Page 54 of Creatures in the Night

“I’ll hate you if you don’t let me help him,” she threatened.

“Since you already hate me, that’s not really the threat that you think it is,” I shot back.

Her eyes began to water with a rage that I could feel coming from deep within her soul. “Stop trying to have me killed, and then maybe I won’t hate you quite so much.”

“Noah, either let her help me or take her out of here,” Lochlan said. “I need to concentrate.”

I wanted to drag Shea out of here, then force her upstairs. I wanted to lock her up in our penthouse, never letting her out ever again. I wanted to know what happened, and then I wanted to strip her naked, so that I could see for myself that she was unharmed. Truthfully, I wanted to burn the entire city to the fucking ground with how enraged I was. I was finally in love for the first and only time in my life, and God kept trying to take her from me as a form of punishment for all my sins.

Shea stared at me, waiting for me to make my decision, and even though it was going to put an even deeper chasm between us, it was an easy choice. For the safety of everyone around us, my mental state of mind was more important than her helping Lochlan. Like he’d stated earlier, this wasn’t anything that he hadn’t already done a million times over. He knew how to work with one hand tied behind his back, so he really didn’t need Shea’s help.

“Lochlan has this handled,” I told her. “I need you to come with me, lass.”

Those tears of rage finally spilled over, and the hole in my chest just kept getting bigger with how much my wife hated me. Nevertheless, there wasn’t anything that I could do about it. Shea believed that I wanted her dead, and no matter what I said or did, that was never going to change. This second attempt on her life had reversed any progress that I might have made these past couple of days, and I knew it like I knew the back of my hand.

“You’re a bastard,” she said before she started taking off her gloves.

Giving a little, I said, “Someone just tried to kill you again, Shea. I need you with me more than Lochlan needs your help.”

“I promised him that he was going to be okay,” she replied evenly, not remarking on what I was feeling right now.

“Noah,” Lochlan snapped, and only family could speak to me in that tone, but I understood it. He was trying to save a man’s life right now.

“Let’s go, Shea,” I ordered.

With her head held high, Shea stormed past me, and as soon as we cleared the doorway, I told Connor, “Go back in there and help Lochlan with anything that he needs.”

What my wife didn’t understand was that we’d all been doing this a really long time, so everyone in the O’Brien organization knew how to do CPR, sew a stitch, stop bleeding, and remove a bullet if absolutely necessary, though we usually left that educated shit to Lochlan. Nevertheless, my brother didn’t need her help, but I thought that ordering Connor to help him might make the spitfire that I was married to a little less pissed off at me.

Once we got to the elevators, I turned on my wife, crowding her up against the opposite corner of the keypad. Grabbing her chin in between my fingers, I said, “I will only say this to you once, Shea. You may speak to me any way that you want to when we’re alone, no matter what you’re feeling. However, even if it is only one of my brothers, you will never challenge me in front of anyone ever again. Do I make myself clear, lass?”

“Perfectly,” she bit out, her dark eyes glittering with hate.

“Everything I do, I do because I can’t lose you,” I told her. “So, if I’m ordering you to stand down, it’s to make sure that nothing happens to you.”

It’d been the wrong thing to say.

“If you had any decency, even an ounce, you’d let me go,” she said. “You’re the reason that someone keeps trying to kill me, and if you love me like you claim, then for safety reasons, you’d let me go, Noah.”

“I’ll never let you go, baby,” I replied truthfully. “Never.”

“Then take your declarations of love and shove them up your ass,” she fired back.

Chapter 34

Shea~

I was so furious that I didn’t even know what to do with myself. All I’d wanted to do was help Keagan, and Noah had taken away the only gift that I had to give people. I was a nurse, nothing more. I wasn’t changing the world by creating life-changing drugs, I wasn’t leaving a mark on humanity by creating technology for world betterment, nor was I raising my voice to lift people towards something better. All I knew how to do was help people medically, and Noah had robbed me of that because our marriage would always be about Noah and what he wanted.

After coming upstairs, I’d taken another shower, doing my best to let the hot water wash away how I’d done the unthinkable and had killed two people. While I understood self-defense, and while I understood that no one would blame me for what I’d done, logic wasn’t helping me right now. I wasn’t a killer, but I wondered how many people I was going to have to kill just to stay alive. Noah could say whatever he wanted, but that didn’t change the glaring facts here. Either he wanted me dead, or else he couldn’t keep me safe, and I didn’t want to live like that.

When I heard a knock on the door, I turned from the window, surprised that anyone would come knocking on the bedroom door, knowing that Noah would just barge in because he had no respect for my privacy or boundaries.

I quickly reached for the robe again, though I was dressed. When I’d gotten out of the shower, I had decided to leave my auburn hair down to dry naturally, then had thrown on a pair of cut-off cotton sweats and a white tank-top. I hadn’t bothered with a bra because I didn’t really need one. Still, I had no idea who was on the other side of the door, so I chose modesty over Noah yelling at me for showing off what wasn’t much of my tits.

When I finally had the robed secured comfortably around me, I called out, “Come in.”

My eyes widened when a stunning raven-haired beauty walked through the door, her green eyes bright and wide, making her look like a doll. To say that she was beautiful was an understatement, and if there was ever an argument against Noah preferring blondes, then this woman was it.

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