So that was why I’d felt a pulse of arousal. It hadn’t been from me. Getting used to this bond thing would take time.
Clearing my throat, I crossed my arms over my chest. Nolan stiffened. Oswald’s grip on him tightened, and he took his sweet time letting him pull away. “Put a shirt on, Ozzy. Maybe it’ll hide your boner.”
“No shirt will be baggy enough to hide my erection,” he rebutted.
Nolan climbed off him. His shirt didn’t hide the bulge in his shorts, either. When Ozzy passed me I went up on my toes, running my nails along the bite mark I’d left on his neck last night. He groaned, nearly tripping over his own feet. “Gods above. Do you want me to come in my pants?”
“It would amuse me.”
“You were nicer to me when I was a cat.”
I smirked as he gently pushed me away and went to retrieve a shirt. Nolan was confused. “What did you do to him?” he asked.
“Touched where I marked him.”
Nolan’s hand went up to grab his neck, body shuddering when he touched his mark from Oswald. “Ah, OK. I didn’t realize you had bonded already. I thought I would feel it.”
“We haven’t bonded. I bit him, but he wouldn’t do it while I was in heat, so it’s a weak Omega bond. That’s probably why you don’t feel it.”
Ozzy came right back out, shirt in hand, not trusting me to be alone with Nolan again. He pulled on the piece of clothing, and Shan’s paper and ink scent came wafting through the air toward me. Fully clothed, Nolan led the way out of our suite, ready to give me a tour of the carnage.
* * *
Kylan had fucked us.
We’d taken out all of the attackers except for one apparent prisoner, but they’d killed or injured far too many of Nolan’s men in the process. The hired hands had fled en masse once the fight had settled, opting out of the paycheque in favour of keeping their lives. I couldn’t say I blamed them, but it left us with a bit of a situation.
This place was running on far too few hands, practically a ghost town.
Even with the bodies we had piled up here, Kylan had endless amounts of money and manpower, and the support of extremely powerful people. With us now at war, the next wave of attackers would be stronger and more knowledgeable about the weak points of this building.
“How long until we can kill Kylan?” I demanded after tugging Nolan and Ozzy into a small storage closet.
We had wandered through the parking garage level as well as grabbing a bite to eat from the cafeteria, and I was feeling ready to fight.
Nolan cringed. “I have no idea.”
“That’s not going to work. We’re sitting ducks here. He knows where we are, he knows our defences are low, and he’s not going to wait until one of your contacts can locate him. I’m shocked he hasn’t sent a second wave yet.”
When it came to Kylan, I was a mouse being batted around by a cat. I much preferred my relationship with Nolan, where I was the one doing the batting.
“We’re trying to get some details out of our captive, but I doubt he knows anything important. Clement and Ama have been dealing with him. We can go check in?” Nolan suggested.
I nodded, dragging them out of the closet. Nolan led the way downstairs to my old cell. The second we stepped off the elevator, we heard screams. They were blood-curdling and aggressive, almost violent enough to make me shudder. Oswald touched Nolan and I, protectiveness reaching toward me. Not that either of us needed protection. Both of us were assassins, with Nolan being trained as one and me having trained myself.
What had Oswald done, before he’d been cursed into feline form?
It was jarring to realize I knew far less about my familiar than I’d thought.
Reaching the doorway, I stopped short at the threshold. Amabella’s magic was filling the room, her eyes shut in concentration as she chanted. A wolf snarled and growled at a vampire bound to an iron chair, his body frantically squirming. This vampire was the one screaming, and a deep inhale of the scents told me the wolf was Clement in his shifted form.
Nolan cleared his throat and Ama’s chant faded, her eyes opening as Clement sat back on his haunches. “Did you need something?”
“Freya wanted to check if you’d gotten anything out of the captive.”
“He’s resisting everything, and doesn’t seem to know much anyway. We’re probably wasting our time.”
“If that’s the case, let me have him,” I said, stepping into the room as the pulse of magic faded.
