Page 60 of Wreaking Havoc
Right.
Kai lowered his wings, and Sascha stepped out from behind him.
But Ivan, for the moment, seemed to have eyes only for Alexei. His lips quirked in a cold smile. “Tell me, Alyosha. Are you going to shootmenow?”
Alexei studied the gun in his hand. “I’m thinking about it.”
Sascha made an exasperated noise. “No one’s shooting anyone. Jesus, Vanya, what were you thinking? Alexei, are you really all right?”
Ivan took his eyes off Alexei to narrow them at Sascha. “Don’t call me that in mixed company.”
Sascha’s lower lip pushed out into a pout, and he rolled his eyes. “Youjustcalled Alexei Alyosha. Plus, it’s not mixed company. They’re like your brothers-in-law.”
Both Alexei and Ivan stared at Sascha incredulously.
Kai grinned. He’d known Sascha was softening to the idea of the mate bond.
Ivan shook off his surprise first, turning to Jay, who was looking a little sheepish at Alexei’s side, then to Kai, whose wings were folded but not yet returned to their hiding place. “And what species, pray tell, are these brothers-in-law of mine?”
Sascha pointed to Jay. “Vampire.” Then to Kai. “Demon.”
Ivan nodded slowly. “The text you sent. Your summoning.”
“See?” Sascha smiled winningly at him. “I even tried to tell you. There’s no conspiracy.”
Ivan cocked a brow. “That singular text was your attempt to inform me?”
Sascha put his hands on his hips. “It’s not my fault you don’t take me seriously! You wrote me off like a dick.”
Was this what having brothers was like? It seemed exhausting at best. Kai was newly grateful to be the sole member of his brood.
“And how did you accidentally summon a demon?” Ivan asked.
“I found a book. I’ll show you.” Sascha looked to Alexei and immediately threw up his hands. “Alyosha! Put down the gun!”
Instead, Alexei used it to point at Ivan’s face. “I don’t trust him.”
“I can vanish it,” Kai offered, if only to stop the bickering.
“He has more than one on him,” Alexei told him. “He always does.”
“Then he may leave.” Kai would allow no more gunshots near Sascha. There was no bond in place yet, and his human was too fragile to risk it, even with Kai’s supernatural reflexes.
But a soft hand landed on his bicep. “Kai, it’s fine,” Sascha told him. “He won’t hurt me. He just needs to feel protected.”
Kai sneered in Ivan’s direction. “As if a mere pistol could protect him from the likes of me.”
He didn’t miss Sascha’s eye roll. “Yes, yes. Everyone here is very tough and scary, except for me.”
And yet it was Sascha herding them all into the living room like wayward children, keeping his older brothers on separate sides of the room. And while he may have thought he loved too easily, it was clear that love was returned. Even Ivan’s cold mask slipped for an instant when Sascha sat him down with a pat onhis shoulder, a look of unmistakable fondness there and gone in a flash.
Perhaps he truly had been worried by Sascha’s silence.
But Kai wasn’t letting down his guard. Ivan looked to Kai to be the exact sort of man who would have summoned him in the past. Power-hungry, paranoid, determined to be an army of one against the world.
His only saving grace was that his soul didn’t yet have the stench of rot. There were humans for whom it was too late, whose actions had corrupted them past a point of no return. It was useless making bargains with them—their souls provided no sustenance.
Ivan wasn’t there, at least not yet. But Kai was sure he had the potential for it.
