“Very. I’m having a bed delivered Monday. This room, this exact spot. In the meantime, we can?—”
Then I hear it. Voices outside. Car doors closing. Footsteps on the gravel.
Garlen’s voice shouts from below. “Jonus. Are you in there?”
I can also hear Aldar. “The back door is broken.”
“My family has found us,” I warn my bride.
“Oh shit.” She starts to scramble off me but there’s nothing to wear, my clothes are shredded and hers are scattered across the floor beneath us. I manage to pull on the remains of my tornpants. She wraps herself in my destroyed shirt, which covers her about as well as a dishrag.
Footsteps are on the stairs.
Dane appears in the doorway of the empty bedroom. He takes in the scene — the two of us barely dressed, flushed, on the floor of an empty room next to a cold fireplace, surrounded by scattered clothing and the unmistakable scent of what we’ve been doing for the last several hours.
His nostrils flare. He can smell everything.
A long pause.
“He’s fine,” Dane calls down the stairs. “They’re both fine.”
Garlen appears behind him. Looks at me and at Sloane. His nostrils flare too.“She’s not hurt,” Garlen confirms quietly. “I can scent it.”
“Can we please not do the scenting thing right now?” Sloane’s face is scarlet, her arms crossed over the shirt that’s barely covering her.
Garlen almost smiles. Almost. Then he sobers. “The police have been at the house for hours. FBI is en route to deal with the mercenaries and investigate who sent them. And Sloane — Aldridge has already been arrested in DC. The story went live about an hour ago. It’s the front page of every outlet.”
Sloane goes still beside me. “It’s live?”
“It’s live. It’s over.”
I feel her exhale. The weight of months — of a kidnapping, a pit, a jungle, a rescue, an article, an attack — lifting from her shoulders. She presses her face against my arm and breathes. “It’s over.”
From downstairs, Aldar’s voice carries up, “I’ve been on the phone with Kelt. Third scent bomb, same chemical signature as the ones used on Garlen and Keric. Someone is manufacturing these and getting them to humans and specifically targeting Irontrees.”
From the doorway, Garlen meets my eyes. A look passes between us. Three attacks. Three scent bombs. Three Irontree males who went feral. Someone is doing this deliberately and Kelt is going to hunt them down.
But that’s a problem for another day.
Garlen looks around the empty bedroom. The vaulted ceilings. The mountain view through the bare window. The soft carpet where I just mated with Sloane for the first time.
“Is this the house with four bedrooms?” he asks.
“Yes. Escrow closed this morning.”
“Good choice.” He turns and walks back downstairs. Dane follows behind him and all three Irontrees leave and return home.
I pull Sloane against me and press my lips to the top of her head. Through the window, the mountains are turning pink in the sunset. This room still smells like us. Like the beginning of everything.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sloane
My Georgetown apartment smells dusty.
I stopped by this morning to grab clothes and stood in the doorway for a full minute, staring at the space I’d lived in for three years. It’s so much smaller than I remembered. A galley kitchen where two people can’t stand side by side. A living room dominated by a couch I bought at a clearance sale. A stack of mail on the counter that I don’t care about. Cold air, stale smell, the particular loneliness of a place that hasn’t been occupied in weeks.
I grabbed what I needed and couldn’t wait to leave.
