contagious disease. As if he might catch my feelings.
“No, Little Shadow,” he murmured even as he turned away, only his fingers still connecting us together as they curled hard around my wrist. “You’ve never been weak.”
When we broke through the last of the crowd separating us from our chosen family, they were all watching us, clearly having tracked our progress from the sidewalk down to the lot. Priest hesitated, boot suspended mid-step. I watched from slightly behind and to the side of him as he cocked his head to study their varying expressions of confusion and open curiosity.
I waited, wondering how he would process their interest in whatever was going on between us.
Loulou broke free from Zeus to come toward us but stopped abruptly when Priest stepped in front of me, blocking her way.
They stared each other down, my big sister and my beloved psycho, communicating in the way of alphas, without words using only intense body language.
Slowly, Priest pulled me by the wrist to his side, then deliberately wrapped his big hand around the back of my neck under my hair to anchor me to him.
“She’s mine,” he said slowly, each word barely leashed with aggression.
Loulou mimicked him, cocking her head and narrowing her eyes. Her hip cocked to the side as she folded her arms across her chest and arched a brow. “And you’re hers?”
He shrugged one shoulder casually, but the hand on my neck flexed in spasm. “Whatever there is of me to have.”
I made a little noise of protest in my throat, but Priest only pressed his thumb tighter to my throat.
“Someone seems damn intent on hurting her,” Lou continued as if there was no one but her and Priest in the parking lot, no firemen or policemen, no eavesdropping neighbours. I realized this was the MC Queen speaking to her soldier, seeing if he could be trusted with the biggest responsibility she had to dole out.
“I’ll kill them before they get to her,” Priest stated flatly.
A little shiver moved through my badass sister before she could quell it. “You’d kill me if I hurt her too, wouldn’t you?”
Priest just blinked slowly in answer.
A smile flickered around my sister’s lips. “Okay, then.”
“Jesus, you can smell the testosterone from the street,” Lion Danner announced as he parted the crowd behind him with some officers following. “If you lot are done showing off for the townsfolk, you mind telling me how you saved the damn day?”
Zeus laughed his great, bellowing laugh, drawing the attention of everyone who wasn’t already listening, though there were few. “Seems the damned saved the pious today. Maybe they’ll think twice next time they campaign against the club, eh?”
“Wouldn’t hold your breath,” Seth muttered from behind me, then smiled when I turned. “Just wanted to check on you, Bea.”
A growl built in Priest’s chest. I slapped my hand against it.
“I’m fine, thanks, Seth. I’m more concerned about you! You were a hero in there.”
He beamed at me, his face classically handsome even covered in soot. “You’re too sweet. Tell me you’ll still come to dinner tonight with Phillipa. We need to band together in times of trouble like this.”
I bit my lip, aware that Priest was still as death beside me. He didn’t want me to go. I didn’t want to go. But I wouldn’t cease being who I’d always been just because I was in love with a man who didn’t believe in some of the things that were dear to me. Seth, Tabby, Eric, Grandpa, my community at First Light were all important parts of my life, and I owed it to both them and myself to continue to prioritize them.
I tipped my head up to look at Priest, who was already gazing down at me, his face utterly expressionless. I thought, maybe, it wasn’t because he was unmoved by the idea of me leaving his side, but because he didn’t want to impose his own thoughts of the matter onto me.
In its own way, I thought that was awfully sweet.
“Drop me off and pick me up?” I asked softly, for some reason not wanting Seth to be in on this little moment.
Maybe because it felt so concrete, a normal conversation between a girlfriend and a boyfriend.
Priest’s hand dug into the back of my head and tugged once, just hard enough to make it sting in a way that reminded me how much I loved when he pulled my hair like that seated deep inside me. I flushed then squirmed when his