Catastrophic Attraction - Eve Langlais Page 0,5

champion. A strange twist of fate had brought him to Roark.

“If you wanted people who always agreed with you, you’d have never asked me to work for you.”

Roark glowered. “You could agree some of the time.”

“When you make sense. Right now, you’re letting panic make your decisions.”

Not panic, fatherly concern. An intense disquiet about the safety of the one person he loved most in this world.

“My life won’t be worth a thing if something happens to her,” he admitted softly.

“And if you’re the one killed first? What do you think happens then?” Titan arched a brow.

“Bossy fucker. Do what you think is best,” Roark growled. “So long as it doesn’t get in my way.”

“On it.” Titan veered off, and Roark spent a moment watching the man, wondering what fresh security hell he’d suggest next.

He stomped toward his tower, almost tripping twice on Sachi along the way. For a cat whose agility stunned, she could be obsessively annoying on stairs, darting between the legs to unbalance. He knew she did it on purpose. Mangy feline.

Sachi tried to distract him from what he’d done to the woman downstairs. Just another memory he’d live with of the things he did to keep those he loved safe.

Chapter 2

The things she did for those she loved. Casey missed the days when she and her gang were trying to stay alive in the Ajatarai forest. When it was humans against everything. Where she felt alive, even if she worried she’d get eaten in her sleep.

However, they’d left the woods and its dangers because the displaced crew of almost fifty was offered a place to call home. The abandoned village that Haven had settled into was actually fairly nice once you looked past the neglect and the recent fire. Even nicer once it got cleaned up. Safe, too.

Almost a month here and Casey was bored to tears. Repairing roofs and learning how to build boats for sailing the river wasn’t exactly her idea of productive use of her time. Food proved to be plentiful with the fish in the river providing meat and the trees that survived abandonment and fire ripe with fruit. The grass outside the village contained edible bulbs easily dug up.

What was a hunter and accomplished marauder such as herself supposed to do? She knew what she wanted to do. Leave. She wanted to explore parts unknown. Apparently, there wasn’t as severe a restriction on travel in these parts. The Marshland city and seat of power, a place known as Eden, welcomed travelers. Even Port City in the opposite direction beckoned her with curious fingers.

But that would mean leaving. How could she abandon the friends and families she loved to go elsewhere? What if they needed her to fight?

Then again, she wouldn’t be much use if her skills got rusty from soft living. Perhaps she should ask Axel if he needed any messages delivered in person. Eden was only a few days’ travel and the ocean only a day’s ride.

What if she left, though, and never wanted to come back?

She stalked out of the civilized parts of Haven, noticing the difference since their arrival. The crushed rock streets were swept clean and the stone block houses sported proper roofs. The trees overhanging the docks by the water had been trimmed for better visibility. New wood showed where it had replaced the rotted gaps on the pier. A few vessels bobbed by its side.

While soot—from a fire Gunner claimed was set by a sorceress—still stained some of the homes, the refugees from Hilltop Haven didn’t care. They finally had a place to call their own.

Except for Casey. She had to share with Cam because her twin—who looked nothing like her no matter how hard people squinted—insisted she not live alone. Why not? She loved her brother, but she was getting older and wanted her own space. From him at least. Cam needed to move on and do his own thing without her.

Yet telling him that he needed to find a new partner would only hurt the brother who loved her, who’d spent his life looking after Casey. Why did he have to be a nice guy?

She hated nice guys.

She stalked along the shore of the river that meandered toward the Ajatarai forest a few days’ hard ride from here. It formed part of the border between the Emerald and Sapphire Kingdoms. It was a hairy trip through those woods and then across the ravine, but how could they resist when offered a place to call