Page 30 of Roar Me Like You Mean It
Silence falls.
The lion prowls restless in the aftermath, but I force it down, pulling the shift back until my hands are my own again, slick with blood, shaking from the violence. The scaffolding groans overhead, half-collapsed from the struggle, dust and splinters still drifting down like ash. The stink of blood and rot is suffocating.
And then I hear her.
Her footsteps are soft, hesitant, moving out from the mouth of the alley across the street. She steps into the glow of the flickering lamp, her coat pulled tight around her, her hair loose and wild around her face. Her eyes are wide, locked not on the corpse at my feet, but on me.
For a moment neither of us speaks. The only sound is the drip of blood pooling across the concrete, the faint hum of traffic beyond the street.
“You came,” she whispers finally, voice rough, as if she doesn’t quite believe it.
I don’t answer. The truth is here, written in the ruin of the boar’s body, in the blood on my hands, in the way I couldn’t stop myself from crossing an ocean at her call.
That night I do not leave her side.
We return to her apartment in silence, the city bustling around us as though the world hasn’t just tilted. Inside, the air is warm and still, the faint scent of coffee lingering from the morning. She locks the door with trembling hands, shrugs her coat off, and sinks onto the couch, her head falling into her palms. She doesn’t speak, and I don’t press her.
I stand near the window, blood still drying on my skin, my body still humming from the fight. Outside, the city moves on, lights glittering, horns blaring, oblivious. Inside, the silence stretches heavy between us, charged with everything unsaid.
I should leave. I should walk out before the bond tightens any further, before the lion claims what I cannot allow.
But I don’t.
I can’t.
So I keep my vigil in the dark, watching her breathe, watching the night shift across her city, knowing that whatever line I thought existed between us has been shattered beyond repair.
20
JENNIFER
The sky over Washington is heavy and low when I wake, swollen clouds pressing down like the weight of a lid on a boiling pot. The air smells of wet stone and exhaust, the city steaming after a night of rain, and it fits the way my chest feels—tight, restless, like something is trying to claw its way out.
Malek is gone, though that’s no surprise. He stayed longer than I ever thought he would, a silent sentinel in my apartment until dawn finally cut through the blinds. No note this time or sharp orders or clipped words, just absence. And yet, I know he hasn’t left me entirely. His scent clings to the place: smoke, whiskey, steel, something wilder beneath that I can’t name.
I shake it off with effort and shove myself into the day. There’s no time to dwell on men who walk away. Not when Roman’s shadow is crawling across the globe, and I’ve got the threads to prove it.
The glow of my laptop fills the kitchen, perched between stacks of files, half-drunk cups of coffee, and a plate with toast I never touched. I hunch over the screen, clicking through lines of data that would look meaningless to most but hum with ugly truths to me. On the surface, Roman’s empire looksuntouchable: cargo companies running clean routes, energy holdings that spin profit charts impressive enough to make Wall Street weep, pharmaceutical research labs tucked neatly under respectable umbrellas. It’s all polished on paper, built for auditors who never ask the right questions.
But I do.
When I peel back the layers, the dirt is everywhere. Tankers rerouted without explanation in the middle of the night, manifests scrubbed clean of cargo, pharmaceutical shipments labeled as compounds that don’t even exist, energy companies claiming mines in countries where no permits have ever been issued. Every one of those threads leads deeper, and every time I tug, the same names surface like bones buried shallow.
Thorne. Cassian. Rafe. Darius.
The Crimson Pact.
At first I think it’s a coincidence, maybe an old ledger glitch, maybe Malek being sloppy, leaving his fingerprints on something I can trace back. But the deeper I dig, the more I realize it’s intentional. Roman’s empire isn’t just new money. It’s built on the ashes of the Pact’s collapse. Accounts that should’ve been closed centuries ago are still alive, feeding Roman like veins to a heart.
The realization makes my stomach lurch. This isn’t just corruption. It’s resurrection.
I push away from the screen, pacing the narrow stretch of my kitchen, the radiator hissing in the corner, paint peeling from the old molding along the ceiling. The city hums faint outside my window—horns, brakes, sirens far off—but I barely hear it. My mind is buzzing with too many voices, too many numbers. Every piece of data I uncover tells me the same thing: Roman isn’t just running guns or building shifter armies. He’s resurrecting something older, something that should’ve stayed buried.
And the dreams don’t help.
They’ve been gnawing at me since Prague, growing sharper each night. Not dreams, not exactly. Flames, claws, shadows with teeth. Cities breaking. Blood running thick in the gutters. Always those same golden eyes in the dark, unblinking, as though they know me better than I know myself. I wake breathless every time, sheets tangled, heart hammering so hard I feel like it might split.
I tell myself it’s stress. Exhaustion. My body demanding more sleep than I’m willing to give. But I don’t believe it anymore. Not after last night. Not after the boar.
