Well, there went that relaxed position Sparrow had.
She tensed up as soon as I asked that. Her back went ramrod straight, her arms fell to her sides, and her eyes widened the slightest bit before she tried to pretend what I asked didn’t faze her.
“Or should I ask, who areyouhiding from?”
Row shakes her head. “It’s not like that.”
“No? You two are altering your appearance, using aliases, and living in an RV because you’renotrunning from anyone?” She gnaws her lower lip and I can practically smell the tension rolling off of her.
“It’s really not like that.”
Now I’m crossing my arms against my chest and raising the skeptical brow. “Then what’s it like? Enlighten me.”
She glances around the room a bit, looking over my shoulder and then in between the racks. Row takes a step toward me, her anxiety slapping me in the face as she looks up with worried, almond shaped eyes.
“I’m not going to go into everything, not right now, but I do feel like it’s important you have a little information.” She pushes a few loose pieces of hair over her ears and takes a deep breath. “I need you to understand why I feel that way first, okay?”
My brow furrows but I nod.
This isn’t really how I was expecting things to go.
She went from stubborn, standoffish, and bratty to whatever this is very quickly, and I can’t help but think the only reason it happened is because of Niko. Which is fine. We both love him, we both want him safe, and at the end of the day, we’re connected because of him. If that’s why she’s telling me whatever it is she’s about to, I have no issues with that.
“I want you to use your connections to help me.”
I guess I was wrong.
That came out of left field.
I frown and move forward without even thinking. “My connections?”
“Yes.”
“Because, what? You assume I’m connected to all the Russians in the basement somehow?” I am, to a good portion of them anyway, but she doesn’t need to know that yet. I want more from her before I tell her anything.
Row shakes her head. “Because you’re connected, period,” she says softly as she holds up a hand to stop my arguing. “I… I was part of a pack before. We were unorthodox, no scent matches or soul bonds or anything, but we were a pack, and they were murdered.”
Interesting how she felt the need to explain that. Telling me there weren’t matches or bonds wasn’t necessary right now, but Row felt the need to do that, and the unspoken reason why makes my heart flutter inside my chest.
“Is that who’s after you? Whoever killed yourmates?” I growl, angrier at the thought of her with other people than I am over anything else she said.
“No, Dimitri, I said it’s not like that. We aren’t being followed or anything, it’s the other way around. I’m trying to find out who killed them.”
“I don’t understand,” I say as I realize we’ve eliminated the space between us and are standing almost chest to chest. “If you don’t know who killed them, why hide?”
Sparrow chews her lip a little more, her eyes bouncing between mine. “I… Where I met my pack, what I was a part of, it wasn’t… It was really bad and unfortunately, I met a lot of alphas from all over the country who were deep into some really dark, heavy criminal activities, and it hasn’t been long enough since I left for any of them to forget me completely. If I’m going to try to get information on who killed my pack, I’m going to be submerged in that world and I can’t risk someone recognizing me.”
My hands move to her shoulders instinctively, squeezing a bit as I pull her closer, the urge to protect her growing with each word she speaks. “You mean, you were?—”
“Niko doesn’t know,” Row says quickly as she nods. “I mean, he doesn’t know everything. My pack, how I lost them, the direct history, he knows that, and he has a pretty good handle on how I grew up in the system. But Niko doesn’t know everything about what my life was like when I met my mates. He doesn’t know what I was or what I was doing…”
“I get it.” I nod and lift my hand, pushing a few pieces of hair behind her ear the way she did a few minutes ago. “He won’t care, though. You know that, right?”
Row gives me a small smile. “I know. It’s not about him, it’s about me. I never cared about that before Niko, before I knew I had true mates and bonds out there, and knowing that you were the only person he’d been with before me…” She shrugs and looks away briefly. “Even if you did royally fuck that up by betraying him in the worst possible way.”
I roll my eyes and sigh as she grins in my face. “Was that really necessary? I thought we were having a moment.”
“Dimitri Volkov, we will have a moment when you’re on your hands and knees, licking the dirt off our omega’s shitkickers, begging for forgiveness while you pray Nikolai’s tender heart hasn’t hardened to you completely.”
