Altair left me at the doors, sword slicing through a vamp on his way to the main fray. I sat back on my haunches and finished the man off with my claws, but it wasn’t long before there was another enemy to take his place.
The scent of blood hung heavy in the air as we fought, our mixed race forces against the nearly exclusive force of vampires sent by Kylan. All I had room for in my head was the battle and my raging protective instincts, telling me I needed to stop these vamps from getting to Freya. At all costs.
ChapterTwenty-Five
NOLAN
Icouldn’t figure out what Freya’s game was.
Her flirting had been a joke, at first. We threw teases back and forth as a game.
But then, she’d kissed me. Fuck, she’d licked me first, and the sound she’d made would live in my fantasies for the rest of my life. If I’d reacted instead of standing frozen and stunned, I might have been able to taste her. She’d been determined to have me parting my lips before Shan forced her away from me.
The desire had to be the heat talking, but that didn’t make sense either. I was a Beta. My scent did nothing for her. I’d been reminded of it often enough in my life. My scent was nothing special, nothing arousing, but in this case her arousal not being caused by my scent only left the option of her being aroused byme.
That was equally perplexing.
“Why are you still with me?” I asked Oswald, watching the cat at my feet as he plodded down the hall with me.
We’d just left Freya again, the witch and angel banging about in their room as Caspian gathered the soft things I’d brought. Oswald was her familiar. He should have stayed to protect her during the vulnerable days of her heat. Ozzy looked up at me and meowed once before winding through my legs. It had me nearly falling face first onto the ground.
I cursed, stabilizing myself on the wall before continuing forward. This time, I paid much closer attention to the cat.
“Fine, I get it. You can’t answer. Go back to her. I’m sure she needs you more than I do.”
No response, as expected. I knew he understood my words, but the more time we’d spent together the more I felt like heunderstoodme in a way very few people ever had. He read between the lines of everything I said and saw what I was trying to hide. My insecurities. My desperation to prove my father wrong by being a proper leader, a better one than he had ever been.
If he could talk back to me, I imagined Oswald would hold me close and tell me I had nothing to prove. That I was enough.
Now I was imagining a person who didn’t exist holding me. Perfect. How lonely and pathetic could I be?
“Go back to Freya,” I demanded as I got into the elevator headed up to the sixth floor. “She needs you.”
He didn’t listen. As I’d expected.
“You’re impossible,” I said, muttering it under my breath.
Oswald meowed.
The elevator doors closed and brought us back up to my floor, where I entered my code into the access doors. As much time as I’d been spending with Freya lately, or on researching her family members and ensuring their safety, I still had other responsibilities. Plus preparations to make, because Kylan wouldn’t leave me alone forever after I’d all but declared war on him.
I settled into my office chair and Oswald curled up in my lap, purring. Why the small ball of fur was so comforting, I had no idea.
Time passed hazily as I went through my email and paper mail, reading reports from my operatives who were still out in the field. Most weren’t, because I’d called off all non-essential missions when this happened. I didn’t want my people to be blindsided by Kylan when they were on their own, and that was the kind of guerilla tactic my cousin might try. So far, everyone who’d had to stay out in the field was doing fine and their missions were progressing as normal.
I couldn’t say how much time had passed since I’d settled down in my office, but I was abruptly jolted from my work by a blaring alarm.
“Fuck,” I cursed, standing up as Oswald jumped from my lap. “We’re under attack. Go back to Freya. I don’t know how bad this is, but it could be fucking bad. I should have known he’d be ready to go the second she went into heat.”
He didn’t go, but the upside of that was I knew Freya was fine. The second she was in danger, he would go. Apparently, she didn’t need him at this moment.
Darting out of my suite faster than the familiar could keep up, I flung open the door to Amabella’s suite and found May wide-eyed and terrified on the couch. “Is Ama here?” I asked, darting my gaze around the space.
She shook her head. “She said she was going down to do some paperwork. What’s happening?”
“We’re under attack.”
Her face paled and she jumped to her feet. “By who? And where are they?”
