Lover Uncloaked (Stealth Guardians #1) - By Unknown Page 0,79
she didn’t. When Hamish had found out shortly before their bonding ritual, he’d been devastated. Aiden had tried to console his friend by reminding him that had he gone through with it he would have died, yet Hamish had only given him an empty stare, professing he would rather be dead than live without her.
Ever since then, Hamish had stayed away from women, and to Aiden’s knowledge hadn’t touched a woman since. He’d lost the woman he’d believed to be his mate, and nobody could help him over the grief.
Nor could anybody explain how the demons had instigated the entire deception and how they could possibly know about the mating ritual and what it would do to a Stealth Guardian if he mated with someone who didn’t truly love him.
Just as Leila couldn’t be aware of it. He’d never even mentioned anything about the Stealth Guardians’ mating habits to her. And why should he? She was his charge, not his girlfriend. Girlfriend? Gods, he sounded like a human.
The night with Leila had clearly shaken him. What had gotten into him to make love to her the Stealth Guardian way, sharing virta with her? He’d never done that. It was reserved for their mates only and not meant to be shared with casual flings. Maybe rasen was getting to him. Damn hormones! They didn’t make it easy for him to think straight.
Aiden reached for the coffee pot and poured himself a mug. He sat down at the kitchen table when Hamish entered, also dressed only in a pair of jeans.
“Morning,” he greeted his friend and motioned to the coffee pot. “Just made coffee.”
“Great. I need it.” Hamish walked to the counter and poured himself a cup before joining him at the kitchen table. “I’ve had a busy night.”
Aiden raised an inquiring eyebrow. “I thought you were just going out for some food.”
His friend shook his head and grinned. “I didn’t really want to hang around here; figured you didn’t need my company.”
“We had things to talk about,” Aiden admitted and looked away.
Hamish didn’t call him on his blatant lie. Instead, he took a sip of his coffee before giving him a serious look. “Anyway, I went back East last night to see if I could find out anything else about who’s after Leila, apart from the demons of course.”
“Where did you go?”
“I snuck into the compound to see what our boys know.”
“You didn’t—”
Hamish held up his hand. “Of course not. They didn’t even know I was there. But just FYI, Manus is major pissed at you, because you haven’t called in. The names he’s calling you, frankly, not even I want to repeat those.”
“He can suck it up.” Pissing off Manus was just a bonus he’d take any day. However, wouldn’t Manus’s annoyance prove something else? “Are you sure he wasn’t just playing being pissed?”
“Oh, I’m sure. He was fuming, and you know how he can’t keep a lid on it when he’s ticked off.”
“For once I’m glad that Manus has such a short fuse. That means that he’s definitely not involved in ratting out our safe house. It had to have been that phone call being traced back to the parlor.”
“Agreed. Just as well, because I think we need some help. There are things we can’t do from here. It would be good if we could bring Manus back in and have him do some investigating for us.”
Aiden contemplated Hamish’s words and nodded. “Let’s do that.”
“Excellent. Because there’s something odd that’s come up.”
“Odd? Since when are the things we deal with not odd?”
His friend shrugged. “I stopped by the police last night, rifled through their files about the murder of the Inter Pharma CEO.”
Aiden looked up from his coffee mug. “What about it?”
“Turns out the majority shareholder of the company disappeared a few nights earlier.”
He listened up. “You think the two events are connected?”
“Too much of a coincidence for my liking.”
“I agree,” Aiden said. “Do they have any leads?”
“Nothing. All I know is that this shareholder, Zoltan, apparently had a meeting with the CEO a few days before Patten’s death. And now he’s nowhere to be found.”
“Zoltan?” Leila’s voice interrupted.
Aiden shifted his gaze and watched as she walked into the kitchen, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her pretty pendant around her neck. Her body still glowed golden. When their eyes connected, she quickly looked away and tried to cover her exposed arms by wrapping them around her waist, but there was no hiding what had happened. Her face showed