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Patrick had a bad habit of bringing work home with him. He’d learned over the years that demons had ingrained stalker tendencies and would never understand the concept of personal space.
He resolutely didn’t think about how this morning could have gone if he didn’t have a SAIC riding his ass. He had a feeling he’d enjoy it more if it was Jono. Blowing off Rachel to blow Jono would earn him zero points with Setsuna.
Carmen’s smile grew wider, though Einar looked like he was contemplating murder. Then again, the vampire always looked like he was contemplating murder.
Lucien was familiar in a way an infected wound was—weeping, rotten, and in danger of becoming gangrenous.
Jono buried his face against Patrick’s healed throat, licking a hot stripe up to his ear before biting down on the tender lobe there. “I want to fuck you,” Jono growled.
He didn’t get what Jono wanted to give him often, if ever—not like this. Not easy and warm and sweet in a way Patrick didn’t think he deserved. But Jono thought he did, and Patrick was willing to let Jono believe he was worth that kindness, just for one night.
Patrick gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles went white. He didn’t want to have this conversation. Unfortunately, he couldn’t throw himself out of a moving vehicle to escape it.
Patrick would pray if he thought it would do them any good, but he’d long since discovered that prayers were nothing more than wasted breath, and begging never helped anyone.
Be still. The voice that echoed through Jono’s mind came from a distance, carrying a roughness to it that sounded how teeth biting into flesh felt.
If there was one lesson Jono had learned on the streets of London as a child that had followed him through the years, it was this: you didn’t get to keep the things you wouldn’t fight for.
“I was eight,” Patrick bit out. “I was dying.” “I healed you.” He let out a bitter laugh. “You offered life to a dying child, but you never said you would own me when I begged for your help. That’s not healing, Persephone. That’s enslavement.”
“A father is more than blood. You immortals never seem to understand that.”
Patrick knew a thing or two about rage and how sometimes it was the only thing that could fuel a body.
Patrick would always mourn what might have been when it came to his family. But this was where the grieving stopped. Tonight, he would pay his respects to the ghosts of all the things that made him and fight.
Beneath all of that—the pain, the panic, the desperation—was the realization that this was not how he wanted it to end. He didn’t want to see another city ravaged by hell, or for Jono to end up like Hannah. Patrick didn’t want to lose any more of himself than he had already given to this war. He’d offered up all he was willing to since he was eight years old, and it stopped now.
Then he grabbed Jono’s right hand in his left, pressed it to the muddy ground, and drove his dagger through both their hands.
The scarred channels of his soul broke open as something else—someone else—filled the space. Patrick stared into Jono’s strangely calm eyes as the magic set in the dagger tied their souls together through blood.
She cared for him but had never seemed to care about him. For once, Patrick wished she would.
Patrick closed his eyes and let out a frustrated sigh. “I hate hospitals.” “We all hate hospitals. Now don’t bite the poor doctor’s head off when she comes back in.”
After everything they’d gone through—everything that had changed between them at the hands of the gods—Patrick could deny Jono nothing. He would fight to his last breath to keep Jono safe from any further machinations the gods might throw their way, no matter how fruitless his efforts might be. For Jono, he would do anything.
He trailed off, but Patrick knew what lived in that silence. He knew the way nightmares could steal everything from a person—their sleep, their dreams, their sense of peace. Trying to go through the motions of acting normal after trauma would only make a person crazy over time. If there was anything years of one-on-one and group therapy had shown Patrick, it was that normal was relative, and you lived every day one day at a time.
Jono vigorously shook the drink shaker, and Patrick let himself get distracted by his muscular arms. “I will kick you out of bed and drive you there myself. Pick your first drink.”
Jono rolled his eyes and leaned across the bar counter, his fingers sliding beneath the collar of Patrick’s shirt to hook around the dog tags. He pulled on them firmly, drawing Patrick forward into a quick, hard kiss that didn’t go unnoticed by anyone in the bar, judging by the catcalls erupting around them. “All right, all right, do your job, Jono. You can do Patrick later,” Marek called out over the noise of the bar.
