Atria opened her mouth and the words almost tumbled out, but she caught them at the last minute.Shit, we can’t do this now.
Now was not the time to ask him a life-changing question. They had a living room full of predators and a roadtrip to plan. It would just have to wait.
In lieu of saying what she really wanted to, Atria crawled out of the blankets to shuffle toward her mate on her knees, the receiver clasped to her heart. Kaz wrapped his arms around her without hesitation, his expression creased with a dark frown. Her poor half-orc looked like he had no idea what was going on.
Touching his cheek with the tips of her fingers, she looked up into his beautiful face and whispered, “Do you love me, Mr. Le Roy?”
Kaz reared back a few inches, his expression a picture of offense. “Don’t you know?”
“I need to hear the words, big guy.” She traced the corner of his mouth with the pad of her thumb. When it turned down into a vicious scowl, she followed it, stroking skin a little rough with morning stubble. “The tether only tells me what you feel. It doesn’t tell me what youwant.It doesn’t tell me what you, Kaz, theman,know in your heart. That… I need to hear that stuff, big guy.”
Kaz’s expression turned belligerent, almost angry, when he leaned in close to bite out, “Iloveyou. I’velovedyou. What the fuck did you think this was all about? Is that why you’re hiding your feelings from me now? Because you think I don’t fucking live and breathe for you? If I could sew myself to your side, Atria Le Roy, I’d have done it in the fucking motel room.”
He bared his fangs at her, his fierceness at odds with the wave of hurt that rippled across his ocean. The receiver vibrated in her palm. A glance down confirmed it had picked up on a massively elevated heart rate.
“I knew you cared, but after last night I wasn’t sure you reallywantedto be with me.” Kaz opened his mouth to argue, his eyes blazing, but Atria stopped him with a gentle touch to his lips. In a softer voice, she continued, “I realize now that I need to trust you the same way you trust me. Part of that means trusting you to tell me the truth, yes, but also trusting you enough to ask for what I need. Really ask.”
Kaz’s brows pulled together in a heartrending look of confusion. Speaking against her fingers, he said, “I told you to ask me for anything, princess.”
“You did.” She dropped her hand in favor of pressing a lingering kiss to his firm lips. “I’m listening now, Kaz, and I’m asking you to be safe when I’m not with you. I’m asking you to always come back to me. And I’mtellingyou that I love you, too.”
The receiver buzzed more insistently in her palm. After a long moment, he cupped the back of her head and drew her up for a hard, punishing kiss. It was part fang, part seeking tongue, and all desperation.
“No more hiding,” he ordered, each harsh syllable bursting across her swollen lips. “I don’t hide shit from you, you don’t hide shit from me. Deal?”
Atria’s chest burned with the heat of her affection for her demanding, stubborn, aggressive, tender mate. “No bullshit?”
Another nip, this time accompanied by a low, menacing growl. “No bullshit, princess.”
She smiled against his mouth. “Then it’s a deal.”
He tilted her head back just enough to give her a heated look. “Ready to go on the run with me again?”
“In your grandma’s caravan?”
“With a troupe of assassins in tow.”
They shared a deadpan look for all of a second before identical grins creased their cheeks. A wild exhilaration bubbled between them, sweet and sparkling.
They weren’t giving up. They weren’t letting their enemies win. They were doing the damn thing, and this time they weren’t alone.
ChapterForty-Seven
They setoff from the homestead in the old caravan at dusk.
The Rione caravan wasn’t the most fanciful one Atria had seen, but it wasn’t exactly nondescript, either. Big enough to fit an orcish family of five or more, round, and covered in slightly tarnished chrome, it was a vehicle straight out of the 1950’s — which made sense, since that was apparently the last time it had been used. Upon his return to the homestead, Kaz had informed her that the Rione clan hadn’t used it since the “roaming days” of his grandparents’ mating.
He’d given her a baffled look when he told her that, as if he couldn’t quite imagine his grandparents once living a life in a caravan, carefree and wild. It didn’t take an empath’s senses to understand why. The people he’d known his entire life were shaped by grief. They were no doubt different wholly from the couple who had roamed the rebuilt UTA, and her heart ached for them as well as their grandson, who would never meet them.
Knowing that, their gift of the caravan was even more meaningful.
Atria found it and the retro interior, mostly untouched by time, rather endearing. Her mate and his team, however, were dismayed by the speed at which the ancient vehicle moved, its lack of advanced features, and the close quarters.
She couldn’t exactly blame them for that second part. Atria got the impression that her mate’s team was barely comfortable in a home, let alone a cozy little caravan decked out primarily in teal and linoleum. They looked objectively ridiculous dressed in their black-on-black gear, helmets perched in their laps, as they squeezed themselves around the chrome-edged table or into the bunk beds next to it.
Atria didn’t feel comfortable sitting beside them in the tiny living area, so as Kaz pulled away from the homestead, she distracted herself from the departure by wandering back to the sealed-off nest.
Opening the door, she poked her head in and found a completely windowless room with padded walls, a mattress, and…
