He was reaching for her before he’d made the choice to do so. One moment he’d been furiously suppressing his fucked up urge to dosomething,and the next he’d felt a warning prickle along the back of his neck. His hand was on hers before she finished gulping in her first stuttered breath.
Scared of flying?He wanted to shake his head. She had no idea how scared she should be. It was a miracle she’d made it onto the plane at all.
Atria had no idea that the men who’d been following her were sitting six rows back.Heknew because he’d used every tool, every favor he had in the frantic minutes between grabbing his go-bag, breaking every autospeed barrier in the city, and running full-tilt through the airport to confirm that she had made it this far.
In the end, it was a call to Rasmus that finally yielded the answers he needed. He was the only person who was more connected to the Underground than Kaz himself. The were had picked up on the third ring, and the sound of women whispering filtered into the background when he casually informed Kaz that yes, he had gotten word of an extraordinary bounty for a witch —tooextraordinary.
“Millions,” he said, growl more pronounced this close to April’s full moon. “Fifty-five million, Rione.”
Fifty-five million dollars.For one witch.Hiswitch.
He had to ask Rasmus to repeat the number for him before he could actually process it.
“No one in their right fucking mind would take that,” he’d argued. “A bounty like that—”
“Is either a trap or put up by someone who doesn’t know what the fuck they’re about to start,” Rasmus finished for him. “That’s war-starting money. That’sidiotmoney. And now a faction of the McCorans are claiming it like the dipshits they are. Callen is gonna lose his mind when he finds out. He just took over and now there’s this mess? My bet is whoever these fuckers are, they think that much money will give them leverage to take his spot.”
What a fucking mess.
The gargoyle clans that eschewed the law had stayed out of their territory for centuries out of respect and wise caution. Hearing that Callen, the young leader of the McCoran clan, might be losing his grip on power and therefore letting his goons run loose in the EVP made Kaz’s already taut nerves snap.
“Nah,” the were continued, “not worth it — not that I’d ever take on a bounty, of course. I’m a legitimate businessman these days.”
“I don’t give a fuck if you’re legit or not,” Kaz had snarled into his car’s microphone as he hurtled down the freeway. “I just need you to tell me who they would have fuckingsent!”
“Why?”
When he didn’t answer, Rasmus filled in the gap with a knowing sigh. “Oh. A witch, Rione? I hear they’re awfully delicate, and more trouble than they’re worth. One good fuck and you’ll snap her in half. That’s if no one gets to her first, of course.”
“Are you threatening her, Adams?”
“No, I’mwarningyou. You’ve got a fucking war on your hands, and if that witch is your mate, good luck keeping her safe.”
“What is it you think I’mtryingto do?”
That, at least, was a point Rasmus had to concede. He was not mated himself, but weres held matehood sacred in a way that no other beings did. Even a dirtbag like Rasmus Adams knew it was nothing to fuck with.
After that, he divulged everything he knew: that he hadn’t been able to pinpoint the source of the bounty, that the lower ranking McCorans had been looking to make their names in the EVP for several years, and that the men sent to capture his mate were most likely trained killers with arrest records a mile long.
“Not sure if the three are a sept or not,” Rasmus had grimly informed him, “but best to assume they are — and that they’ll be more dangerous and territorial for it.”
Gods help them all if they were a sept. He was already predisposed to ripping them apart with his bare hands, but if they took one lustful look at his mate…
Sitting in the uncomfortable jet seat, Kaz tried to make his muscles relax, but it was impossible. The tension he felt was unlike anything he’d ever experienced, and it only got worse the more he thought of the three gargoyles sitting in the back of the plane, their eyes no doubt locked on the back of his mate’s head.
They weren’t just dangerous because they intended to collect their outrageous bounty, but because gargoyles could be just as territorial over their families as elves and orcs were. If they were a sept — a small, tightly knit family unit who shared a mate — then only the gods knew how they might react to Atria. What if they took one look at her and said,Hey, fuck the bounty, let’s keep the girl?
He would. There wasn’t an amount of money in the world that would have compelled him to turn Atria over to someone else. He didn’t even know her, but the steel jaws of possessiveness closed around him with a vicioussnap!
His logical mind knew that they would almost certainly toss her off a bridge for the right price rather than mate with her, but the beast lurking in his gut didn’t. Allitknew was that three dangerous men who might wish to make her the center of their sept or worse were sitting several rows behind him, claws flexing for a chance to feelhismate’s soft, soft skin.
Keep your shit together.He hoped that if he thought it enough he might actually be able to survive this torturous trip.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that he was breathing her in at the same time that he knew for a fact that the men who wanted to abduct her wereright there,he was also stuck in fuckingcoach!
At least some of his stress was alleviated when the damn vampire finally unclipped his belt and wisely scurried out of his seat. Kaz turned his head and watched, eyes narrowed, as he found a new seat a few aisles down.Good.
A tiny bit of tension leached out of his spine when he flipped the armrest up, giving him more room to spread out — and block his mate from view. He pretended the instinct to do so was triggered by the threat and not, as it most certainly was, because the orcish part of him was desperate to sequester her somewhere dark and soft, to lock her away from the world so he could indulge in her at his leisure.
