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It wasn’t hard to read her mind. “Nalla will be okay. I promise.”
“Even when she’s out there, in the night?”
With a low, vicious tone, he vowed to his mate, “I will destroy anything that hurts her. Or you. Never doubt that.”
As he pulled hisshellaninto his chest, he felt the shudder that went through her body just as his phone started ringing some more, and so help him Lassiter, he wanted to scream.One night.All he’d wanted was one full night off from the nasty business he did to protect the species.
“I try to talk to Nalla, but she won’t listen to me,” hisshellansaid against his pec. “I don’t think she even likes me, at this point.”
That makes two of us, he thought.
Easing back, he hated the way hisshellan’s eyes were watery, her fear just under the composure she was fighting to keep in place, her sadness like a gray veil draping her beautiful face.
“I’ll sit her down,” he said. “Again.”
“She’s at Auntie Beth’s—”
He bared his fangs and hissed at the phone.
Breaking away, he went back to the table. “Goddamnit.”
Shoving one of his two autoloaders aside, he grabbed the fucking thing and swiped right on the screen.“What.”
I-87, a.k.a. the Northway, southbound
3.4 miles from downtown Caldwell
“You gonna tell me why you were half naked in your side yard?”
As Shuli tossed the question out, he glanced across the interior of his newest Tesla. The stiff sitting on the passenger side of things was looking like he’d been taxidermied before getting strapped into the shotgun position. But the male was breathing.
Okay, he was pretty sure Nate was breathing.
“Well, at least you’re in my car. When was the last time we went out?”
Although given how much fun this trip in from the sticks had been? He was wondering why he bothered.
When he only got more silence and the angular profile of what had once been his best friend, Shuli refocused on the three lanes of theNorthway up ahead. Traffic was light, and the auto-driving feature handled easily what was mostly eighteen-wheelers running the route from the Canadian ports to New York City.
“I’m not sure you living out there alone is doing you any good. You’ve turned into a recluse.”
He looked over again, and remembered when the guy hadn’t insisted on shaving his head. Not that the bald was a bad vibe. Then again, nothing short of a paper bag over those cruel, handsome features would fuck up the ten out of ten. Too bad the personality was what it was.
“It’s a public service.”
Oh, look. It talks, Shuli thought.
“You don’t care about the public.”
Nate shrugged, his thick shoulder shifting under the seat belt. “I’m not saying I care one way or the other. It’s a statement of fact.”
Thank Lassiter the downtown Caldwell exits started appearing, and Shuli debated which one to take. The first couple dumped out onto a bunch of one-ways, and he wasn’t interested in fighting the surface road traffic lights for two miles. The next grouping funneled into the Financial District. Bathe, the club they were going to, was down on 16th on the far side of the skyscraper forest—
Fuck it. He disengaged the auto-driving and got off early because hitting the turn signal and playing with the steering wheel would distract him. From the silence.
Why was he wasting his time with this?
When the traffic signal at the bottom of the exit ramp was red, he drummed his fingers on the windowsill and wished he were still going seventy miles an hour.
