Page 25 of Break Out the Girl

Why the dawn makes the smell worse is a mystery, but an unfortunate truth.

At least now we can move on from here. I roll my stiff neck. Bevan and I barely slept, taking shifts as watchmen. Usually lack of sleep is not a problem, but my body is still recovering.

I’m not complaining. It kept her safe.

Bevan is pretty happily asleep right now, tucked up on the left side of Aurora with London on the other.

Even in the dim light of a derelict fish-canning factory, her short gold hair catches the gray dawn. As my eyes rove over her face, she stirs and catches me watching her.

Softly, she sits up and extricates herself from the two men.

“Hey.” She comes and stands beside me, looking through the dirty glass. “Did you get any sleep?”

“Enough.”

“How are your hands?”

I show her my healing palms. She traces a finger over the skin. “Amazing, so quick.”

We lapse into silence again until she pulls the rainjacket more tightly around her body. “Let's go out. Just the two of us. We can scout for boats that look abandoned while the others sleep.”

Just the two of us?

The thought is intoxicating but I must be practical. “It’s not safe.”

"My face was on the news, but yours wasn't,” she argues, pulling up the coat hood. “But dressed like this, no one will recognize me. I look nothing like the photo on the news.”

That is true.

“I like how you look now,” I admit.

She looks skeptical. “Really, François? I doubt it. I know you.”

But that is the problem. She doesn’t know me.

Nobody does.

A desperate, sharp hunger flares in my chest. I want this. Time for just the two of us. I want it desperately. “Very well,” I murmur, my tone deliberately detached to mask the sudden, fierce thudding of my heart. "Keep your head down though.”

We slip through the office door and out into the biting morning air. The harbor is just beginning to stir; the distant, mechanical groan of cranes echoes across the eastern basin, and the faint smell of marine oil drifts over the water. A few early-morning dockers move through the fog in the distance, but they are focused on their boots and their first cigarettes.

We walk along, moving further from where the hub of the action seems to be, finally getting to a series of weathered low jetties. The water swirls oily and dark around the moored boats.

“François,” Aurora says softly, keeping her eyes on the water but shifting slightly closer until her arm brushes mine. “I haven't had a chance to say it properly but thank you. For everything. For getting us this far, and for helping me find Sky. I know you risked your entire life to break us out of that place.”

The words press into my chest.

“You do not need to thank me, Aurora,” I reply, turning my body to shield her from three men walking nearby. "I would burn Havengard to the ground if it meant keeping you out of my father's hands. I would do anything for you. Absolutely anything.”

She looks up from beneath the yellow hood, her ice-blue eyes wide and searching.

“I know I have displayed it poorly,” I continue, the admission easier than any I’ve given before. "My family… we, er, deal in leverage. In control. It is how I’ve learned to exist. And it’s a toxic, difficult habit to break. But you must understand. You are my priority. You.”

My gaze usually makes people recoil, but Aurora doesn't shrink back.

She steps into my space, reaching a small, cold hand out from her sleeve to rest against the front of my sweatshirt. “I think I misjudged you,” she whispers, a tender, fragile smile touching her lips. “But I’m beginning to see who you are, François de Vaux. Stop hiding. I’d really like to know the real you.”

For a single second, the venom under my tongue turns sweet. I want to reach out, to trace the line of her jaw and claim the mouth that the wolf had possessed yesterday.