scrappy and loyal. He said people were prone to underestimate me due to my slight and dainty build, but they’d inevitably find out some day that I was a champion. Glory because Cleo’s full name was Cleopatra, which meant “glory of the father,” and Cleo was his pride and joy.

“Your name means elegant pearl, doesn’t it? Like the pearl seen beneath the Chinese dragon’s chin or clutched in its talon.”

“Parents hope their children will become a dragon among men. That we’ll be special.”

“Caution to the child too eager to race into the future.”

“The marriage line is too long,” she added. “Your reputation or theirs will be affected by this union. You are not very lucky, daughter. Not in love.”

“Love is your weakness, but success will be yours however you seek it.”

“Because there is strength in softness too. There is purity, success, and happiness in finding balance between yin and yang. If you don’t learn this, the tragedies of your life will overtake you.”

“In real life, Dr. Axelsen, white knights rarely get happy endings. Only broken hearts.”

Looking back, that was the start of it for me. Falling in love with him. Ruining his life. They would become one and the same, but right then, it was pure and simple. I loved him the way a child loved a superhero.

“Koi fish.” My numb heart prickled painfully, coming alive after a long frost. “Why?” I whispered. “You tell me,” he countered without taking his attention from the drawing. “In my culture, the koi fish is a sign of strength,” I said softly. “It swims against the currents and when it reaches the end of the long, hard journey upstream, it becomes a dragon.”

this girl had so much tragedy in her small frame, so much poison. A part of me wanted to suck it out of every one of her wounds, ingestin’ it myself so she didn’t have to.

When she set off down the hall toward the principal’s office for detention, I was still standin’ there like a bastard tryin’ to figure out how to love a girl who desperately needed love when it was socially unacceptable for me to love her any more than I already did.

Joinin’ The Fallen had irrevocably stained my soul, but I still had remnants of decency. I refused to lose them, even if it meant losin’ my life.

I’d patched in to find Kate’s killers, and I wouldn’t leave ’til I’d accomplished exactly that. I’d compromised my soul to do it, but I’d also die defendin’ what remained of my honour to ensure Cleo wasn’t raised by a total fuckin’ monster.

Canada’s boogeyman. The Fallen’s weapon. Hence my biker name. Axe. A man whose sole purpose was to cleave people in two.

So, in the kitchen in the middle of the night, blood from my wound wettin’ her tee, my entire body an oversized bracket for her slight frame, I hugged her tight and let us both have the moment of connection we craved.

A hero doesn’t mean being a man who never does any wrong. It means being a man who seeks truth and justice no matter the consequences.

“I’m not normal or safe or dull. I’m not scared of pain or death, Hen. I’m only scared of losing the few people I love.”

A livin’ contrast, Mei Zhen. Our Rocky. A girl who was both named for a beautiful pearl and a famous fictional boxer.

The number of claws on a Chinese dragon was contentious throughout its history, but I’d given Mei’s dragon five ’cause it was considered the most sacred. And whatever Rocky was to me, it was sacred.

“Is this how you see me?”

“It’s strange,” she whispered, almost to herself, and I held very still, suddenly afraid to startle her out of revealin’ her mysteries. “That you could look at me and see everything I’ve ever wanted to be.” She closed the book and hugged it to her chest, eyes dark and fathomless as they raised to me. “It feels just as good as it does bad. To be seen like that.” Her lips flattened. “Like being flayed alive.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“No,” she agreed. “You didn’t, not really. I guess it’s one thing to want to be known and another to actually have someone ...

“Rocky, thank you,” I called lightly, though my throat ached. “For seein’ me, too.”

“One hundred hearts would not be enough to carry the love I have for you,” I croaked out in Cantonese. Ma smiled. “One hundred hearts would never be enough to carry the love and pride I have for you, my Mei Zhen. Remember that always.”

I’d finally be a huge step closer to figuring out why tragedy struck the Axelsen family five years ago. I just had to sell a little of my soul to get there.

I wanted a man to tremble as he held back his strength to touch me like I was made of glass, not because he thought I was weak, but because he thought I was precious.

I wanted a man to change his career because it would have meant too much time away from me even though I’d never ask him to do so.

I wanted a man who’d join a criminal motorcycle gang just to find j...

I wanted a man who would always try to save me, even when I tried...

I wanted Henning. Not as a father figure. But as a man. My man.

My God, I was in love with Henning Axelsen.

God, he was beautiful. And at that moment, I knew I’d never love anyone better than I loved him. So

His gaze seemed to cut me open like a knife, like I was prone on a metal slab, and he was performing an emotional autopsy.

Maybe love was that simple, to see and be seen. So simple and so impossibly complicated because I couldn’t bear for Henning to know what I knew now. That I loved him. Not tenderly, not softly like a song or a poem.

I loved him in all my dark places. In the way I would die for him, impaling myself on a sword intended for his side. In the way I would kill for him––a happy murder, a giggling death with blood on my teeth that tasted like love and sin. What cruel, tragic irony that he sho...

As quickly as I realized I would love him forever, I realized I would never have him.

I’m in love with you, and it feels like a prison sentence confined to solitary because you’ll never love me, too.

“Henning and his girls.” Henning and his girls. And there I was, aching with the desire to be his woman. Damn, I was so going to hell one day.

A white knight didn’t just come in shining armour. My knight came in leather.

“Bein’ loyal doesn’t mean takin’ on the world to right your loved one’s wrongs, Mei. You understand that, right?”

There was a saying in Chinese, a fight between a dragon and a tiger, a conflict that was too evenly matched to result in victory for either. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought of Henning in those terms. As a tiger, also his zodiac sign, and my equal match. And it wouldn’t be the last.

Whatever the reason, I found the courage to throw caution to the wind, rise up on my toes again, and kiss him.

It only lasted for three heart-pounding, bone-quaking moments, but they were the purest moments of my entire life. Followed swiftly by the most mortifying.

“Dammit, Mei. Why?”

“Why? I think the question should be why not? You’re the best man I’ve ever known, Henning. You saved Kate and Cleo first, but there’s no doubt you saved me, too. I wouldn’t have survived what happened at the carnival without you. I wouldn’t be surviving Mum’s illness now without you either.”

“I don’t deserve the hero worship, but I can live with that if it’s what you need to believe. I cannot and will not live with this…whatever that just was,” he said, struggling to find the words and growing more frustra...