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Ridley rubbed her hands down her pants. “I couldn’t let her do it.”
“But I’m your target. You—”
“I told you. I’m on your side now.”
“But why?”
She stared at me with her heart in her eyes. I waited for her to say she loved me, that she could never hurt me because she knew we were mates.
But her gaze slid from mine, and I tried not to be disappointed.
“Because you don’t deserve to die,” she told my chin. “You’re a pawn in the battle between your father and SI. There’s no other reason they would’ve kidnapped you.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, SI doesn’t tolerate disobedience. The minute I lied to my alpha, I was a rogue. I’m—” She snapped her mouth on the words shut like merely releasing them into the room would be a betrayal.
“—fucked?” I finished for her. “So what you’re saying is you would’ve protected me from your alpha. Me—a Kral.”
Triumph flooded me. Triumph and love and all the things you feel when you’ve finally found your other half.
Her shoulders lifted in a shrug like the fact she’d chosen me over her mission didn’t matter. “I should leave. Get far, far away from you.”
Like hell.
I took her wine and set both glasses on the coffee table. “Try it and see how far you get.” I pulled her onto my lap. “You’re mine now, and I’m not letting you go.”
She started to speak and I shook my head. “Let’s save that argument for later, okay? I have things to tell you, too.”
She opened her mouth to disagree, and I said, “Believe me, you want to hear this.”
She compressed her lips. “Go ahead.”
I brought her up-to-date on what Xavier had told me about what had happened in the Hotel Garnet restaurant, including Tomas’s last words, “Zaquiel is ours.”
Ridley had rested her head on my shoulder to listen, but now she pulled back to look at me.
“And there’s a rumor going around you’re the one who’s been working with SI?”
“Yeah.”
She stiffened and tried to push off my lap, but I tightened my grip on her.
She shook her head. “And here you are hiding a slayer. Holy bat crap, Zaq. You have to let me leave. If your father finds out—”
“I’ll handle him. I’m not letting you go. We’re mates. You just haven’t accepted the bond.”
“No.” She shoved my arms away and rocketed off my lap like I’d touched a live wire to her ass. “Hell, no. I have to consent to it. Don’t I?”
I stared at her, hurt and a little angry. Would I be that bad of a mate?
I took a deep breath. Ridley’s objection came out of a place of fear; I would’ve guessed that even if I hadn’t felt the panic radiating off her.
“Well, yeah. But you’re not going to find it easy to leave me. There’s a link between us, a connection. You think I don’t know you feel me, just like I feel you?”
And right now, her anxiety was off the charts.
“Sometimes it’s like we’re in each other’s heads,” I added. “I’ve seen you wince when I was hurting. And you knew I’d come back that night in the Bronx. You knew I couldn’t stay away.”
