“It’s too dangerous,” Theodore firmly interjected. “If this is as big as I am worried it is, then we need you home and under lock and key, Atria. I’m not letting you and my brother walk into the viper’s nest for something like aconference.”
“We don’t have permission to release the research anywhere else,” Atria protested, voice thick. Her eyes took on a suspiciously glassy sheen. “And with the way the commission handles these things, it could take years for us to get approval again. Please, you have to understand how important—”
“Yourlifeis more important to me than anything else,” Theodore coolly replied. “Isn’t that right, Kaz?”
He knows.
Of course he knew. Theodore didn’t have Foresight like their sister, but he had an uncanny intuition and the ability to catch anyone in a lie. Even if he didn’t have those gifts, he knew Kaz better than anyone else on Burden’s Earth.
There were vanishingly few reasons he would have abandoned his post and their territory to chase after a woman. Only one was probable, if unfortunate.
Even knowing that she was a friend of his sister-in-law’s, he probably wouldn’t have bothered to interfere beyond alerting Patrol to the bounty.
Theodore had to at least guess that Atria was his mate.
It was the only reason he would be perched on the edge of a stiff motel bed, a witch in his lap and his instincts in a riot.
On one hand, he knew what he needed to do. The urge to protect her at all costs was perfectly in line with his extensive professional experience. Atria needed to be evacuated to their territory and hidden in a safehouse until the threat was extinguished, her research be damned.
On the other… Kaz was horrified to realize he hated watching her cry.
His voice was rough when he said, “There will be another chance to tell the world about your research — but only if you’re alive.”
Atria’s lip wobbled. A fat tear escaped one eye and raced down her cheek as her hand fell limply from his chest. “Please,” she begged, “I’ll do whatever you want. Just let me go to the conference.”
Kaz’s chest tightened painfully. Remorse was a new and unwelcome addition to his usual crew of shitty feelings. Unable to stop himself, he reached up to wipe away her tear with his thumb. “I’m sorry, princess, but I can’t.”
He’d seen a lot of bad shit in his life, but it was a special sort of terrible when Atria’s expression crumpled. Her head dipped and her arms wrapped around her middle like she had to work hard to hold herself together. Her long hair, still damp, fell to obscure her expression from his view, but he didn’t need to see it to know she was trying not to cry.
The way her shoulders shook told him everything.
I… hate this,he realized, sick to his stomach.
He didn’t know what to do, how to help her. He couldn’t make this better. Saving her meant going against her wishes. It didn’t bother him when that meant cuffing her or chasing her down through a damn cornfield, but this was something else entirely.
This actually hurt her.Hehurt her.
“Teddy…” he began, not knowing where he was going with the sentence. He floundered. “Could we—”
“No, Kaz.” Theodore’s voice was hard. There was no brotherly love there. There was only the heavy dominance of the sovereign. Kaz never had any trouble yielding to him before, but things were different now. The beast that lurked in the dark corners of his mind balked at letting his brother decide this for him.
Atria washismate. Her care washisresponsibility, not Theodore’s. To hand the choice over to his brother grated against something foundational and ancient, no matter how foolish he knew it was to feel that way.
Ignorant of his struggle to capitulate as he should, Theodore continued, “I’m not negotiating. Your lives are too important to me to justify the risk. I’m sending a unit out now.”
Kaz glanced down at his mate and felt another spiky ball of guilt lodge itself in his throat. Because he didn’t know what else to do, he curled both of his arms around her until he could tuck her head under his chin. Atria curled up against his chest and clutched him like sheneededhim.
And then she trembled. He was lost.
“We’re safe here tonight,” he argued, desperate forsomething.“Send a gate in the morning.”
“Kaz, there’s no reason to—”
“Teddy, she’s been through some shit tonight. She’s beat up and exhausted. We’re in the middle of bumfuck nowhere and I’ve got my gun. We’ll be safe for a few more hours. Just… Please just give me this.”
He could practicallyfeelTheodore’s surprise and disapproval all the way from San Francisco. He very rarely asked for anything, and he wasn’t a particularly sentimental type. It was entirely out of character for him to beg foranything,let alone something foolish like this. By rights he should have demanded a unit pick them up at that moment. It would have been the smart thing to do, as both a person with tactical training and her mate.
But he couldn’t.
