He wanted to know. As if he didn’t know. As if the entire Hawk family weren’t laughing behind my back.

You don’t know it’s him!

I knew I should calm down, seek out clues, and formulate the truth before tearing into the most-likely innocent Kite. But after being through a transformation from meek to fierce, I couldn’t bottle myself up. I refused to corset my emotions any longer.

I would take back control message by message.

Needle&Thread: You want to know? You want to hear personal details of my life? What happened to you, Kite? Someone drop you on your head?

Kite007: Careful. I’m one push away from deletion and walking away from this. You’re the one who begged me to stay in contact. Remember?

Needle&Thread: You have a short temper.

Kind of like someone else I know.

Kite007: Want me to stay a fucking arsehole? Got it. Don’t ever say I never tried to help you.

My heart lurched.

If he was Kestrel, then he might be my only ally. I couldn’t afford to piss him off—not while I lived in a nest of reptiles. If I could befriend him—make him care—he might be my ticket to freedom.

What better way for a Weaver to escape than for a Hawk to open her cage?

Back in the dining room, Kes had been the only one who’d looked at me with…compassion. He’d seen my struggle, and even though he’d treated me the same as all the rest, he’d been chivalrous in a strange, fucked-up way. Unlike his brother, who’d made me come—stripped me of my rights and privacy and given me a gift I’d never been given before.

Bloody Jethro.

Needle&Thread: I’m sorry. I’ve been through a rather big change in the past few days. My temper is a little short.

Kite007: I’ve noticed. So…you going to tell me how you found a pair of balls?

Needle&Thread: No, I don’t think so. You wanted no personal details…remember?

I sat biting my lip, my fingers poised to cast my first web. How could I phrase a question to make him give away his identity: do you live in the country? Do you ride motorbikes? Did you happen to taste a woman yesterday along with twenty of your gang brothers?

Kite007: Shoot me down, then. See if I fucking care. Enough talking. Let’s get back to a subject we both enjoy. Touch yourself. Tell me how wet you are at the thought of me spanking you. Because you deserve a spanking. A fucking hard one.

Needle&Thread: I don’t believe I’ve been anything but good. I don’t deserve anything of the sort, seeing as you whipped me last night.

Kite007: What’s with the whip fantasy? Why not my hand? I want to feel your skin burn while I punish you. I want equal pain in my palm as you scream and beg for my cock.

I stopped.

My heart switched from burning to frozen. What sort of response was that? Equal pain? Shared pain? Was that what pleasure-pain was all about? Equal measure of obedience and trust?

Kite007: You’ve gone quiet. Fine. You want a whip. I’m hitting you with a whip.

Needle&Thread: No. Actually…I would prefer your hand. I want to feel you touch me. I want to be stroked, caressed by you, all while you do whatever you want to me.

I swallowed the tiny thrill at the thought of Kes spanking me and quickly sent another message before he could reply.

Needle&Thread: Where are we while you hit me? Bedroom? Forest? Countryside? Across your motorcycle?

His response was instant.

Kite007: How the fuck do you know I have a motorcycle?

I threw my phone away as if it had electrocuted me.

I couldn’t breathe.

Oh, God. It had to be. The strange connection. The glint and secretive smirk on Kestrel’s face. Even the two words were similar. They’re both birds of prey.

I’m so stupid!

All this time, I thought Kite stood for the winged paper craft decorated with bows and string, when in reality it was another bird of prey.

Don’t believe it until you can prove it!

My internal dialogue went unheard.

I couldn’t shake the overwhelming knowing.

My world ended again, and the one person who I trusted to be impartial and grant me strength to get through this was the vilest liar of them all.

Kite was Kestrel.

Kestrel was Kite.

He’s a Hawk.

I DIDN’T GO to Nila for two days.

Two long fucking days.

She’d successfully done what I’d sworn never to let happen again. She’d made me lose control. Bad things happened when I lost my ice. People got hurt. Possessions got broken.

Things did not go to plan when I stepped from the comfort of my arctic shell.

There was a reason people called me distinguished and shrewd—a carefully groomed perception. To be cruel but firm was the ultimate calmness—the persona that smoothed out my violent life.

I’d lived in the cold for so long, it’d become a part of who I was, yet all it’d taken was a silly little girl to burn cracks in my carefully designed control.

Those two days were a reprieve. Not for me, but for her. For my family. For every goddamn soul who had to live with me.

She thought I was a monster? Ice wasn’t a monster—it was unyielding and inviolable—a perfect cage for something like me.

She thought she understood me?

I laughed.

She would never understand. I would never permit her to.

I made sure food was sent to her morning, noon, and night. I spied on her with the bedroom cameras to make sure she didn’t do anything idiotic like break through a window or try to slit her wrists with a piece of crockery.

Two days I left her in the room of death, only to see the girl I’d taken evolve into a sexual creature who glowed like a beacon.

She spent most of the day on her phone—texting, reading, surfing God knows what. Sometimes, her face would fall. Sometimes, her lips would tilt into a smile. Sometimes, she’d pant, her small chest rising and falling. The flush of sex on her skin drove me fucking insane with jealousy.

Jealousy.

An emotion not permitted in my snowy world.

The second day I abandoned her, I went for a hunt. I let loose the hounds and thundered after a herd of deer. I stalked the poor creatures, and shot a quivering arrow through some feeble herbivore’s heart. Some things still functioned correctly in my world, even if most of it had been bulldozed into ruins.

The bloodlust was sated. Calmed.

The cracks that’d formed froze over.

Rationality and tranquillity returned.

That night, my father and brothers had a family dinner—just the four of us. The deer I’d shot graced a stew, roulade, and roast.

Dinner talk was sparse, but an undercurrent of anger hummed between us. Daniel smirked with his insane arrogance. Kes smiled occasionally for no good goddamn reason, and my father...

Shit, my father.

I was a fucking twenty-nine-year old man. I had blood beneath my nails and ice around my heart, but still I wasn’t good enough. Still, I lacked. I had something inside me that he’d tried to kill, but despite his best efforts, it survived.

I’d learned how to hide it.

But Nila…fuck.

She had the power to expose it.

I wanted to rage. To step into the truth and show my father who I truly was.

But I wouldn’t. Not yet. That would be weak.

And I wasn’t fucking weak.

I was one year away from inheriting it all. I had my own Weaver to play with. The power shift had begun—all the brothers of the Black Diamond knew it. My relatives knew it. The world fucking knew it, but my father…he wasn’t happy with the change.

His gaze ensnared me; I glowered back.

The animosity between us was rife tonight, unable to be buried beneath the rotting veneer of respect and mutual alliance to never challenge each other again.

The last time we did, one of us walked away broken and the other almost didn’t walk away at all.

Dessert was brought in, some raspberry soufflé affair. The matriarch of our family finally decided to show her face from her private wing at Hawksridge.

Bonnie Hawk might’ve looked bonny in her day, but she was well past her prime. At ninety-one, she moved painfully and with difficulty—the stubborn cow refusing to use a wheelchair or even a cane to get around.

“Hello, my son.” She nodded at Bryan Hawk then looked to Kes, Dan, and me. “Hello, my grandbabies.”

Daniel rolled his eyes, Kes shot up to help her into a chair, and I smiled the signature ‘warm-but-not-too-warm’ smile I’d perfected since I was ten. “Hello, Grandmamma,” the three well-trained Hawk boys said in unison.

Bonnie sat, snapping her fingers for the unobtrusive staff to ladle her plate with the raspberry sweet. She placed an over-piled spoon into her mouth.

Her brown eyes landed on mine. “Tell me, Jet. How are things going with the latest Weaver?”

My back straightened as my cock twitched unbidden. That damn fucking witch had ruined me. I only had to hear the word Weaver and I became fucking hard.

That’s why you’re avoiding her.

Another reason, I admitted.

I scowled.

Swallowing my one and only mouthful of soufflé, I smiled tightly. “She’s a work in progress, Grandmamma.”

My father jumped in. “The little brat had the audacity to speak back after her welcome luncheon. The cheek of her. If she was mine to discipline, she would be missing a body part by now.”

He spoke the truth. I’d seen what he’d done to Nila’s mother, and I fucking hated him for it.

The venison in my stomach rolled as a wash of ferocious rage exploded through my blood. I stabbed my butter knife into the table. “Thank fuck she’s not yours to torment, then. It so happens I like my women whole.”

The moment the words were out of my mouth, I froze.

The table froze.

The fucking candles flickering on the sideboards froze.

Shit.

Bryan Hawk steepled his fingers, his eyes narrowed and dark. “That was a rather uncalled for outburst. Do you want to rephrase that, perhaps?” He never looked away.

My palms grew slick with sweat. I hadn’t meant to show what I’d kept hidden successfully for years. My true nature was not tolerated in the Hawk family—even by my fucking grandmother, who by all rights should encourage us to be gentle and forgiving—not keeping alive a ridiculous debt over a family that made a few mistakes hundreds of years ago.

Fuck, I need time alone.

I needed to get myself under control, before I dug a grave worse than the one I just did.

When my jaw refused to unlock, my father muttered, “Maybe I’ve put too much responsibility on you, Jet. Are you taxed already? Maybe I overestimated you, and Kes or Daniel should share your workload?”

Something slithered across my soul.

Daniel snickered. “Give her to me, Pop. I’ll make sure I don’t let you down.” His eyes danced with evil. “Unlike some.”

We glowered at each other; he tried to intimidate me but didn’t succeed. He never succeeded. Fucking twat.

Tension crackled around the table. Kestrel stopped shovelling food into his mouth long enough to say, “You know Jet is the best man for the job. I’ve never seen him fail you yet, Pop. Give the bloke a chance.” Giving me a conspiring look, he added, “She’s highly strung and goddamn beautiful. Can’t blame a man for wanting to enjoy the chance to break such a filly.”

Goddammit, what the hell does that mean?

My temper raged beneath my thin exterior of ice. Lately, I was a fraud. A hypocrite, just like Nila said. The coldness inside was mysteriously missing. The blissful uncaring, the emotional detachment I’d been forced to live with since my father taught me how to behave was gone—almost as if someone had flicked a switch.

Before, I felt nothing. I permitted my senses to neither care, nor feel hate, nor feel happiness. I was blank, blessedly blank and strong. Now, I felt everything. I overthought everything. I wanted to murder every man I lived with purely because I wasn’t what they’d groomed me to be.

I fucking hated it.

And I hated that Kestrel—my one ally who knew the truth about me—was pushing my damn buttons. “If you think a speech like that will get you near her, think again. Good try, brother, but I’m watching you.”

Kes grinned. “We’ll see. After all, she’s ours. Not just yours. Our adoptive pet, if you will. Can’t help it if the pet prefers someone else than the original owner.”

My hand clenched around the butter knife.

“Enough,” my father snapped. It echoed around the room, bouncing off the images of our forefathers.

“I expect you to do the First Debt before the week is out, Jet,” my grandmother said, her lips covered in clotted cream.

I swallowed in disgust. “Yes, Grandmamma.”

Cut, my father, muttered, “Do what you think you need to do, Jethro. But mark my words…I’m judging your every move.”

Judge me, you bastard. Watch me behave just as you’ve taught. Watch me be the perfect Hawk.

I would make sure to give him something to judge.

Tonight, I would ‘fix’ myself. Tonight, I would smooth away the chaos that Nila fucking Weaver had caused and find that saviour of snow.

Cut continued to watch me as he spooned dessert into his mouth. “Make me proud, son. You know what you need to show her and what needs to be done afterward.”

Forcing my hand to uncurl around the knife, I placed it slowly on the table. Swallowing the overwhelming emotions that had no place in my world, I muttered, “I’ll make you proud, father.”

Cut relaxed into his chair.

Instantly, a wash of relief fell over me. It had always been the same. I lived with a family of devils. I was one year away from being emperor to them all, yet I still craved my elders’ respect.