ChapterForty-Six
Perhaps it should have beena restless night, seeing as her home was full of apex predators, but by the time she and Kaz crawled back into their nest, Atria was too exhausted to care. Seeing her mate on the ground with a bolt gun pointed at his nose had scared years off of her life.
Never, not once in her entire life had she been as afraid as she was then.
After the threat was extinguished, she was left jelly-legged by exhaustion and relief. It was pure adrenaline that kept her up and talking semi-coherently for hours as Kaz and his team hashed out a plan to get her to the conference.
When she woke to Kaz gently trying to extract himself from the nest, Atria jerked awake, her fingers curling into claws against his skin as she instinctively sought to keep him with her. “Where are you going?” she croaked.
Kaz’s face was shadowed in the nest’s alcove, but she could just make out his drawn brows and slight frown as he leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead. “I’m gonna take Sloane with me to pick up the caravan, remember?”
It was hard to recall what they’d talked about the night before when her heartbeat still raced in her ears. “Oh.” She forced her fingers to ease back some. Not completely, though.Can’t let him go.What if he never came back?
“Why are you taking Sloane? Are you worried something might happen on the way?”
If he was, Sloane was a good pick for a bodyguard. Not only was he nearly Kaz’s formidable size, but he was also… cold. Colder than cold. That man had a vicious, icy center that made her instinctively recoil.
Sloane was the kind of cold thatburned.
She’d only gotten a quick, scattershot read on the elves Kaz introduced her to the previous night, but it was enough to know that out of all of them, Sloane was by far the most terrifying.
If he’s taking Sloane, he might be in danger.Struggling to cast off the last dregs of lingering exhaustion, Atria began to pull herself up into a sitting position. She was the kind of tired that made a person feel vaguely ill, but she gritted her teeth and pushed through it. “Let me just get dressed and I’ll come wi—”
“Princess, no.” Kaz gently pressed on her shoulders until she was forced to lay back down in the half-undone nest. “You only got a couple hours of sleep. Rest. I’ll take care of it.”
“So did you,” she argued, wrapping her fingers around his wrist so he wouldn’t leave. She searched his expression in the shadows. “Kaz, if you’re in danger, I don’t want to be apart from you. I can’t— The tether doesn’t stretch that far, and if something happened, I’d…”
Her throat closed around the words.If something happened to you, it’d destroy me.I need to be there to keep you safe.
It didn’t matter that he was a big, badass half-orc with a gun. The moment she felt the tether snap as he left the house the previous night, Atria was jolted awake by the screaming need to make sure he was all right.
Not being able to sense him waswrong.It was unnatural. If she couldn’t sense him, how would she know if something happened to him? How could she help? What if this time the gun pointed at his head wasn’t held by someone who would never shoot?
Atria knew she would never forget waking up to find their nest empty, nor the awful, sick feeling that churned through her at the sight of his gun still on the ledge. Her mateneverleft his gun.
It was pure, wild adrenaline that compelled her to take it with her as she threw herself out of bed.
And then she walked up the stairs to the open door and found him on the ground. She’d never,neverfelt the fear and rage that consumed her then.
The residual panic threatened to consume her again. Cold pinpricks of fear rushed over her body. Too late she remembered to compartmentalize that sickly rush. She felt the impact of it the moment it slipped through the tether and into him.
She tried to reel it back, to shut it down, but it was like fumbling with the ripples of a wave. There was no stopping it.
Kaz’s sharply in-drawn breath was loud even over the rush of blood in her ears.
A sense of vertigo overcame her as she struggled to remember why she needed to reel herself in, to hide, even as she couldn’t bear to let him go.
Their fight from the previous night seemed like a lifetime ago. A different world.
The wound of Kaz’s rejection remained, but the woman who sustained it no longer did. She ceased to exist the moment she realized she would kill for him. Only a persistent phantom ache kept her from throwing open the tether completely.
“Atria, princess. Please.” His voice cracked. “Please. I can feel you trying to pull back from me. Stop it. I can’t stand that there’s this— thisspacebetween us.” Kaz lowered some of his weight onto her. His hands cupped the top of her head as he skimmed his lips over the dips and valleys of her face. “Don’t hide shit from me, princess. Let me feel it.Tellme what you need.”
“I’m just—” Atria was shaking so hard her teeth clacked together. Exhaustion melded with a bone-deep fear.
I could have lost him.
She could have lost him when she’d just found him. She could have lost him when she’d lost her mind to her own stupid insecurities. She could have lost him when he was finally completely honest with her.
