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“This is getting pathetic,” I mutter under my breath. I push through the garage door expecting to find it empty. Instead, metal clinks against concrete somewhere deeper inside. Sentinel is bent over Carnage’s bike with a wrench in one hand, and one boot braced near the stand, apparently finishing whatever Carnage was working on before the rest of his life went spectacularly sideways. The overhead lights throw shadows across his face, catching the gold buried in the stubble along his jaw, and the second the door creaks behind me, his head comes up fast.
His shoulders relax when he sees me. “Morning.”
I lean against the doorframe. “Do any of you actually sleep?”
Sentinel glances toward the wrench in his hand. “Occasionally. Usually by accident.”
Despite myself, my mouth twitches. “Good. So it’s not just the hellhound.”
Sentinel’s eyebrows lift, and the grin that starts spreading across his face immediately makes me regret my choice of words. “I meant because he’s always awake.”
“Sure you did.”
“Sentinel.”
“Echo.”
I stare at him, and he grins. Apparently, this is who I’ve decided to seek out during a full-blown crisis. “Got a minute?” I ask.
He sets the wrench down slowly, wipes his palm against his jeans, and something about the way he does it makes it seem like he’s giving himself time to decide what version of honest he’s about to be. “For you?” He leans back against the workbench and crosses his arms. His angelic power is still there beneath the surface, a faint charge in the air that I’m starting to recognize as pure Sentinel. “I’ve always got a minute.”
I don’t waste the opening. “Can you tell me about him?”
Sentinel’s eyebrows lift, but nothing about his expression shifts into the smirk I’ve watched him wear like armor for days now. “That’s a big ask, Siren. Which part?”
“All of it.” I fold my arms because if I don’t give my hands something to do, they’ll start shaking, and I’m not ready for him to see that yet. “I’m not asking so I can go tell the other girls something juicy at breakfast. I want to know who he actually is. The man under the fur, the fire, and the finger he keeps flipping at everybody.”
Something in Sentinel’s jaw loosens. I know Sentinel can’t lie. One of those fun little angel perks I learned about pretty damn fast, and usually I appreciate knowing whatever comes out of his mouth is the truth.
Right now, with the way he’s looking at me, I’m starting to think a convincing liar might have been the better choice.
“You want a story,” he says. “I’ll give you one.” He pushes off the workbench and paces a slow line across the concrete, his wings tucked so tight against his back I’d never know they existed if I hadn’t already watched them tear through fabric and light up a hallway like judgment day.
“Two years ago, we ran a job that went sideways in about four different directions at once. Carnage took a blade meant for my throat, that would have opened me straight through if it landed. Carnage saw it coming half a second before I did.” Sentinel’s gaze goes distant, fixed on something that isn’t the garage anymore. “He didn’t think or hesitate. Just moved, and the blade that should’ve killed me went into his side instead, buried to the hilt.”
The thought of Carnage taking that blade makes something inside me recoil.
“He pulled it out himself,” Sentinel continues, his voice flattening the way it does when he’s reciting something he’d rather not feel again. “He just laughed about it. Told me I owed him a drink for ruining his favorite shirt. Never once mentioned it again, not to me, not to Raze, not to anybody. I only know the whole story because Scar told me later, after Carnage passed out from blood loss in the truck and none of us could get him to our hospital fast enough.”
I think about last night. The way Carnage stopped at the edge of the bed even when we were both naked and breathing hard, waiting until I chose to pull him closer. The way he checked my face every time something shifted between us, making damn sure I was still there with him.
Then the room exploded, that door flew open, and his first instinct wasn’t to look at the destruction or protect himself… it was to cover me.
A man who can bleed badly enough to pass out and turn it into a fucking joke, but treats every flicker of discomfort on my face like it matters.
“He really doesn’t give himself the same consideration he gives everyone else, does he?”
Sentinel’s mouth twists. “Now you’re getting it. That’s who he is under the fur,” Sentinel says, quieter now. “Somebody who bleeds for the people he loves and calls it nothing.” He drags a hand through his hair, and some of the humor that usually sits so easily on him disappears. “You know about the roar.”
“I know he can’t use it anymore.”
Sentinel’s jaw tightens. “That’s not what I mean. Do you know where he came from?”
I hesitate. “Hell seems like the obvious answer.”
One corner of his mouth moves, but there’s no real humor behind it. “Yeah. Hell.”
He sets the wrench down on the workbench and leans back against it. “Hellhounds aren’t born into cute little families, Echo. Nobody throws birthday parties or teaches them to ride a bike. They’re bred for a purpose… to hunt, guard, and punish. Whatever Hell points them at, they’re supposed to tear apart and ask fuck all about why.”
