“Atria,” he growled, leaning down until they were nearly close enough to bump noses, “I have had it up toherewith this running bullshit. I let it go the first time because you didn’t know better, but now you have proof that people are after you. I’m not gonna tolerate this shit anymore, do you understand? My job is to protect you. I can’t fucking do that if you’re gonna bolt the second I turn my back!”
Her eyes were a warm, whiskey brown in the light. In the dark, they looked almost purple. He almost hated how pretty they were. “OfcourseI’m going to bolt! Any sane person would!”
Kaz nodded. “Fine.”
“Fine? What—”
Reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, he dug out the small black device he always kept there. About the size of his thumbnail and half an inch thick, it was activated with a touch of his finger. Two loops of braided synthetic cord slithered out of either side.
It took Atria a second to figure out what it was, but by the time she did, it was too late. He was already forcing her hands into the loops and hitting the activator again. The loops tightened, cinching her wrists together.
She let out a howl of frustration and began to tug at the cuffs, but it was no use. The cord couldn’t be cut by anything less than a plasma torch and the activator wouldn’t loosen them without his bio scan.
Settling one hand on her thigh to keep her from toppling off of the car and because heneededto touch her, he rumbled, “See? That’s what happens when you don’t listen to…” His eyes locked on her hands. Snatching them, he stilled her useless fighting to slowly bunch the stained sleeve of her sweater up around her elbow.
At first his heart stopped because he thought the markings were abrasions, but then his vision adjusted and he realized that they were actually tattoos.
Not just tattoos.
He wasn’t a religious man by any stretch of the imagination. He’d never even set foot in one of Burden’s Sanctuaries, but he knew what the deep red tattoos — circles overlapping circles, connected by the stylized motif of Burden’s symbol, cupped hands, which wrapped around her delicate wrists to make cuffs.
A cold sweat broke out across his body when he croaked, “You’re apriestess?”
“If I say yes, will you let me go?”
His gaze snapped back to her face. She was staring at him with her jaw firmed and eyes blazing. The bruise under her eye was a nasty one, and the cut there had begun to scab. Even so, she was so beautiful it made his chest ache.
“No,” he answered, curling his fingers around her bare forearms. The heat of her skin blazed under his chilled palms.
“Then no. I’m not.”
He dropped his gaze to her throat. It bobbed with a hard swallow under his attention, and though there was some mud and streaks of algae, he was still captivated by the sight.
It was alsobare.
“You didn’t take the vow.” He wasn’t willing to examine why he sounded so relieved by this discovery.
Atria abruptly turned her head away from him. Her chin thrust out in a stubborn angle and her full lips pressed together. She offered no response beyond a stiffening of her spine when he brought her wrists up for a closer look.
A hot sort of urgency pooled in his gut, made all the more potent by the instinctive dread intertwined with it.
It wasn’t just the concept that Atria was now one hundred percent out of his league that made his stomach curdle. It was what those tattoos represented.
Service. Community. Ownership.
He didn’t know much about Burden’s priestesses, only that they were rare. He’d always assumed it was because the cost of entry was so high. Once the final vow was taken, the Collar painstakingly hand tattooed around the neck, they eschewed matehood. They lived to serve the Selfless God and him alone.
Kaz’s stomach clenched. His breathing sped up as that urgency matured into a dark sort of possessiveness. It didn’t matter that the being Atria could have pledged herself to was a god — she wasn’t supposed to belong to anyone buthim.
He gave himself a hard internal shake.Get a fucking grip!
So what if she could have been out of his reach, magically bound by a vow to remain forever unmated in service to the god who carried them all on his back?
Still, his thumbs stroked over the tattoos on her wrists as a chill ran through him.I could have lost her,instinct raged again.
He didn’t care. He didn’t know her. But now… now he was forced to realized that hewantedto.
Every time he felt like he got a grip on who she was, something new threw him off balance. What did this discovery tell him about her? What did he really knowabout his mate?
