I love you,he thought, surprising himself.I don’t even really know what that means yet, but I do.
He would have to tell her later.Or maybe not. How could she not already know? My empath knows everything about me — even the stuff I don’t.
Stowing those thoughts for another time, he turned back around. Jaw locked, Kaz flung open the door.
They were older than he remembered.
Frances and Tosun stood side by side. They were dressed in faded work jeans, boots, and layers of flannel and sturdy, oiled canvas. Frances’s long black hair was streaked with white and bound in an elaborate, wispy braid around her head, while Tosun’s soft brown locks had gone more salt than pepper.
There was a taut silence, and then, “Well? Did you think you’d get away with not saying hello?”
Kaz fixed his stare on his grandmother. The Rione clan, humble as it was, originally hailed from the spiny ridge of the Alps. They were a sturdy lot, with wide shoulders, impressive height, and dark green skin that hearkened back to the lush green mountainsides they came from. Frances towered over her mate, whose clan had lived in the Surma Saravar Lekh mountains for thousands of years. He was significantly smaller in stature but built with formidable muscle even in his advanced age, and had skin so pale gray, it was practically white.
Despite his muscle mass, Tosun was far less intimidating than Frances. That was not due to her height, but rather her heavy jaw, flinty eyes, and generally dour demeanor.
Instead of answering her question, Kaz grunted, “Clark?”
Tosun offered him a wry smile. “Clark.”
He knew it was only a matter of time before the smiley bastard ratted him out, so Kaz tried not to feel too bitter. Clark had apparently at least refrained from doing so immediately. As it stood, he had a week of uninterrupted bonding time with his mate, so Kaz decided to do the orc the kindness of not hunting him down and skinning him alive for snitching.
This time.
“What are you doing here, Kaz?” Frances pressed. She folded her arms over her chest. There wasn’t a bit of warmth in her expression when she added, “It’s not to visit your clan, clearly.”
“I wasn’t aware that I needed to inform you whenever I want to visit my own house.”
Her lips thinned. “I helped your mother build this house, boy. If it meant so much to you, maybe you’d have visited it more than once every ten years to check if it was still standing.”
Kaz heavily suspected he got his bad attitude from Frances. While he admired her strength, they had never once gotten along in the two miserable years he spent working on the Rione ranch. They sniped at one another constantly, and it was impossible to miss the way she looked at him with blame in her eyes.
Frances didn’t see her grandson when she looked at him. She saw Thaddeus, just like Amira did.
He didn’t blame her for it, but he also didn’t need to put up with her withering looks and criticism, either.
While his first instinct was to slam the door in their faces, his second wasn’t much better. He doubted they’d buy a lie, no matter how well he told it, so instead of doing that, he settled on a third option he usually did his best to avoid: the truth.
Arching a brow, Kaz told them, “I’m here with my mate.”
He felt Atria shuffle up behind him when Tosun exclaimed, “You’re mated?”
“Yes,” he answered, stretching out his arms to grip the sides of the door frame so that Atria remained safely out of view. Their gazes immediately sought out his hands, checking for the kohl. “I needed a quiet place to nest, so we ended up here. We’ll be gone in a few days, so don’t worry about running into us.” He jerked his chin toward the gravel driveway. “There. I’ve answered your question.”
Frances’s eyes stayed down, locked on his fingers as they curled around the wooden door frame. The pigment in his skin gleamed with a faint iridescence in the sunlight. Her expression was softened with surprise for about half a second before her brows snapped together.
Glaring at him from under her wrinkled brow, she snapped, “And what? You’re just going to send us on our way? Introduce us. We deserve to know who’s joined our clan.”
Kaz’s own temper rose in time with hers. “We haven’t spoken in twenty years. I’m not part of your clan and neither is she.”
“Those tattoos say otherwise, boy,” she snapped, gesturing sharply to his naked chest. “Or did you forget those too, right alongside your mother?”
“Fran,” Tosun murmured. “Let’s not—”
She shot her mate a quelling look. “If the boy wants to fight, then we’ll fight.”
“There is no reason to fight.”
Kaz bit back a growl as Atria stepped around him on the stairs to duck under his arm. She didn’t make it over the door jamb before he looped his arm around her middle and dragged her against his chest, where a deep rumble was gradually building.
