Page 42 of Bound

Before I can interject, the front security panel chimes.

Every man not in on the secret moves toward the weapon of choice he carries.

Blaze goes from lounging to lunging in one movement. His knife flashes in his hand as he flies up from the chair. “Why the hell weren’t we warned someone was approaching?”

Bayne’s brows lift, amused. “You have that little faith in my men? See, that’s why Freya calls us back. Because you, Blaze, are a pain in the arse.”

“Stand down,” I say to the room. “Blaze. The door is for you.”

Blaze goes still. “Oh,” he says.

In on the plan, Erin grins at me. “You finally shut him up, Lucian.”

“What oh?” I say.

Rafe turns the tablet to face Blaze. He falls to his knees. “I can’t believe it.”

A woman stands beneath the gray Icelandic sky in a colorful patchwork coat that looks more thrift store than couture, her brown hair hanging in a braid over her shoulder. She has one hand on a suitcase, the other planted on her hip.

Cleopatra. Blaze’s wife. She waves at the camera above her head. “Yoohoo! Is one going to let me in? It’s freezing out here, and I have some choice words to deliver.”

Blaze is gone.

Erin and I sit, smiling at one another. We hear the front door open. Wind rushes in. Blaze lets out a kind of cowboy victory yelp.

Then her teacher’s voice cuts through the house.

“Do not sweetheart me, Blaze Bachman. Your phone stopped working, your texts turned into caveman fragments, and then Freya called me to let me know your phone wasn’t working and said everyone here was temporarily alive. Temporarily. Alive.”

Bayne murmurs, “Freya does enjoy theatrics.”

Blaze says something too low to hear.

Cleo snaps, “Don’t you dare kiss me until⁠—”

The sentence ends.

Erin laughs under her breath. “I like her.”

A moment later, Blaze returns with his wife tucked firmly against his side and no apology on his face.

He looks different with her.

Still lethal.

Still insufferable.

But steadier.

Like a match that finally found its hearth.

Cleo scans the room, taking in the maps, the weapons, the faces.

Her gaze lands on Erin first.

“Erin. I would hug you, but my husband has decided I’m luggage.”

“She told the men in New York that if they were coming to replace Bayne’s men, she was coming with them,” Blaze says.