He didnotintend to let nature beat his ass.
For the first time since Delilah dropped the packet on the bar, Kaz was actuallygrateful.Not because he intended to use it to win his mate — he’d never read past that first inch — but because it meant that when Margot casually mentioned that her cousin’s best friend Atria was coming for dinner and asked if he’d like to join them, he knew exactly who she was talking about.
He’d successfully avoided Atria for three years with almost no effort. Kaz saw no reason to break that streak now, no matter how his skin itched at the thought of her being near enough to smell, to touch, to walk into his penthouse if she got lost on her way to the dining room—
Though he didn’t believe in gods, he counted it as a sign from above that Margot mentioned it at all. If she hadn’t, he might have been there when she walked down the hall or stayed for a drink in the family room.
A glance at her from across a field and he knew that she was his. He could only imagine what would happen if he actuallymether.
One deep breath of her scent and their lives would be over.
So he grabbed his go-bag and hoofed it to the apartment he used when he needed to stay mobile or take a breather from his intense and often meddlesome family.
He planned to spend the weekend there, doors locked, until the danger passed. It wasn’t as easy avoiding the nagging voice in the back of his mind, though. It was that insidious curiosity that had morphed into a ruthlessly controlled obsession over the three years since he’d glimpsed her at his brother’s wedding.
What if it isn’t so bad? Maybe you can just get another look at her. You don’t have to have contact to do that. Just look.
Even more dangerous was the thought,What if you’re wrong about her? Then you could have tortured yourself for nothing. Maybe you should just check, just to be sure.
It was his instincts laying a trap for him and he knew it. Worse — hewantedto fall for it.
Kaz gnashed his fangs as he went through the motions of his day. His spine was so tense that it felt like someone had soldered steel to his bones as he mindlessly flipped through reports from his team on everything from the state of the criminal Underground to the personal lives of several powerful individuals who needed watching. His spies were everywhere, and they all had something valuable to tell him. Information was power, and he wielded it ruthlessly in defense of his family.
Too bad he couldn’tfocus.
He’d spent the better part of the day glancing at the door. The lack of control over his impulses pissed him off. He’d neveroncebeen this frazzled. He couldn’t afford to be, not when his family and his territory needed him. Theodore was the sovereign, the Protectorate’s sword, buthewas the shield. It was his job to keep everyone safe and be the leader of his small, deadly team.
But what about her?
Kaz cursed. Throwing his tablet onto the empty couch cushion beside him, he leaned his elbows onto his knees and raked his claws through his long black hair.
Atria Le Roy was no more than a biological trigger. A pretty little allergen that threatened to rewrite his entire personality with just her scent.
He didn’t want a consort, that veryelvishweakness, before he saw her at the wedding and he definitely didn’t want one now, three years later. If anything, he was even more determined to avoid the concept altogether.
He’d seen her for exactly five seconds. That was all it took for him to know they were fundamentally incompatible. She was a witch with soft skin, soft curves, and a striking, heart-shaped face. He was a predator, finely honed and bursting with barely checked aggression on the best day.
His father had indulged himself with his consort and it drove the sociopath to a madness so complete, he murdered his own elvish spouse and tried to do the same to his children, including a one month old Theodore.
His mother had given in to her own mating imperative despite the danger Thaddeus posed. All it got her was a bastard she couldn’t stand to look at and a miserable early death.
Even if he could somehow make himself soft for a mate, Kaz knew that he would find some way to destroy the witch who haunted him. Protecting her — protectinghimself —meant staying as far away from her as possible.
That didn’t stop his instincts from punishing him, though.
Kaz hadn’t gone a single night in the past three years without dreaming of her. Usually he was back at the wedding, but every time he turned around, desperate to escape, she was there, just out of reach but still too close. Sometimes he dreamed she was in his apartment, making quiet, domestic sounds as she went about her day just out of sight.
But the worst was when he dreamed of having her in his bed, only to see her vanish as soon as he clasped his hands around her waist. He hated those dreams the most. Every single time he woke up with an aching cock and the pounding need to crack open his safe, where he shoved Delilah’s envelope all those years ago.
It was psychological torture manufactured by his own thwarted biology and he’d reached his motherfuckinglimit.
That was why, when there was a knock at his balcony door, Kaz whipped out his gun before he’d even gotten off the couch. Aggression was a roar in his mind, and paranoia was not far behind it.
Everything felt like a threat. His apartment felt too exposed even with all the armored shutters drawn. The door to his bedroom yawned behind him, empty of a nest that should have smelled like her,them.The orcish instinct to hunt her down and snatch her combined with his elvish possessiveness to make him one dangerously raw nerve.
Everything felt undone, unfinished, as if he was slowly being driven mad by the very idea of Atria in his city.
Moving around the coffee table to get a clear line of sight to the opposite side of the room, where his glass-encased balcony overlooked the Aquatic Sanctuary, he peered over the barrel of his heavy-duty bolt gun.
