The words hit harder than they should have. “Get out.”
“Dante—”
“I said get out.” My voice was rising, and I didn’t care. “Now.”
He held up his hands in a gesture that was probably meant to be placating but felt threatening. “All right. Fine. But you’re making a mistake. Kincaid doesn’t want you the way I do. He’s just using you to make his team better.”
“That’s not—”
I didn’t get to finish that sentence because Odin moved faster than I expected, crossing the space between us before I could react. His hand caught the back of my neck—too strong, unnaturally strong for someone his size—and he was pulling me toward him, his mouth aiming for mine.
“Stop!” I shoved at his chest, but it was like pushing against concrete. Panic spiked through me. “Get off—”
The door to my apartment exploded inward.
I’d never seen anything move as fast as Theron did in that moment. One second he was in the doorway, the next he had Odin by the collar and was physically throwing him across the room. Odin hit the wall hard enough that I heard the impact, and when he slid down, there was actual damage to the drywall.
“Don’t. Touch. Him.” Kincaid’s voice was barely recognizable—deeper, rougher, that made every instinct I had scream danger. His eyes were glowing copper, actually glowing.
The air felt charged, dangerous in a way I didn’t understand. Odin managed to get to his feet, and something flickered across his face—recognition, maybe, or calculation. Then he moved toward the door. He paused when he reached it, looking back at me.
“When you’re ready to stop playing games with someone who’ll never give you what you want, you know where to find me.”
Then he was gone and it was just the two of us standing in my small apartment. Kincaid’s eyes were still that burning copper, and I could see his chest rising and falling like he’d been running.
“Pack a bag,” he said. “Enough for a few days. You’re not staying here tonight.”
“What? You can’t just—”
“Dante.” He stepped closer, and I could feel the heat radiating off him. “Please. Trust me. Pack a bag and come with me, and I will explain everything. But not here. Not now. Somewhere safe.”
I stared at him, trying to understand what was happening. His eyes. The way he’d looked at Odin. The barely controlled furythat was still vibrating through him. None of it made sense, but thepleasein his words made me move.
I grabbed a duffel bag from my closet and threw in clothes without really thinking about what I was packing. Jeans, shirts, toiletries, my phone charger. My hands were shaking, and I couldn’t tell if it was from the wine or the adrenaline or the fact that Theron was standing in my apartment with copper eyes telling me I wasn’t safe here.
And that in my head I was calling him Theron.
“Ready,” I said, slinging the bag over my shoulder.
Kincaid nodded and gestured for me to go first. I locked my apartment door behind us, acutely aware of Odin’s door across the hall, wondering if he was in there listening. The thought made my skin crawl.
We didn’t speak in the elevator. I stood on one side, he stood on the other, and the silence between us was heavy with things I didn’t know how to ask. His eyes had faded back to their normal gray with copper flecks, but his jaw was still tight, his shoulders still carrying tension that suggested he was holding himself back from something.
His truck was in the parking garage—a big black Ford that suited him perfectly. He opened the passenger door for me, which felt strangely formal given the circumstances, and I climbed in while he threw my bag in the back seat.
The drive started in silence. He navigated through downtown Denver with the kind of focus that suggested he was thinking about something other than traffic patterns. I watched the city slide past my window, trying to process what had just happened.
Odin had tried to kiss me. Had been stronger than he should have been. Had said things about Kincaid that felt too knowing, too specific. And then Kincaid had shown up with copper eyes and an intensity that made me wonder what the hell I’d gotten myself into.
We left downtown behind, heading west toward the foothills. The houses got bigger, the lots more spread out, and the sort of darkness that came from being away from city lights settling around us. I watched the landscape change, trying to figure out where we were going.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“Not much further.”
We turned onto a road that wound up into the foothills, the incline steep enough that I could feel it in my ears. Trees appeared on both sides—pine and aspen, dark shapes against the slightly lighter sky. No streetlights here, just the occasional mailbox marking driveways I couldn’t see.
He turned onto one of those driveways, and I watched a gate swing open automatically as we approached. The driveway was long, paved, climbing higher into the foothills until we rounded a curve and suddenly there was a house.
