“You’ve never claimed to have any self-control.” Freya rolled her eyes. “Mine is exceptional, and I hated Alphas. Still do, in fact, with very few notable exceptions.”
“You spent years missing out. I’m sure you realize that now. Knots are just so…” Thereon sighed, relaxing back against his mate.
Matthias rolled his eyes, ignoring Thereon’s faint scent of arousal. The Omega smelled of strawberries and cream, much sweeter than Freya’s faintly bitter coffee scent. I noticed Oswald crinkling his nose in distaste as he perfumed.
“I’m not here to talk about my sex life,” Freya said dryly. “The long and short of it is that I have mates now, Kylan Jitara has gone to war with Nolan because he wants me for whatever fucked up reason, and Shan and Caspian have been kidnapped by one of his employees.”
Silence descended on the room. Matthias was visibly concerned for her, but beneath that he was doing math. Calculating how much shit he would be in if we were caught here, and how likely it was we would be discovered.
“I also want to know why the fuck Kylan has been the Club Chaos, and whether or not you knew about it.”
My eyes widened, as did everyone else’s. Since when did Freya know Kylan had been here? Had she seen him when they’d been in the apartment building? We’d gotten closer than I’d thought to success if that was the case. It was oddly comforting.
“Kylan Jitara has never been to my club,” Matthias said adamantly, back straight.
Thereon was surprised too, his seductive demeanour dropped.
“We’re trying to kill him, and before Shan and Cas were taken I got close enough to see his face. Only for a split second, but I’ve seen him here before.”
“Are you sure it was him?” I asked, regretting my doubt of her a second later when she turned on me with a scowl.
“I’m quite positive, but I suppose there’s only one way to know for certain.”
Freya stormed over to me, grabbing my hand and tugging me until I could sit in the chair she’d vacated. Then she sat on my lap and I glanced around, trying to figure out if anyone knew what the fuck was going on or if we were all as clueless as I was. Her warm hands cupped both of my cheeks, and she closed her eyes.
There was a prodding against my mind, and I almost startled.
Flicking my gaze to the side, I saw Ozzy was hovering beside us now, one hand on Freya’s shoulder and his eyes squeezed shut. What the fuck were they trying to do?
Another prod, followed by Freya snapping her eyes open.
“If this is going to work, you have to let me in.”
“Ifwhatis going to work? I don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I’m going to show you the person I saw, and you tell me if it’s your cousin or not.”
My jaw gaped open. “I don’t think it works like that. Don’t you have to be strong enough to break my mental defenses if you’re going to show me a picture? Isn’t that how the magic works?”
“This isn’t magic. I’m using our bond.”
“We don’t have a bond!”
That wasn’t to say I didn’t want one, but it would likely get annoying for her to refresh the bond every few days when it began to fade. And I knew the second she marked me, the second I got too close to her, I’d be desperate to continue to belong with her.
“You have a bond with Oswald, and he has a bond with me. We’re connected. You’re part of the pack. Emmett and Ozzy have been speaking into each other’s minds all day, so this can work too.”
Em and Ozzy were different. They were both Alphas. They were both bonded to her. All my hesitations were thrown out the window when her lips landed on mine again. Her touch softened me, opened my mind to the possibilities, and then I felt it.
Her.
She was there and gone in an instant, but I couldn’t ignore her. The stroke of her mind against mine was warm and soft, making me shiver from the pure comfort of it. This was a tease of what it would be like if she marked me and for a second I allowed myself to imagine it.
Then she was gone, leaving behind an image of a man.
He was in the dim lighting of the club, a predatory curiosity on his face as he looked at Freya. My cousin was unmistakable, even after so long without seeing him. That look on his face was impossible to ignore, too. Obsession.
I snapped my eyes open, loathe to leave the fantasy of having Freya bound directly to me. “It’s Kylan. He was here, and he was watching you personally for a hell of a lot longer than we thought.”
