Including the most essential, sacred one that existed between a Breed male and his mate.
The one he wanted despite the many questions and niggling suspicions he couldn’t seem to shake when it came to this female.
Aric sat down beside her. “If your injuries need more care, tell me and we can go find Rafe.”
The words tasted like sawdust on his tongue, but it was all he had to offer her. It was a relief when she shook her head in denial.
“It’s not my body that hurts, it’s my heart. I still can’t believe Bal’s gone.”
Aric nodded, but inside he felt a jolt of uncertainty now. The memory of Kaya wearing a massively oversized shirt that could only have belonged to the behemoth of a male sank sharp talons into him. “Did you love him?”
“Yes.” She turned her face toward him when her answer had made Aric’s molars clamp together. “Bal was kind to me from my first day at the command center. I loved him like a brother, Aric. Like a friend. I always will.”
“Of course,” he answered, consoled that he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his days envying a dead man.
Kaya reached for his hand, twining her fingers through his. “I was so scared when Webb reported that you’d run alone into the gunfire at Scrully’s place.” A strangled breath caught in her throat. “God, Aric. If you had died tonight too--”
“I didn’t.” He pulled her close, into the circle of his arm. Her freshly washed hair was sweet and silky soft against his lips as he kissed the top of her head. “I’m right here, baby.”
She nestled against him, her fingers stroking over his clean T-shirt at the places where his torso had taken multiple enemy rounds, including more than one UV bullet. The wounds were healed now, but the entry points were still raised and tender. “Does it hurt when I touch you?”
“Only in the best way.” He lifted her chin and gazed down into her soft eyes. “Touch me anytime you like. You’re never going to hear me complain.”
He brushed his lips over hers, groaning when the brief kiss shot through him like pure flame. He tore away from her sweet mouth with more restraint than he realized he possessed. But only barely. Everything Breed in him yearned to take Kaya . . . to claim her as his regardless of the separate paths their lives were on.
Maybe she sensed the thinness of his control. God knew it was hard for her to miss the sudden surge of his fangs behind his lip, or the simmering glow of his irises as he stared at her, doing his damnedest to bite back the word that leapt to his tongue every time he looked at her.
Mine.
She drew back from him, retreating a few inches closer to her corner of the sofa. “I’m sorry if I’m to blame for some of your wounds tonight. You told me to stay put, but I couldn’t just sit and wait for the danger to pass.”
“I wish to hell you were better at following instructions,” he said, offering her a wry smile. “But you were a help to me in there, Kaya. You’ve got great warrior instincts and skill.”
She lifted her shoulder in a mild shrug. “I’ve had good training. And it helps to have a good partner.”
“Yes, it does.” Aric held her meaningful gaze. “I don’t think I could hope for anyone better.”
Something flickered in her dark eyes, shadows that seemed to dim the tender regard she held him in before shuttering her gaze to him completely. She got up from the sofa and poured a glass of wine, taking a drink of it as she strode in front of the fireplace.
“Maybe we’re not that good together.” It was an abrupt redirect, steering their conversation away from the awareness he knew she felt as strongly as he did. “We finally identified Mercier’s Opus contact, but in the end it was all for nothing. The Order’s come back less one of our best members and we’re no closer to stopping Opus Nostrum than we were before you and I met.”
Aric rose and moved over to where she stood, her arms crossed in front of her, fingers grasped around her wineglass as if it was the only thing holding her together. “We did suffer losses today. But so did Opus. They’ve got one less member of their inner circle now too. And we’ve got substantial intel collected from Scrully’s estate and computers. We’ve also taken a van full of UV weapons away from Opus’s arsenal.”
Without the time or preparations to detonate the recovered cache of arms and munitions, the crates were currently stowed in the bowels of the command center, a fact that was making more than a few of the Breed warriors a bit twitchy.
“They knew we were coming, Aric. The timing of Scrully’s killing and the Order’s arrival couldn’t have been coincidence, right? Opus’s assassins didn’t just get lucky when they brought a van filled with UV weapons to that estate to kill Scrully. They were waiting for us. They knew we were coming and they knew when.”
He stilled, somewhat taken aback to hear her say the very thing that the Order’s commanders had been discussing ever since they’d returned tonight. Rafe had made no secret of his suspicions over the past few days either, pressing the very likely possibility that the Order had a leak with loyalties to Opus somewhere in their intel chain. Or somewhere closer than that.
Even Aric had to admit he had doubts--too many of them centered on the beautiful woman standing in front of him now.
She spoke so earnestly, so convincingly, she was either innocent or one hell of a cold-hearted liar.
And he had to be some kind of fool for how eagerly he grasped for the former while pretending he could ignore the latter. Staring into Kaya’s soulful eyes made him want to ignore a lot
