Rolling his eyes, he pushed me off. I tended to be violent when angry, and Em tended to not react. “You deal better with concrete facts than feelings. All I knew were his feelings around the topic were conflicted, and he’d been distressed.”
“You should have told me, I would have…”
I trailed off.
Emmett picked up where I’d left off. “You would have wrapped your hands around his neck and demanded to know the facts. There was a reason he didn’t tell us anything. Caspian is fragile. Not his body, as you obviously know considering how much you toss him around. But his mind is delicate. If you pulled something out of him and he wasn’t ready to tell you, it wouldn’t have been good. That’s why I didn’t push either, although I guess I should have. I didn’t realize it was this serious of an issue.”
“Why didn’t he feel ready to tell us?”
He frowned sadly at that, finally showing a bit of the emotion, the same kind that was whipping up chaos in my mind. “We’ll have to ask him when he gets back.”
“And when the fuck is he going to get back?” I started pacing again, shouting the question toward the door.
To my surprise, it flung open. Nolan walked in, alone, a faint smile on his face and the scent of Caspian and Freya all over him. I had him by the neck with his back against the wall before the door had closed behind him, and the eyes of the guard outside widened. Nolan waved him off with a croaky chuckle. “I’d release me, if I were you,” he said. Each word was nothing more than a whisper.
“Why would I fucking do that? You smell like Cas.MyCaspian. I want to rip out your fucking intestines.”
Going off the deep end once and committing a massacre to save Freya had done a number on my control. There was no more calm and calculating Shan. At least, not until this ordeal was over. Maybe never. I was pointedly ignoring my complete dissociation from reality when I’d seen the Viking guard at Jude’s.
“Because I can breathe like this for a hell of a lot longer than he can.”
I looked back at Emmett, finding him grasping at his throat and wheezing so faintly I hadn’t heard it through the blood rushing in my ears. The magic stole his air, the same way Nolan had stolen Jude’s breath. Control over air was formidable if used correctly and Nolan, despite his nonthreatening appearance, knew what he was doing. Glancing between my captive and my partner, I noted Nolan was right. He was doing better than Em. My fingers unclenched from his neck and I stepped back half a metre.
Nolan coughed a few times, and Emmett pulled in a deep breath that had him doubling over.
“Glad you saw the reason in my suggestion,” Nolan said.
“Tell me why you smell like Cas and Freya, or I’ll have you pinned up against the wall again in a fucking second.”
“How kinky. If you must know, I smell like them because I’ve just gotten back from Caspian sucking my cock.”
He smirked. I saw red and almost had my hand wrapped around his throat again when Emmett’s arms wrapped around me from behind. He held me back and Nolan glanced at me like he wasn’t the slightest bit worried, heading over to the couches and sitting down. His hand came up to stroke down Oswald’s back, the familiar perched on the back of the couch watching the whole ordeal. He’d been quiet since we’d gotten here. Partially because none of us could speak to him, but I was pretty sure he was also sulking from being put in a cat carrier. It was quite an indignity.
I struggled against Emmett until he grunted from the impact of my elbow into his ribs. This wasn’t helping. We should put up a united front for this asshole, and he’d already proven he handled himself well alone in the room with us.
“There better be a good fucking explanation. If you forced yourself on him, I’ll hunt you down through all four fucking realms if I have to.”
He laughed, and Oswald got fed up with the touching, swiping at his hand and leaving red claw marks. They closed within seconds, and Nolan didn’t draw his hand away. Ozzy ended up hopping down onto the ground. “I was watching him fuck Freya on the cameras, but he was taking too much from her. They claimed he needed more energy; I said they were lying to get a third person into that cell so they could try to escape. Of course, I’m too kind of a soul to let him starve or drain Freya if I was wrong. I offered myself up, and he accepted. I’m still uncertain if it was because he needed more, or because they were trying to call my bluff and maintain the lie. Either way, I got a blowjob out of it and your little incubus is sated.”
What he was describing was helping the pieces line up in my mind, although still with fairly big gaps between them. Caspian fed off killing, somehow, but it seemed to push his hunger into overdrive instead of feeding him. But what did he mean when he’d said he would have hurt her? When he was starving, he simply… fucked. Freya would take it happily.
I wasn’t about to discuss this or ask these questions in front of Nolan, so I tamped it down.
“Did you come here solely to rub it in my face that you fucked my mate?” I asked, clenching my fists.
He looked surprised, and it took me a second to realize why. Technically, Cas wasn’t my mate. According to normal societal rules, he never would be. An Alpha marking another Alpha was possible, but considered taboo. Alphas weren’t supposed to be owned.
Using the term for him felt right, and I wouldn’t take it back.
“No,” Nolan said after a pause. “I have other matters to discuss. Sit down.”
We did, and Oswald jumped back up to lie on the back of the couch we’d chosen, far away from Nolan and his wandering hands.
“Are you planning on keeping us here forever?” Emmett asked, more calmly than I could speak. I noticed his tight jaw, though. He didn’t like the idea of this guy fooling around with Caspian either.
“Until I’m bored with you.” He smirked, directing it at me. “Or until Freya proves to me she’s the one who’s been murdering all those Alphas and accepts my offer of a job.”
Our reactions were so similar he would have been an idiot to miss them. His smirk grew. Had she told him about that, or was this an educated guess we’d just confirmed with our physical response? She wouldn’t have told him. We’d known her for weeks and she hadn’t told us. This guy had kidnapped her and held her captive for less than forty-eight hours.
