“You installed a cappuccino machine.”
“She likes cappuccinos.”
“In your underground bunker.”
“If she’s going to be hiding from assassins, she should at least have good coffee.”
Noah had just shaken his head and walked away. But I noticed he hadn’t tried to stop me. He understood, even if he thought I was crazy. We had lost Blake. We knew what it felt like to have someone you loved ripped away without warning. We knew the lengths you would go to in order to prevent it from happening again.
Now, sitting on the couch while Lina showered upstairs, I felt my anxiety clawing at my chest. She was in our bathroom. Connected to our bedroom. One floor above me. There were stairs between us. A hallway. A door. So many damn obstacles between me and my mate.
Anything could happen.
I stood up.
“Knox,” Noah warned.
“I’m just going to check on something.”
“You’re going to hover outside the bathroom door like a creepy stalker.”
“I’m not.”
“You absolutely are.”
I was already halfway up the stairs.
Our bedroom was quiet except for the sound of running water from the bathroom. I could hear the shower, the steady rhythm of water hitting tiles. I could hear Lina humming softly to herself, some song I didn’t recognize but that sounded cheerful. Everything was fine. Everything was completely, utterly normal.
I told myself I was just passing through. Just happened to be in our bedroom. Just coincidentally pacing back and forth near the bathroom door. Not hovering. Definitely not hovering.
Twenty minutes later, I was still passing through.
My wolf was pacing inside me, restless and anxious, wanting to be closer to our mate. I could feel him pushing at my control, urging me to break down the door and confirm with my own eyes that she was safe. I resisted. Barely.
Then a loud thud came from the bathroom.
I didn’t think. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t pause to consider that there might be a perfectly reasonable explanation for a thudding sound in a bathroom where someone was showering.
I kicked the door open.
The wood splintered. The hinges screamed in protest. The handle punched clean through the drywall on the other side, leaving a fist-sized hole in the plaster. I burst through the ruined doorway, claws extended, a growl ripping from my throat, ready to murder whatever assassin had dared to threaten my mate.
I found Lina standing in the middle of the bathroom, naked and wet, water dripping from her hair onto the tile floor. She was staring at a bottle of conditioner that had apparently fallen from the shower shelf and was now rolling gently across the ground.
She blinked at me.
Then she looked at the broken door hanging off its hinges, the demolished frame, the hole in the wall.
Then back at me.
“Knox,” she said, her voice completely dry despite the fact that she was literally dripping wet. “Did you just try to murder my conditioner?”
I stood there, chest heaving, claws slowly retracting, adrenaline crashing headfirst into a tidal wave of embarrassment. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears.
“I thought... I heard a thud.”
“It’s a plastic bottle, honey. Not a bomb.”
