“I have Andarion connections. My bud brings it to me whenever he happens this way. I got a case left from the last time he visited. Don’t know how y’all drink that regularly. One can and I’m wired for days.”
“’Cause you’re human,” Darice said proudly, puffing his chest out.
“For the record,” Thia whispered to him, “if you shoot or preferably kill Darice, I’ll tell Uncle Hauk it was an accident.”
Releasing her, Bastien laughed. This was what he loved most whenever Jullien stopped in. Familial bantering and busting chops.
Unfortunately, he was so focused on them that he didn’t realize his alarm had been tripped.
Not until he turned the dim lights on and met the angry faces of a band of Boldorians who were hiding inside his home.
Weapons drawn.
Ah, minsid hell…
Had he been alone, he’d have chanced their aim against his reflexes. But since more of the smelly beasts came in behind them, he thought better of it. Neither Thia nor Darice seemed particularly trained.
“Hands up!”
Bastien obeyed. “Do it, kids.”
At least he knew Dancer would be coming in soon. If he could keep them distracted and their attention on him and away from the equipment, it would allow Dancer to get the drop on them.
As one of them came forward to pat him down and his hand trailed a bit too close to his cock, Bastien sucked his breath in sharply. “Hey, hey! Dinner first! No groping till you feed me! Don’t know what you’ve heard, but I’m not a cheap date!”
That got him a rifle butt against the back of his head.
Son of a…
The force of the blow dropped him to his knees and almost rendered him unconscious. Only sheer force of will kept him semi-alert. But the ringing in his ears was quite special.
When they came forward to take Thia, she flipped the first one to the ground. Throat-punched the second one. And would have made it to the door had Darice not kicked his opponent into her and knocked her down.
Proving Bastien right with his earlier assessment of their skill level. While Thia had been trained in hand-to-hand, they weren’t trained to fight as a unit. Damn shame, that. With Thia’s skill, they would have stood a chance of escape.
Instead, they cuffed his hands and dragged him away.
Bastien glared at their captors. “You’d best not hurt the kids. You don’t want to know who their parents are.”
“The Andarion we’re tracking.”
“No. They’re kidnapped Sentella children. The blonde belongs to Nemesis. The Andarion boy is his nephew. You harm them and he’ll hunt you to the ends of the universe to gut you bare-handed.”
“What about you?”
Bastien twisted so that he could grin into the older man’s wrinkled face. “I’m just the idiot protecting them.”
He ran Bastien’s head into the desk. “Well then, you won’t mind telling us about the Andarion we’re after. And about this base…”
Was theknœttron something? You never asked a younger sibling anything about anyone. Bastien’s older brother and sister had tutored him early on and well about the one basic sibling principle—snitches get stitches.
“Don’t know nothing about the Andarion you’re tracking. Ain’t telling you shit about Shinola.”
The grimy man stepped back to make room for one of his colleagues who could give Dancer a run for his money on gargantuan size. “We’ll see how long that stubbornness lasts.”
***
Bastien lost all track of time, as well as what it felt like not to be in excruciating pain. But as bad as this beating was, it paled in comparison to the torture sessions he’d gone through while in League custody. Hell, there had been times then when he’d considered confessing to killing his family just to get them to stop.
