Kaz’s heartbeat slowed as time stretched.
“Up.”
ChapterForty-Four
The voice was completely flat,scrubbed clean of inflection or any identifying features. The command was spoken so low, it was almost subvocal. His mate would never hear it, but she almost certainly would wake up if the intruder pulled the trigger.
Cold sweat broke out over every inch of his body. A sense of powerlessness swept over him, acrid and vicious, as he slowly removed his hand from where it rested a scant inch from his gun.
Moving with extreme deliberation in an attempt to telegraph every move, he unwound himself from around his mate and climbed out of the bed. His heart jammed itself into his throat when Atria mumbled softly in her sleep and rolled over into the warm indentation he left behind. Her white nightie flashed like a beacon in the dark.
A hot lashing of rage whipped through him as he stared down at her.
The sacred space of their nest had been invaded. To know that a stranger had seen it, had come upon them in the night as his mate rested in the place she was supposed to be safest in all the world was a crime so heinous, it made him want to rip the intruder apart with his bare hands.
Except he couldn’t do that. Not when they had a rifle trained on him. While he was certain he could disarm them, he couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t result in shots going off in the confined space of the bedroom. Once again he was helpless in the face of someone pointing a fucking gun at his mate.
The thick fur rug was soft under his bare feet as he climbed off of the bed, hands raised. All the while, the intruder kept the rifle a hairsbreadth from the skin of his neck.
A nudge directed him toward the bedroom door. Kaz gritted his teeth and forced his legs to move.
He hated leaving his mate behind. His night vision was perfect, but without being able to turn his head, he wasn’t able to do a sweep of the room to be sure there wasn’t another intruder in the shadows, a rifle trained on Atria as well.
Rage and fear lashed again, but he forced himself to swallow it down. He wasn’t sure if one of his emotions could rouse his mate from sleep, but he didn’t want to find out. He needed to keep calm. He needed to think. He needed to rip some fucking heads off and then run as far and fast as he could with his mate.
Keeping his hands up and his mounting bloodlust tightly capped, Kaz walked stiffly out of the bedroom and down the long, subterranean hallway. He didn’t say a word as he was nudged again, toward the living room and then the steps leading to the front door.
On one hand, he was relieved they were escorting him outside. The farther they were from his mate, the better. On the other hand, he was absolutely certain he was being taken out into the yard for a swift execution.
Sub-ideal.
Gods only knew what awaited him outside the house. The skill and stealth of the intruder implied that they were well-trained. While it was always possible that someone of that level might work alone, Kaz knew from experience that assassins were much more efficient if they worked in pairs or larger groups. There was every possibility that he might be walking out into a highly trained crew.
Or worse.
He couldn’t allow the intruder to get him away from the house. Once they left, it was nothing but grassland for hundreds of miles. Running wouldn’t be an option, and neither would stealth. He had to attack while he still had some slight advantage.
When he reached the top step, Kaz paused, one arm lifting slightly toward the control panel.
“Keep moving.”
Speaking through his teeth, he answered, “I need to dismantle the alarm. I don’t want to wake my mate.”
“Your security system has been dismantled.” Though the voice was modulated to remove any trace of emotion or tone, Kaz thought he detected the ghost of amusement in it.
“And the wards?”
“Voided.”
His stomach turned over. Whoever this person was, whatever group they belonged to, they had to have a massive amount of skill to void the wards without actually dismantling them — a process that essentially made theminvisibleto the complex netting he’d paid an extraordinary amount to have Shade build.
Jaw firming, Kaz forced himself to open the door and step out onto the stone stoop.
He scanned the yard. All he saw was the prairie, the unused garden patch, and the gravel driveway limned in moonlight. The air bit at the exposed skin of his chest. There was no one there and no sound other than the whistle of cold wind through the tall grass. Even so, he felt eyes crawling all over him.
The intruder came with backup.
Kaz’s vision sharpened. His breathing slowed. He kept his hands high, his spine relaxed, until the moment he sensed that the intruder had lifted their foot to ascend the final step.
