She straightened her spine, her stature something I knew well from the time we’d spent together. Dismissing me with a look, I growled low in my throat as she turned her attention back to Jesse. She ignored me completely. “Did I hear you say your last name is Moss?”
Jesse sat back down in my chair with a sigh. “That’s what I said, yes.”
A look of horrified understanding dawned across her face. “That makes you my cousin.”
“–cousin,” he finished at the same time.
Disgust twisted her lovely features. She shook her head in denial, thick, dark hair falling about her shoulders. “That’s not possible.”
“Ryan is my sister,” he repeated for her. “Separated at birth.”
She continued to shake her head. “You’re full of shit. You’re lying.”
Jesse rolled his eyes. “As I told your vampire, why would I lie about something like this?”
“I don’t know. Why do you do anything you do?”
“I have reasons.”
“Fucked up reasons.”
I could tell the warlock was swiftly tiring of this conversation. “Enough,” he told her. Engaging the spirits hovering around him as I’d seen him do many times before, he had them push her back out of the room and shut the glass door. She ended up on the floor, her robe riding up her thighs.
With a roar of rage, I sprang from my chair, and I heard a satisfying thump as Jesse’s head slammed against the wall behind him, my hand around his throat. The glass cracked behind him as I bared my fangs, my eyes burning with rage.
“Do not touch the witch,” I hissed at him.
Jesse allowed me my anger, which was surprising, until I heard his next words.
“Because only you are allowed to torture her?”
I began to tremble with rage as he twisted the dagger in my back just a little bit more. The urge to strike was overwhelming.
“Jesse! What are you doing?”
The warlock closed his eyes, and I felt him shiver at Shea’s voice. But it wasn’t from fear. The scent of his desire for her was strong in my nose.
Moving only his eyes, he looked toward the door and smiled. I followed his gaze, and found her in the open door with her arm around Keira, now back on her feet. Both females were staring at us with similar horrified expressions, but for completely different reasons.
With a wave of his hand, Jesse removed my fingers from his throat and sent me staggering backward.
“Control him, witch,” he directed to Keira as I struggled against the power holding me back.
She ran to me without pause, wrapping her arms around my waist and whispering in my ear as she used the physical touch of her body to calm me.
The apartment door crashed open, broken from the hinges by the sounds of it, and Nikulas appeared behind Shea, Aiden on his heels. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Shall we go ahead and call the others?” Jesse asked me.
My attention, focused on the female in my arms, flew back to Jesse. My only response to the question was to hiss at the warlock in warning, but I didn’t act on it. Instead, I stayed with my mate, keeping my large body wrapped protectively around her much smaller form.
“Is that a yes?” Jesse looked to Shea for clarification.
She walked over to him, wearing only a long-sleeved cotton shirt and little else if her bare legs and feet were any indication. “Jesse, what’s going on? What are you doing?”
He rubbed her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “I only came to speak with Luukas. But things are a little touchy between us, as you can well imagine.”
“Talk to him about what?”
