But I wouldn’t do that to him.
I would, however, give him a few hours to cool off once he found the collar I’d left lying on the table beside him. It wasn’t that I was leaving him, but if I was going to do this, I had to do it asme.
Not as Killer.
Not as pet.
Not as Aubrey Bishop.
I had to be Aubrey Malcolm again.
I wasn’t going to get a chance to do that if Phoenix woke up and instantly strangled me because I’d slipped his leash.
It would be better if I gave him an hour or two to get over being so worked up. I’d told Blythe I wasn’t leaving when I went back for the skull, so once he got around to asking them where I’d gone, he’d figure it out.
I hoped.
It wasn’t just that, though. I needed space—space to figure out how in the fuck I was going to do this. How I was going to open myself up and let myself…
Want.
I still didn’t know how to trust the fact that the world wouldn’t take him from me now that I realized how much I needed to keep him.
Phoenix was the tiger.
He’d always been the fucking tiger, alive and thriving. A predator trapped and waiting for me to come find him. The only difference was, he was free. He wasalive.
If there’d ever been anyone in this world strong enough to survive caring about me, maybe it was him.
And like the thought was a goddamn curse, I heard the sound of footsteps in front of me—they weren’t heavy enough to be his, though. I pulled my pistol before I had time to think, not that it would do me much good. I barely had any ammo left. I’d run through most of what I stole from the Order clearing out the resort, and the men in the theater had mostly had bullets for the bigger guns.
That and explosives.
I came up short when I found another gun pointed at my face. It wasn’t someone from the pack, and it wasn’t a raider.
I recognized the man.
He’d been part of my squad with Ben. I wasn’t surprised they were here—I’d honestly been expectingsomeoneto come and hunt me down, eventually.
But…
There was something a little too excited about his expression.
“Hey, Aubrey.” He said the name so casually, and his gaze dropped to the tags I still wore at my throat. “That’s your name, right? Not Bishop.”
“No,” I said carefully, my eyes sweeping the area. If there were more Order assholes here, the last thing I needed was them finding the rest of my group—my pack.
Fuck.
My little family, who I’d found and hadn’t realized until this moment that I’d kill to protect.
“Guess the question is, are you going to come quiet like your little raider friend, or do I have to shoot you?”
My little raider friend?
“Who do you have?”
It could have been Cutter—it could have been Flynt or Cora or?—
