The smell of her blood was slowly driving him insane.
Kaz knew he was tough. He’d trained himself ruthlessly to be just that. He was the Solbourne shield. It was the job he’d given himself when he was eighteen and the role he was born to fulfill.
He’d endured hundreds of hours of rigorous physical instruction. He’d trained himself to withstand torture and interrogation. He’d executed threats with his bare hands and witnessed some of the most vile depravity the mind could conjure with barely a blink.
But he would never,everforget watching the gargoyle backhand his mate.
Gargoyles had skin like stone. The man’s hand must have weighed at least five pounds and he’d just— hehither like she was nothing. Like her fragile human bones wouldn’t shatter with the slightest touch. Like she wasn’t singular, precious,breakable.
He knew how delicate witches were. Once, he saw his sister-in-law step into a door that opened too quickly. It broke her nose instantly. Chaos broke loose as blood gushed, Theodore roared at the hysterical maid to get a towel, and Margot desperately tried to get everyone to calm down. Being a healer meant she could fix her nose with a second or two of thought, but that didn’t stop the assembled elves from being horrified on her behalf.
While she was a halfling, Margot could still be cut by paper or glass, her bones crushed by a wayward door. Atria didn’t even have the benefit of elvish blood to shore up the density of her bones or little claws. She wassoft.
Again and again, he heard her desperate cry echoing across the parking lot. It sounded like his name had been torn from her throat, and his reaction to the sound was so visceral, even the memory made his skin prickle.
She didn’t trust him, but when she was in danger, his mate called forhim.Was it sick to find that satisfying and horrifying at the same time? Something beaten nearly to dust within him basked in the momentary flash of satisfaction it caused, just as the rest of him recoiled from the horror of watching her be manhandled.
One wrong move and she could have died. If he missed his shot, if the gargoyles had been any rougher with her, if Dan had taken flight—
I could have lost her.
Kaz shuddered. The ripple of disgust, fury, and despair was so deep, he felt it in every cell.
Atria was so very breakable. She needed someone looking out for her, someone to guard her. Instinct said that right belonged to him, but his mind balked.You didn’t trust a wolf to guard a lamb.
Again, his thoughts circled back to his brother.How the fuck does Teddy handle this?
How could Kaz handle his mate atall?Gods knew what could happen if he pressed too hard, if he bit her or lost control of his instincts for even a moment.
He’d never witnessed Theodore be anything other than gentle with his little mate. Did he have to work hard to keep from accidentally harming her, or was it not even a question? Perhaps Theodore never had to think twice about the amount of pressure he used when he clasped her to his chest or twined his fingers in her hair.
Maybe he never felt this awful, grinding need totakefrom her, that feeling of losing control that made his panic more acute by the second. Bitterly, he wondered if it was yet another gift passed down from his father.
As far as he knew, Thaddeus had never laid a hand on Kaz’s mother in anger, butTheodore’smother… Well, she hadn’t survived her union with the madman, and the gods knew what torture he subjected her to in their life together.
Would that be Atria’s fate as well?
Kaz’s eyes moved back to the road, but he saw the blurring yellow line that ran down its center through the film of memory. In his mind, he was back in the parking lot, watching her stumble under the blow, then be wrenched forward by a cruel hand in her long hair.
Nausea swelled. Bile crept up the back of his throat so fast, so forcefully, that he had to pull off the side of the road or risk swerving into a ditch. Aware that there was every possibility they were still being followed, he cut the ignition, plunging them into blue-black darkness broken only by the tiny orange dome light set in the roof.
Fingers locked around the steering wheel and arm muscles so stiff they trembled, he braced his back against the seat and grit his teeth. He was pissed that she was hurt, but he knew the physiological response was entirely his fucked up instincts at work — and that only made him angrier.
How was he supposed toprotecther if he couldn’t think past the rage, the nausea, the crawling fear? He could barely see straight!
There was no pill to take, no spray or shot to fix this.Shewas both the cure and the disease.
He knew he was going to have to reckon with that soon, but at the moment he needed to find some way to relieve the terrible pressure in his mind, to clear the horror that clung to the back of his throat like the aftertaste of vomit.
“Why did we stop?” Atria’s voice was hoarse, barely audible over his own ragged breathing.
“How badly are you hurt?”
“What?”
Kaz hissed out a breath through his teeth. “Is there anything broken? Do you need a healer? Are you in pain? Tell me now.”
She watched him like he was an animal ready to strike at any moment. It was grating, but it was also fair. Was he really better than animal when he was driven half-insane by fucked up biological urges? He couldn’t even manage to ask her if she was okay without barking at her.
