A year ago, hell six weeks ago, he would have said that women were soft and sweet and helpless. That their love was everything warm and delicate, like silk over skin. Delicious to sink into. But so very fragile. So easily torn. And simply not worth the risk of any kind of long-term involvement.
But not these two. Fuck. He had never met anyone with more grit than they had both shown again and again, and he had been on some of the worst battlefields of his generation.
What would it be like, to have that kind of strength at his side?
His beast flicked an irritated ripple of scales up his skin. It reckoned it knew exactly what it would be like. It would be like the soul-deep haze of fulfillment that Tristan now wore, the captain’s newfound happiness almost palpable. Mathos hadn’t imagined it was even possible for Tristan to fall for a woman, but look at him now.
Val too. Despite everything he’d been through, everything he’d suffered, there was no doubt how much he adored Alanna. He watched her like she was water in the desert. Essential to life, but almost too wonderful to be true. And she looked at him in exactly the same way.
Mathos leaned against a wall, crossing his arms casually, but never losing his close attention on the room as he pushed away the whispering observations of his beast. Just because Tristan and Val had found the right women didn’t mean that he ever would.
After all, the only three women he’d ever admired were already taken.
And there, as if the thought had summoned her, was the third. The door crashed open, and in walked Keely. Stalked was probably a better description.
Where Nim was short and delicately curved and Alanna was tall and blonde and willowy, Keely was somewhere between the two. Petite, but tomboy lean, green eyes currently flashing with irritation, her cheeks flaming against her creamy skin.
And right behind her, as Mathos had known he would be, was Tor. Looking even darker and more surly than usual.
The two had arrived at the temple an hour before dawn, and Mathos had quickly filled them in on everything that had happened, and then sent them to get something to eat and wash up after their hours in the woods. Even then he’d known something was wrong. Not just in the tension vibrating between them, but the very fact that they’d marched through the dark woods, making their way to the Eshcol Temple complex, not knowing whether anyone else from their squad might be there to greet them, rather than camp in the relative safety of the forest.
“Good morning, darlin’.” Mathos smiled wickedly, enjoying Keely’s raised eyebrows as she reined in her anger and replied with a polite, “Good morning, Mathos.” But what he really enjoyed was the way Tor looked at him, forehead furrowed in a heavy scowl, his dark eyes flickering with something powerful and just as powerfully repressed.
Gods, he loved tormenting his fellow Hawks. If they were too fucking stupid to step up and make their women truly theirs, then Mathos was free to charm them as much as he liked. It was his duty, after all, as squad second and general nursemaid, to nudge his brothers in the right direction.
Tor stepped closer to Keely and settled his hand on her lower back, and Mathos wanted to crow with amusement. Couldn’t the big Apollyon just piss on her and be done?
“Don’t touch me!” Keely snarled as she stepped away and joined the women. Alanna and Nim crowded around her, giving her relieved hugs and whispering reassurances that they were all well. Keely’s back softened as she murmured with her friends, but she kept it resolutely toward Tor.
“Damn, Tor.” This time, Mathos couldn’t help his amused chuckle as Tor joined him at the wall, looking like he might take someone’s head off if they breathed too loudly. “You truly have a way with women.”
“Fuck you.” Tor cracked his knuckles one by one, his scowl deepening.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Tor grunted sullenly enough to pass as Tristan but replied anyway. “No. It’s….” For a moment he thought Tor might give in and say something, but at the last moment, the huge Apollyon looked away. “It’s nothing.”
Mathos raised both eyebrows at him in disbelief. “Nothing doesn’t make a woman look like that. Or you, for that matter.”
Tor looked back at Mathos, his dark eyes gleaming. “And what would you know about it?”
Mathos let it go. What did he know? Not very much. And about women—well, he knew how to take them home for the night and how to leave them in the morning, and he generally avoided even that much. He couldn’t see that helping here.
He grunted and changed the subject. “Was Garet with you last night?”
“No. We just saw him coming into the temple with a squad of Nephilim. He’s in with Reece now.”
Mathos ran a hand down his face. Too many hours without sleep. Too much to worry about with Dornar and Ballanor scheming and plotting. And, on top of it all, Reece.
Fucking Reece. He’d gone in to see him after dinner and found his friend awake and snarling, trying to refuse treatment.
Mathos had tried talking to him, reminding him, yet again, that no one held him responsible for Dornar finding them; Dornar knew exactly where they were going. Reece had simply been an appetizer for him to work out some of his frustration on before moving on to Val and Alanna for his main meal.
But Reece wouldn’t hear it. He felt responsible. Just as he felt responsible for that bitch Helaine betraying them to Ballanor. Mathos was losing him, and he had no idea how to fix it.
He shook off the hopeless feeling that came with thinking about Reece. There was nothing he could do if the man wouldn’t listen.
With Tristan gone off with Val, he was in charge. Which made him responsible for getting his squad, and he included the women in that, fed, armed, and ready for whatever was about to happen on the tournament field. Whatever Ballanor and Dornar were planning.
