“Why?”
“Because she’s a friend.” One he’d recognized by her slight build and her lightning quick fighting style almost instantly.
“And you’re my mate,” she replied, hard and flat. “It’s my right to defend you. You’remine,remember?”
Fuck, I love you.Kaz couldn’t help the way his shoulders straightened a bit, knowing that his team was watching, listening to her claim him. A tight knot of anxiety tucked behind his belly button began to unravel as the gap between them narrowed.
Damn right I’m yours, princess.
Trying very hard to keep the pleasure her fierce possessiveness inspired in him out of his voice, he said, “You’re right. You defended me. Everyone here would agree that it was a reasonable response to the situation as you saw it.” He cast a shrewd eye about the yard, making sure he leveled a look at every member of his team, before he turned his attention back to his mate. “Now it’s time to let her go.”
He held his breath, keenly aware of all the eyes on them — as well as the rifles — and nearly wilted with relief when the mulish expression on her face began to melt away. The air lightened. That choking scent of magic and the oily, nauseating terror evaporated.
Not looking away from his mate’s upturned face, Kaz barked, “Sloane, Johanna — check on Vesta.”
There was no sound of boots on gravel, but he sensed their movements as two black-clad figures peeled away from the group to assess their comrade.
After a moment, another modulated voice cut through the night. “She’s unharmed, Captain. Just rattled.”
He let out a short, sharp breath of relief. “Good.” Pulling his mate into his arms, he slowly turned to face the assembled members of his team. Thankfully, they’d lowered their rifles.
Speaking through his teeth, he announced, “Everyone, this is my mate. Her name is Doctor Atria Le Roy. You fucking look at her wrong and I’ll bury you in a hole so deep, not even the worms will find you.” He smoothed his hand down his mate’s bare arm. It was pebbled with goosebumps. “Atria, this… is Fracture.”
There was a tense beat before the members of his team began to unlatch their helmets. Air hissed in sharp bursts all around them as helmets popped off, one after another, revealing elvish faces of every color. All their gazes were trained on his mate with laser-like intensity.
Instincts still in a tangle, Kaz scowled and cupped the side of her head, turning her into his chest so she was less visible. Addressing his team, he growled, “Welcome to the homestead. Now, tell me what thefuckyou’re doing here.”
ChapterForty-Five
Kaz assessedthe predators currently lounging around his living room.
He’d known them his entire life, but he had never once seen them in a domestic setting before. He suspected it was deliberate. If they appeared at his apartment in the city to deliver a report, they usually showed up on his balcony. Even when he invited them inside, they rarely took him up on it.
He always got the impression that they were a bit like feral cats: friendly to those who fed them, but wary of being trapped inside.
That impression didn’t change much when they cautiously slunk into the house, their eyes moving restlessly as they fanned out around the living room. They settled their battle-honed bodies on every available surface and sprawled out with the liquid grace of felines. On the surface they appeared relaxed, but he could sense their tension. They were uncomfortable on a fundamental level.
They probably would have been more at ease having this meeting in an alleyway, or perhaps a blood-splattered basement.
While Kaz had never been apartof Fracture, he had been its leader for fifteen years. At first, the idea hadn’t made sense to him, seeing as he was a young, relatively inexperienced outsider, but he quickly came to understand why Valen suggested it.
Each and every one of the members of Fracture was a deadly weapon forged in fire. They were viciously loyal to one another and had formed a unique pack in the crucible of Thaddeus’s torture.
Not one of them was fit to lead.
They did not know how to function in the world, and without direction, they became aimless and aggressive. They needed a leader who understood them, who could go toe-to-toe with them, but wasnotthem, or else they’d run headlong into the ground. His anger issues and aggression had seen him thrown in the ring with them from an early age to get the shit kicked out of him to work it out, and though it was skewed, he still claimed a moral compass. In another world, he might have even been trained to be one of them completely.
But he wasn’t. He knew what it was like to be loved, to have family. He understood that there were lines never to be crossed. Despite his many issues, hecared.His family might have worried he didn’t feel much, but they never questioned his need to protect them. Kaz knew that it was that vicious protective instinct that got him the position as Fracture’s captain.
They didn’t need a general directing their every move. They needed someone to care about them.Reallycare. More often than not, Kaz felt like something of a den mother to the broken elves under his command.
And that was precisely why he was pissed they were in his living room.
“Here.”
He looked away from his team to find his mate standing beside him. She held out a bag of frozen crinkle cut fries. Kaz blinked. “Um…”
Atria took a step closer to him, her emotions a low, possessive buzz under his skin, and gestured with the bag to Vesta, who was perched on the arm of their couch running her claws through the seafoam green hair at the back of her head.
