It was the truth, though. He felt it in that raw, aching thing in his chest.
Oblivious to his growing impatience, Atria continued, “I should’ve guessed. Kaz told me you’d be around. You’ve got a couple days off, right?”
Sloane doubted he’d ever get used to how much the captain shared with his mate. He knew she was good friends with the sovereign’s consort, Margot Goode, and a wildly intelligent scientist in her own right, but he didn’t think it was wise to give her access to so much confidential information.
And he’d never,everbe comfortable with her ability to read his emotions.
Fighting the urge to simply ignore her and walk away, he replied, “Yes.”
Job done, he turned to leave. He didn’t make it far.
The sound of blankets rustling heralded further delays. “Wait, Sloane!”
Fighting back a snarl that would’ve gotten him a brutal ass-kicking from her mate, he turned his head to look over his shoulder at the witch. She’d sat up and slung her arms over the back of the couch. The marks of her previous order, Burden’s Bonded, ringed her slim wrists, but it was the tattoo around her neck that marked her as Kazimier’s mate.
Her brow furrowed deeply as she stared at him with those penetrating brown eyes that saw too much. Speaking slowly as if she was trying not to spook him, she asked, “Are you sure you’re okay? You feel… off.”
His mind went quiet. In the span of a heartbeat, all paranoia and anxiety over the state of his charge vanished. In its place was the perfect, empty stillness of the predator.
As Sloane silently watched her, letting her question hang unanswered in the air, he wondered if she knew how easily he could kill her. Even having seen her impressive range of abilities used in combat, it wouldn’t take him more than a minute to dispatch her. Witches were just as weak as arrants if you got to them fast enough.
He had no desire to kill her. She was his captain’s consort, and that meant she was one of them. But he’d kill any one of his team members to protect his doe.
And he’d do far worse to keep her.
Sloane stared at her blankly from behind his visor, his breathing slow and even. For a long moment, she ceased to be a person. She was no longer his captain’s mate. She wasn’t an honorary member of Fracture. She was an obstacle and a threat to the only thing that mattered to him.
Atria had no idea how narrowly she avoided danger when she added, “I don’t mean to pry. I just… If there’s ever anything I can do to help you — something that you can’t go to Kaz or the rest of the team for — just know that you can come to me, okay? Not to put you on the spot or anything, but you’ve got plasma streaks on your helmet.”
Passing his hand over the damaged side of his helmet, which would need to be replaced if he didn’t want a single hit to shatter the new weak spot, he muttered, “A weapon misfire.”
Atria blew out an incredulous breath. “Oh comeon,Sloane. I won’t snitch.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’d tell your mate.”
“Only if whatever it was posed a risk to yourself or someone else,” she replied, somehow managing to hold his gaze steadily despite the visor. When she dipped her chin, her long, dark hair slid against her cheek. For just a moment, the similarities between his doe and his captain’s mate were uncanny.
All at once, the familiar predatory emptiness left him. She was once again a woman, a team member, and a witch whose features echoed those he’d become so very fond of.
She firmed her jaw before announcing, “Otherwise, no. I wouldn’t tell Kaz. And I would expect the same from him. You’re his family, Sloane, which means you’re my family, too. We keep each other’s secrets.”
A strange frisson of something passed through him. A feeling, maybe, but one he didn’t care to acknowledge, let alone identify.
“It’s a bad idea to be my family,” he warned her. “They usually end up dead.”
He didn’t stick around to hear her reply. Sloane strode out of the mess hall and down the corridor to his room, intent on accomplishing his task.
It was good, he reasoned, that he ran into Atria. He’d been seen, which would hopefully give him just a little more time before anyone reported him as missing. There was no reason to kill her when a witness might actually make things a little easier.
It had absolutely nothing at all to do with the new, uneasy stirring in his gut at the thought, or how similar she looked to his doe.
Taking a bag wasn’t unusual for any of them, so he didn’t bother trying to hide it as he walked out of his room with a black backpack slung over his shoulder. It had everything he needed — the scant few possessions that meant anything at all to him.
When he walked back out into the mess hall, he wasn’t surprised to find Atria still in her spot. This time, he wasn’t determined to ignore her.
Passing the couch, he asked, “Where do you get the strawberry soda?”
“Huh?” She blinked up at him, dark eyebrows arched with surprise.
