Page 54 of King of the Dawn

I ran, my boots clacking to the end of the street to see if he was around the corner. But there was no one there but an old man going for a stroll. I turned around, running to the next corner, and looked down the side street. Again, he wasn’t there. There were only strangers walking up and down, going about their lives, as my heart fluttered in my chest.

“Jericho?” I said, louder now, hoping he would hear me. “Jericho?”

But there was no answer. My hands trembled. I felt like I was drowning. Like I was lost at sea. Where was my compass? Where was he?

He said he would be here when I came out. Where had he gone?

“Jericho?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Jericho

The ring had always been too ostentatious for my taste. I wore it because she had given it to me after Eoghan Green ruined our engagement party.

The carved iron with two crowns and a crystal blinked at me from my ring finger. It looked like something out of a gothic novel, which was appropriate, considering the woman who gave it to me. I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to keep wearing it.

No one would be taking her place in my bed, or in my life. I had no intention of taking another wife. But, then again, I wasn’t married, so the best thing to do was take it off, put it away, and have one less reminder of the woman who had upended my existence. I should take it off, and drop it on the table, in case she wanted to keep it. In case she wanted to give it to the next man… to Ryan.

I brought my right hand to my left, intending to slide it off… but I didn’t.

Maybe it was the magnetism that she always talked about. The way she would say that something “called” to her, or whatever witchy nonsense she would spout…

Something clutched at my chest, telling me that if I pulled it off my hand, if I wavered in my devotion, then something bad would happen. Something catastrophic.

So instead of removing the adornment from my hand, I steepled my fingers in front of me.

Divorce papers. Two words. So final.

I had them drafted up in New York while she was in the hospital. She would continue to be provided for, by me, without the obligation to live with me, or place herself in the constant danger of the life I had chosen. A life she still didn’t fully comprehend.

I signed my name across the bottom. I felt my heart cracking in my ears.

It sounded like a glacier crumbling into the arctic sea, only silenced by the sudden squeak of birds outside the window. Two black and white birds hopped along the outside balcony, their fat little bodies round and joyful.

“Shoo,” I said, angry at their singing. “Get out of here!”

I marched to the balcony, and slammed the double doors closed, blocking out the pesky vermin, my nostrils flaring in disgust at what I had to do. It went against every instinct I had. I was losing everything I didn’t know that I wanted.

I placed my forehead against the cool glass, closing my eyes.

She was home. She was safe. She’d be happy here.

But maybe just one more moment… just one more memory. Just one more…

I had said those words over and over again last night, when the prospect of never having her body filled me with an insatiable hunger that consumed me. One more kiss, one more embrace, one more moment buried in her heat.

One more, and one more, and one more.

But one more was never enough.

It would never be enough.

I placed a phone to my ear, dialing a number that was on speed dial.

“Yes?” Lea Bonifacio’s irritated voice came over the line, and I smiled.

She had hated me on sight, when I first started scoping her out in California. The fierce assassin had once been my mark. I gathered intel on her and her brother in the most obnoxious way possible. I hit on her, crashed her family dinners, and acted like a fool - I lived up to the completely douchey name of “Brett Bradley” while I freely walked around her house, and surveilled her from across the street.

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