Faith Sullivan doesn't want my protection. I don't want to give it.
She's a schoolteacher with no business in my world. I'm Storm Reavers' treasurer, not a babysitter. Shadow assigns her to me anyway.
She fights me on everything. Every rule. Every restriction. Every time I try to keep my distance.
But she cries through the wall at night and gets back up every morning and keeps going. And somewhere between the lockdown and the war building outside our gates, she stops being an assignment.
I don't do this. I don't let people in. I don't cross lines I've spent years building.
But Faith is brave and stubborn and soft in all the ways this life isn't, and she's mine whether either of us planned it or not.
God help anyone who tries to take her from me.