Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,128
ache in her heart as mine when we were apart, even for a day. Now that we had found each other, two souls crafted by fate, absence did not make the heart grow fonder. Shaking my head, I crouched so that she could drop onto flat feet, her body still recovering from Deimos’s brutality, her legs trembling. “You don’t have to apologize.”
Sniffling, she eased back and planted her hands on my chest, looking oddly determined as she said, “Yes, I do, so… just let me.”
“All right, star-crossed lovers,” Fintan interjected, cutting off what would have been acknowledgement from me—acceptance that if she felt like she needed to say or do something, I as her mate would support her. Sure, I’d argue when I needed to. I’d put my foot down when it came to her safety and well-being. But… I wouldn’t control her. Never. Fintan, on the other hand, seemed hell-bent on running the show, and had the audacity to sidle between her and I, guard in tow, looking a little too thrilled with the turn of events. “Let’s get Rafe and the cat and then get the fuck out of here. This one’ll give us no trouble at all, right?”
He flicked the knife just hard enough at the warlock’s flesh that it split, bright red oozing from the wound. The boy cried out and shook his head. Honestly, weren’t all the prats patrolling this place hardened criminals themselves? I’d assumed those inside Guthrie’s organization had a backbone, but maybe the best and brightest—like Thompson—had fled for greener pastures when they realized what a shit gig they found themselves in out here.
Pleased, Fintan tapped the boy under his chin with the flat side of the blade. “Fantastic.” He then looked between me and Katja, brows up. “Shall we?”
While Katja hopped to, immediately headed for the door, I couldn’t move until I’d said my piece. Grabbing hold of Fintan’s green sleeve, I hauled him back when he tried to trail after my mate.
“You are putting her at risk, Fintan,” I hissed, hoping he realized what he had started with his trademark impulsivity. If something happened to her in all this, I’d kill him. The fae merely glanced down at my huge fist, then snorted.
“This was her bloody idea!”
“Hey…” Katja wheeled around in the doorway, hands on her hips, the end of her scissors nudging at the wall. “The riot was not my idea.”
“Coming back here was most certainly your idea,” Fintan argued, his grin tinted with dark delight—like he relished a fight before a fuck. My inner dragon growled at the thought but seemed more focused on Katja than the other male fate might have chosen for us to share her with.
Arms crossed, Katja sidled back into the little room, eyes on me.
“Nobody gets left behind,” she murmured. In an instant, I melted, all soft and gooey on the inside, infatuated with her even more now that I saw her loyalty in a crisis. This new side of her set off the protective alpha in me, my inner dragon on high alert for possible threats, but it also made me want to bend her over this table and make her mine in front of everyone. Fuck her until she begged for mercy, then mark her over and over again, my bite forever burned across her flesh.
I just smiled instead, wholly on board with whatever these two had in mind—because from the look in her eyes, the pride, the promise, the confidence in what she was doing, I figured I ought to encourage this. An alpha’s mate could withstand our strength, our fury, our darkest side. Yet they also made us better. Whatever we needed, we found it in them, and they in us. An alpha wasn’t exempt from growth, from personal betterment. Before Katja, I had always assumed I would pluck my fated mate from obscurity and tuck her away in a tower, dazzle her with jewels and keep her safe.
But my mate wanted to fight.
Katja longed to stand on her own two feet—to make the difficult call when necessary. I’d suspected it the second she ran to Fintan’s defense on his first day, but I saw it now, bright and glaring, her tenacity and her potential. The days of distance and quiet were gone. It was time to make waves.
“Let the record show that I wanted to bribe someone to quietly sneak us out the front door, but here we are,” Fintan insisted when I started toward her. He stiffened