“Loyalty is a product of love. Of course there are different forms of love, but loyalty is earned through a connection with someone else, and a connection comes from a relationship that is cultivated over time, over someone showing you they can be trusted. It’s cultivated by them choosing you over and over again.”
He turned his scowling face on me. “You’re trying to confuse me.”
“I’m doing no such thing.” I hitched my bag higher on my shoulder and gripped the straps tighter. “You’re being closed-minded.”
“I’m being logical.”
“Logic has no place in love.”
“Which is why I’m glad I don’t feel it,” he said dismissively.
I rolled my eyes. “What about your brothers? You’d risk your life for them, wouldn’t you? You have, many times. Why do you think that is?”
“You can try to convince me all you like, but the reason we feel loyalty for each other is because Lucifer created us that way. End of story.”
Gods, he was a stubborn ass. Nothing new there. He always had been. “So you don’t want what War and Jag have, or Dirk and Relic? You don’t want a…a mate, and more pups that you can form a true bond with?”
Shut the hell up! What is wrong with me?
Asking that question was cruel and selfish. He would never have a mate, or more pups, and he had me to thank for that.
“No. Why would I want that?”
My fingers ached from gripping my bag so tight, and my heart felt as if it were ten times too big for my chest. “I get you’re freaking clueless, Lothar, but even you must be able to see how happy your brothers are now?” And still I couldn’t shut my damned mouth. I had wondered, though, many times over the years, if he thought about a mate for himself. If he wanted what some of his brothers had. Obviously not. That was a good thing. It should make me happy. I didn’t want him to pine for something he’d never have.
It was stupid to feel sad about that or hurt. In fact, it was masochistic. A form of self-mutilation. I wanted it this way, right? I’d made a decision a long time ago, and I had to live with it. I had been living with it, for hundreds of years. I’d made peace with it, or at least I thought I had.
I glanced his way. “Let’s change th?—”
Lothar dived at me without warning, hooking me around the chest and throwing us to the ground mere moments before an axe whistled a centimeter past my face.
What the fuck? How had I missed that?
I tried to get up, but he held me down, pressing a finger to his lips.
If I wanted to, I could move him easily. I could flip him, hurt him in multiple ways that would make him get off me, but I indulged him for a moment. I let him take the role of protector as hounds often needed to do, and if having him pressed against me was nice, I wasn’t going to dwell on that.
But more than those things, I was seriously shaken that I’d allowed myself to be distracted enough by him that I hadn’t seen that axe coming.
He reached up, tugging the axe from where it was buried in a tree trunk, and inspected it, causing his hard body to press more firmly against mine. I curled my fingers into tight fists so I didn’t run my hand up his back, seeking more of the heat radiating from his skin, and forced myself to study the weapon. It was intricately carved. I touched the side of the blade with the tip of my finger and hissed. It was made of an ancient steel, the kind capable of killing immortals. I’d had up-close-and-personal time with a weapon made from the same steel a long time ago and was lucky to survive it. The memory was still so raw after all this time, just touching the weapon made my scar ache like some kind of phantom reminder. How did some asshole in Oldwood Forest have one of these?
“Can you see how many?” I whispered, taking the axe from him and sliding it into my bag.
He shook his head.
“We need to move,” I mouthed.
He nodded, lifted his head again, then ducked back. “Hang on.”
I frowned. “To what?”
A split second later, Lothar tossed me over his monster shoulder, bounded to his feet, and exploded into the forest.
I hung there, utterly stunned for several seconds, while I flopped around like a dying fish. “Lothar?” I ground out. “Why are you carrying me?”
He didn’t answer, too focused on running like hell through the trees, determined to save me. Me, a being more than twice his freaking age, a warrior who had literally been given the name, The Blade, because of my expert skills with a knife.
“Put me down,” I ordered. “Now.”
