Page 99 of The ARC Unit: Breach

“You’ll survive.”

I leaned one hip against the railing, careful not to put weight through my right shoulder.

“Does it have something to do with why you acted like somebody died when Raven lost my signal?”

Wolf went completely still and I knew instantly that I had crossed into something dangerous.

He lowered his head. “Don’t ask me that again.”

“Okay,” I whispered.

Wolf looked back toward the trees and the silence lasted long enough that I assumed the conversation was over.

Then, quietly, he said, “You shouldn’t have had to tell me to get off you.”

He still did not look at me. The words were not an apology wrapped in poetry. They were barely more than a fact, delivered by a man who seemed to hate every fact he could not change.

“No,” I said. “I shouldn’t have.”

Wolf nodded once.

“It won’t happen again.”

I looked at the marks on my wrists.

“Good.” I repeated his favorite word back to him.

He dropped the dead end of the cigarette into the small metal cup sitting near the wall.

“You still want me to go fuck myself?”

The question caught me off guard enough that I laughed before I could stop it.

“Oh, I absolutely do.”

Wolf’s eyes narrowed, something almost amused creeping into them. It took me another second to hear my own wording the way he clearly had, but before I could decide whether I wanted to correct myself, he spoke.

“And I still think you were wrong at the party,” he said.

“Of course you do.”

“You were.”

“We got Südweg.”

“And next time you’ll get it without disappearing.”

“You are so fucking irritating.”

“Go to bed, Mercer.”

I pushed away from the railing and headed toward the balcony door, looking back once.

Wolf lifted his mask again and lit another cigarette. The snake seemed to shift around his forearm when he raised it to his mouth, the coils changing shape with the movement of muscle beneath them.

I went inside with my shoulder aching and my wrists still tender. The webbing had hurt, while his hand in my hair had done something else entirely, and both truths were going to have to live in the same body until I figured out what the hell to do with them.

Behind me, the balcony door closed.