Kylo could see himself settling down with someone fragile and innocent—someone who struggled to navigate the real world due to her lack of speech. He pictured himself as her protector, keeping her safe while she nurtured him in return. It wasn’t so much her stunning looks that captivated him, but the serene strength that surrounded her fragile soul.
Hindsight was a funny thing. When he first realized Selina had betrayed him, betrayed his family, Kylo’s first feeling had been relief. If she’d accepted his clumsy efforts to let her know about his shifting viewpoint about her, then he’d have been forever tied to a traitor. And that went against the core of who he was. Kylo wasn’t perfect. He fully recognized and accepted his flaws, but he was as honorable as the day was long—even when he struggled to be.
Kicking at a discarded shoe left behind, Kylo went outside, breathing in the fresh air, as he made his way over to a fallen log and sat down. Somewhere in the trees to his right, a bird called to another. That was new. The first time Kylo had gone to the address left for him, there wasn’t a twitter from birds or a peep from insects. It was almost as though the trees themselves held their breath, unwilling to breathe in the evil from the house. Months later—fuck, has it really been that long—the birds were returning, and while Kylo was sure the living energy of the area would be forever scarred by the events that unfolded, he also believed nature was resilient. It would find a way to survive and thrive.
While I’m left to wallow in my thoughts, driving myself completely bonkers, because I have no fucking leads.Pulling out his phone again, Kylo checked the time. Another assassin was coming to town. Kylo didn’t know which one and he didn’t care. All he knew, from what he had gleaned from the Thalassas, from Ben and his mates, and from watching Beaumont and Duron together, was that the assassins were a tight-knit bunch.
It was clear they weren’t supposed to be, but Duron and Wyatt’s ability to communicate without words, and the trust they showed in each other while they viewed the rest of the world with distrust, spoke volumes. Even in the heat of the midday sun, Kylo shivered. The skills those assassins had were unnatural. Duron, with the test Kylo gave him, picking up impressions of people from words on a page—who could do that?
Selina?Someone else who wasn’t natural with her use of magic.Whatever happened to the good old days?Kylo sighed as he followed a bird’s progress through the leaves of a nearby tree. Criminals used to be so predictable. They’d do stupid stuff, either because they didn’t have two brain cells to rub together, or they were driven by a need, or even voices in their head. For Kylo and his brothers, the process was simple. Gather scents, track those scents down, sniff out the lies criminals inevitably told, and close the case.
Devil changed all that.
Kylo had no specific idea of what the man had actually done, mainly because the people working for Devil never spoke about him. They went to their deaths, keeping their loyalty to a man who’d been nothing more than a shadow in the darkness.
Then Selina was found and introduced into their lives by another family friend. She’d put up wards around their family home, supposedly to keep them safe…wards that were spying on us for her father, who turned out to be the Devil himself. Fuck.
Kylo ran his fingers through his hair. He couldn’t remember just how many conversations Selina would’ve overheard. It was a clear indication of one of the many ways Devil had remained so elusive for so many years. He knew what Kylo and his men were doing before they’d done it.
And then there was the assassin, Wyatt—another unanswered question. Kylo didn’t know for sure if Wyatt had anything to do with Devil’s disappearance. With all the smells of death in the house, it was impossible to isolate the scent of an assassin he barely knew. Wyatt had supposedly gone undercover—infiltrating Devil’s gang. His body wasn’t at the house when Beaumont and Duron left it, either.
So was he off on another mission? Or still part of the gang and therefore still one of Kylo’s problems? Or had he taken Devil for his own nefarious reasons, turned traitor on his assassin band of brothers?
It was the not knowing that itched at him like a burr under his fur. Kylo believed in honesty in all things, whether or not it did him any favors. It meant he could face himself in the mirror each morning and look himself in the eyes with a clear conscience.
That itch was why Kylo called Beaumont and demanded another assassin. Who better to track down an elusive assassin than another hybrid trained in the same ways?
Kylo was well aware of how horrific that training had been. He had read the information found in his own traitor’s office in the precinct, and the information Todd Thalassa had sent through about his brother’s mates. He’d seen for himself the state Nico and Teilo had been in when they’d rescued them. The scenes of death in the other cages was another frequent visitor in Kylo’s troubled brain when he tried to sleep at night. And, because he’d dealt with scum for most of his life, Kylo imagined a lot of what he’d read only skimmed the surface of what those shifters had been through. It had been horrific, there had been no other word for it, and Kylo didn’t wish that experience on anybody.
“But if this new assassin thinks me knowing what he’s been through gives him a free pass to piss me around, he’s got another thing coming,” Kylo muttered. He was determined to find out what happened to the fucking Devil, and while there was a tiny part of his psyche that realized he was bordering on being obsessed, Kylo could and would live with that.
Standing, Kylo brushed off his pants and flicked his hair away from his face. It was time to go and pick up an assassin. It was finally time to get the answers Kylo craved. If he had to put a short leash on an assassin to do it, then Kylo was the man for the job.
Chapter Three
Conrad
Conrad had hopped on an later flight and used some of his hard-earned money to treat himself to first class. Yes, he could have used the Thalassa brother’s jet, but he didn’t want anyone to figure out where he was flying from.
Saying goodbye to Wyatt was hard, something that hadn’t really hit until he’d gotten back to the hotel room. A day wallowing in self-pity and a trip to a BDSM club he’d visited once before had given him time to clear his mind.
He never had sex with the subs he chose. That had never been what he’d wanted from the interaction. No, he liked them handing over control to him and allowing him the freedom to choose what came next, including if they got to come. He didn’t need a psychologist to explain why he needed that; he got it.
Unlike his cage brothers, who’d never talked about sex, Conrad had, and he’d wanted to try it out to see what the fuss was all about.
Giving pleasure. Yeah, he could do that all day long. Being a professional Dom had crossed his mind once or twice. The problem was, the Shifter Council had other ideas. That, he hoped, was going to change with Duron in charge of the hybrids. Conrad foresaw this as his last job. He wanted to ensure that Wyatt was protected, and if that protected Wyatt’s mate, then so be it. He could live with that, for Wyatt.
As the plane taxied down the runway and the aircraft came to a stop, Conrad took his cell phone out of flight mode. The thing started pinging like crazy.
He groaned and pressed his thumb to the screen to open it. The first four messages were from Duron asking where he was. Each got a little terser. Conrad rolled his eyes at the fourth message that told him he could deal with Kylo, Ben’s brother, direct.
The next eight messages were from Kylo. How did he know that, given that all of the messages came from the same unassigned number? Easy, the aggressive, asshole quality to the messages. It was very reminiscent of Ben when they’d first met him.
Conrad undid his seat belt and was up before the flight crew had the door open. He grabbed his backpack from the overhead bin and smiled at the flight attendant who had flirted with him for the part of the flight where he hadn’t slept.
“Enjoy your time in Paraguay,” he said as the door opened and Conrad passed.
He looked at the cell phone still clutched in his hand. “That might be debatable,” he murmured. The last message held an address and a terse message.
