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She rolled her eyes, but she did as she was told, reaching for the plate like she couldn’t help herself. And I stood behind her, close enough to smell her shampoo, my hand settling possessively at her waist.

Her body leaned back into me before she could stop it. Good. I bent my head, my mouth to her ear. “After you eat, you go to our room and have a nice long bath. While I take care of some business.”

Her shoulders tensed. “Viking…”

I kissed the side of her throat, right over my mark, and felt her shiver.

“I’ll argue with you later,” I murmured. “When I’m not imagining you dead.”

That shut her up, or at least for now. By the time she was done eating, my decision was made. I kissed her passionately, my body arguing for me to pick her up and drag her back upstairs to take her body in slow, lustful sex. But instead, I placed my hands on her waist picking her up off the chair and placing her on her feet facing the door. “Off you go, have a nice long bath and I will come and join you after my business.”

She looks over her shoulder at me frowning, “I’m only going because the thought of a nice hot bath sounds amazing right now.” She says, “because if it didn’t you wouldn’t have been able to manipulate me so easily… just saying.” She states before walking away.

I shake my head in amusement at her fire. I’m so fucked, my mate is not going to make it easy for me.

Walking out of the kitchen, I found Draugr in the study, already awake, and contrary to me, dressed, already surrounded by laptops, papers, and the kind of weapons that didn’t belong in a country that pretended it was civilized.

He didn’t look up as I entered. “She’s not dead. Relax.”

“I’m going to kill you,” I snap.

Draugr’s mouth twitched. “You’ll have to wait in line.”

I leaned over the desk, planting both hands on it. “I’m putting protection on her.”

Draugr finally looked up, pale eyes hard. “Good.”

“I want two changelings on her during the day,” I said. “Always. She doesn’t need to see them, she doesn’t need to know. But they’re there.”

Draugr nodded once. “And at night?”

“If I leave the mansion,” I said, voice sharpening, “I want one of ours at her side.”

Draugr’s gaze narrowed. “You’re that worried?”

I bared my teeth. “I’m that certain.”

Because this wasn’t paranoia, this was instinct, the kind that kept our kind alive. Draugr leaned back in the chair and rubbed a hand over his jaw, eyes unfocused as he ran through names and faces in his head like a list of weapons on a rack.

“Changelings,” he murmured. “Two.”

“Yes,” I snapped instantly. “Not one. Two.”

One was a guard. Two was insurance. Two meant no blind spots. No gaps. No bathroom break that turned into a tragedy.

Draugr’s mouth twitched faintly. “You want subtle or lethal?”

My eyes cut to him. “Both.”

He exhaled slowly, as if he could already feel the headache I was becoming. “Subtle, then. If she sees two seven-foot monsters lurking behind her like sentries, she’ll bolt again.”

“She won’t bolt,” I said, too fast.

Draugr’s brow lifted, but I didn’t blink.

Then I growled, “She might.” That was better, truth mattered between brothers. Draugr shifted a file toward me on the desk, but it wasn’t paper. It was names. It was faces and abilities. What they could become, after all the changelings weren’t like vampires. They weren’t ancient or damned or bound by blood.

They were fluid. They could walk through a room as a shadow. Slip into a crowd like they belonged there. Become forgettable on command. It was their greatest gift, and their greatest horror.