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I choked back the nerves and nodded, grabbing a tank top from a drawer. “I know.”
“If you don’t want to be alone tonight, I could stay. Just to sleep.”
Even though Axel and I had hooked up a few times, I’d never fallen asleep with anyone except Hawk. Sleep left me vulnerable and not to mention my night terrors.
I opened my mouth to decline his offer when someone cleared her throat.
“Mr. Danvers, shouldn’t you be elsewhere at this hour and not in Ms. Teague’s room?”
Captain Coltrane stood in front of the now open door, her arms crossed and hard lines cutting into her face as she noticed the nonexistent space between Axel and me. My current state, barely covered in a towel, didn’t soothe the harshness from her expression either.
“He just stopped by to, uh, congratulate me.” Not technically a lie.
Axel turned to stone, every muscle locked into a rigid position as the captain glared. “I helped Gia administer Tate and Hawk’s test.”
Coltrane’s brow arched. “I know. I approved the assignments.”
The male raven nodded. “Well, I should go.”
“Yes, you should, Mr. Danvers.” Coltrane’s shoulder-length, dirty blonde hair was slicked back into her usual low pony at the base of her neck, making her severe cheekbones stand out even more. She could probably slice Axel with those things. Or her brown eyes could, as hard as they currently were.
As Coltrane angled away from him, Axel winked and blew me a kiss before he darted into the hall, leaving me alone with the leader of the Savannah ravens.
She closed the door and clasped her hands behind her back, still wearing her standard black attire with the raven emblem stitched on the left side of her shirt over her heart. “Why don’t you get dressed so we can talk?”
“Sure.” I grabbed my clothes and headed into the bathroom.
When I returned, Coltrane stood near my dresser, holding a framed picture of Hawk and me sitting under a giant oak in Forsyth Square.
“Is there something you want to talk about?” I asked when the silence stretched.
She gave a curt nod, placed the picture back on my dresser, and motioned for me to sit on my bed.
I followed her instructions and swallowed hard. “Am I in trouble?” I wiped my clammy hands on my cream comforter. Was the captain mad about the dux demon? “I had every right to kill that demon. He came after us. He could have killed Hawk. I didn’t break any—”
“Relax, Tatum.” She lifted her hand to cut off my yammering. “Of course you did the right thing. And I’m proud of you.”
“Oh.” My shoulders slumped, and I inhaled short bits of air as her words sank in. She wasproudof me.
“I will never forget the night I found you in that derelict building. You stood in the middle of all that death, covered in gore and clutching a rusted piece of metal.” She shook her head, her features pinching as she recalled every ugly detail.
I choked back the bile oozing up my throat as images I tried to bury like a corpse hurtled back. Once again, thick blood coated my hands, a metallic tinge penetrated the air, and the scent of death choked me. Jayla’s ebony curls twisted around her head like a shadowy halo against the concrete, and only a tiny bit of crimson dribbled from her mouth, a far cry from the gore covering me.
And him.
The others remained just as still and silent as Jayla—as they always would be from that point on. They’d spoken their last words, made their last pleas. And I hadn’t been there.
It should have been me. If anyone deserved that particular fate, I did.
“You were barely seventeen,” Coltrane said, dragging me from the torrent of dark thoughts. “But I saw it in your eyes, that same look I had when I found them—”
Her words sheared off, and her lips thinned. Coltrane didn’t need to finish. I already knew the story of how she found her sister and brother-in-law slaughtered by sub-demons. Thankfully her young nephew had been away at a sleepover with a bunch of other ten-year-olds.
After that, Anna Coltrane went on her own killing spree, gaining the Chicago ravens' attention. She later became the head of the Savannah division.
She blinked the moisture from her eyes and leaned her hip against my dresser. “I knew you’d make an amazing raven—with the right discipline of course.”
When Coltrane first brought me in, I hadn’t exactly been the dutiful, obedient soldier I was now. In fact, I’d been a hellion, dead set on fighting everyone and everything. Living on the streets since thirteen—except for short stints in foster care when social services managed to find me—taught me many things. Fighting was one. And I was damn good at it.
