“Let’s take a little break,” I said, shifting to get more comfortable. I wouldn’t have figured having an adult in my lap would ever be comfortable, yet here we were.
All it took was her warmth and scent and my eyes already felt heavier.
Our relationship had started out rocky, to say the least. We’d hated each other until that hate had morphed into something just as passionate but less hostile. Everything we did, we did to extremes, which was why I cherished times like this so much.
I’d never had another person I could just let my guard down with, someone I could just be with like this. It was a debt I knew I could never pay off but I’d spend my life trying to.
I held her tightly as she closed her eyes, as her breathing evened out and she drifted off. I pressed another kiss to her head, then whispered the truest words I’d ever spoken. “I love you, songbird.”
* * * *
Deacon
“I’m sorry,”Hera signed as she jogged up to me, even though with how far away she was, it mostly looked like frantic waving.
When she reached me, I actually tapped my foot. “Do you have any idea how late you are?”
“Pretty late,”she signed back.
Hera could get out of trouble with that smile of hers with almost anyone. Wade and Knox sure as fuck spoiled her, giving in the moment she batted her eyelashes. Brax wasn’t as obviously whipped, but he gave in pretty fast, too. Kit didn’t give in so much as seemed old enough he didn’t get riled up about the stuff she did.
I wasn’t as easy for her to distract, though. In fact, a part of me enjoyed our push and pull.
“Yes, you are,” I said, my arms crossed. “You need an assistant.”
“I don’t need an assistant,”she argued, the same talk we’d had a few times.
“Of course you do. Every Warden has had one—”
“I’m not a warden,”she signed, interrupting me with the intensity that said she didn’t like the term.
Which I understood. It held a lot of bad feelings, which was why she’d changed her title here, to try to show she didn’t plan to run Larkwood as it had been run before.
“I know that, but your job remains similar. You’re running yourself ragged trying to do everything on your own and it’s dumb. Why don’t you make Wade be your assistant? He like taking your orders.”
“He’s busy with intakes. Besides, I can handle this.”
“No, you can’t. No one could. You aren’t sleeping enough, you’re constantly late for meetings and you’re working through every weekend. It can’t keep going on like this. I’ll look over the records we have and suggest a few qualified shades who would serve as good assistants.”
Her expression said she wanted to continue to fight with me. Hera tended to take on too much, to not ask for help even when she really needed it. I’d watched her run herself down trying to deal with every last problem here all on her own, doing far more than the previous Warden had done. I’d found that sometimes, she needed a firm hand for her own good. Thankfully, she eventually gave in to me.
She moved her hands in a grudging acceptance.“Thanks.”
I nodded, then moved onto the reason for our meeting. “Now, the issue at hand. The North Tower.”
She turned to look up at it, anxiety appearing in her features. Everyone probably felt the same way about it, like it was this looming dragon that watched over the rest of us, waiting for a chance to swoop in and fuck us all over again. No matter how long it was since it had caused us pain, we couldn’t shake the fear that it could still swipe out at any time.
“I’ve gotten a lot of requests for people to get access.”
“I’m going to strongly suggest against that,” I said.
As the new head of security for all of Larkwood, what we did with the North Tower fell right into my area. While we didn’t have the issues we had before, since we didn’t treat the shades here as prisoners needing guarding, we still needed people who kept the peace.
Fights happened between shades and people up to no good sometimes tried to gain access to Larkwood. I was in charge of keeping Larkwood safe, of ensure the people who chose to come here didn’t have to worry.
“It’s going to take a long time to go through this place,” I said as I gestured at the tower. “The Warden kept the records for the North Tower out of the main servers, so we still have no idea about all the projects. Even the files for the old projects could be extremely dangerous if they fell into the wrong hands. We can’t give people access until we know what’s there. I wish we could just burn it all down,” I muttered.
Hera hesitated as if she knew she should tread carefully.“We can’t do that. While most of what they did there was horrible, there could still be projects that help shades.”