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that he was still keeping her in the dark as to what he was doing about it.
    It wasn’t fair to her. None of it was fair to her.
    But he had no choice. He couldn’t risk Sirius finding out that, despite it looking on the surface like he was doing nothing about his threat, beneath ground word was spreading amongst his most trusted. Deep in the underbelly of the east and north of Blackthorn, there was already a hive of activity. Even in those past two days, small communities were being rounded up and were already becoming familiar with the tunnel systems he had assigned them having distributed maps to his key links. There were going to be two types: hideaways for the more vulnerable; and battle routes for those who were going to retaliate when the time came.
    Given more days, Kane could guarantee turning most of Blackthorn into a ghost town in less than fifteen minutes of the alarm being raised. He was working towards it but, with no guarantee of when Sirius would strike, in the interim they needed to remain focused on saving or preparing as many as they could. That needed to remain his priority.
    And Caitlin could have been a part of it. Instead, she’d gone back to them .
    Despite thinking he’d understood her, the evidence of that choice had proved that things went on behind those eyes that he could never predict – even now. And their first-ever encounter would always be with him, nagging away at the back of his mind: that split-second when he’d used her gun to shoot Morgan and had felt the unexpected backstab of the hemlock she’d laced it with. He’d let his guard down, he hadn’t seen it coming; he’d underestimated her. He’d fucked up once around her. And now, more than ever, he couldn’t afford to fuck up again.
    Because he didn’t know what Sirius had said to her whilst he’d laid down his threat. He didn’t know what threats Sirius had made to her, what deals he had laid out, or what he still had planned for her.
    Furthermore, seeing her there, back on the job, back in her “uniform”, reminded him that he wasn’t enough for her; or that she didn’t trust him enough to think she was enough for him. Caitlin had put him – had put their relationship – second to her job the minute she had returned to the VCU. Now, since Sirius’s threat, he had even greater reason to do the same. Because although it should have been a unifying cause, just like the soul-ripper had been, neither could ignore that, ultimately, she worked for Throme. Ultimately everyone she was surrounded by worked for Throme.
    ‘We need to talk,’ she added.
    He looked down at where her grip barely encompassed his wrist, her knuckles pale, a slight tremor in her hand. But when he looked back into her eyes, her gaze and her resolve were steady. The dichotomy was there again: the vulnerable with the tenaciousness and the plea with the command.
    But she didn’t call the shots. She’d lost that right when she’d thrown him the curveball of her return. More to the point, with a potential lycan and west-side vampire war to prevent, let alone Phia – the serryn and potential key to the vampire prophecy – on the cusp of falling into Caleb’s hands, sitting around discussing his and Caitlin’s relationship was indulgent.
    Negligent.
    But he knew, at some point, he was going to have to face it head on and deal with it. They were both going to have to face up to the reality that this wasn’t going to work without one of them making a sacrifice neither was willing to make.
    Until then, he had to keep a distance. He wasn’t ready to push her away but neither could he afford to fall deeper – especially if she was playing him.
    She had put them both in that position.
    She had made that choice.
    She was going to have to revoke it if things were going to change.
    ‘I have things to do,’ he said, moving to pull away, reinforcing the renewed distance between them that was more painful in practice than in thought.
    But her grip