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“You hurt her—” Aidan nodded to Ava, “—and I’ll make that beating look like a papercut.”
Aidan had warned them that the Heat hormones were affecting the alphas. It’d never been more apparent. The pair of werewolves across from him both wore aggression on their faces.
“Aye aye, Captain.” Remmus grimaced as another spot of pain lanced through his skull. “Riaz already threatened me with the tar and feather act. Y’all are breaking my heart with your skepticism.”
“What heart?” Ava asked. “I wasn’t aware you had one.”
“Jeez, call off the wolves.”
Chuckling, Remmus found his feet steady beneath him and smiled down at Ava, the feeling of darkness in his mind finally receding.
“Let’s go, Casanova.”
Fortunately, he had stopped bleeding by the time they’d started making the trek toward Ava’s quarters, and the broken temple bone in Remmus’ skull already felt substantially better. It didn’t keep Ava from fussing over him.
“On the stool, Raeth.”
“And here I thought I’d graduated to Remmus.” A soft cluck of his tongue. “Just keep piling on the hits, huh, Blondie?”
Remmus didn’t miss the curling of her lips, nor the noise of contentment that rumbled from her wolf. He watched soundlessly as she gathered saline and cotton balls, wipes and a first aid kit that looked like it’d been used too many times.
Something predatorial and dark inside him gave him tunnel vision. All at once, he was clouded with a deep, visceral need to hunt down whoever had hurt this woman and protect her. The urge was so deeply rooted that it didn’t even cross his mind to wonder why.
Ava dumped an armful of medical supplies on the counter next to him. “Okay, mister. Prepare for Nurse Ava.”
When his lips pulled wide, a scab on his cheekbone cracked open once more, earning him a sharp reprimand from his healing practitioner.
She stepped between his knees, so close to him he could smell the citrusy scent that clung to her skin, and the undercurrent of desire that raced beneath it. But her eyes were fixated on the weeping cut on his eyebrow, gently dabbing at it with the saline-soaked cotton ball.
Her delicate touch sent need zinging through him. Quiet movements and complete concentration left Remmus yearning for more. He could barely sit still on the stool, fingers itching with the need to splay across her waist and yank her even closer.
Her eyes sparkled like midnight on the ocean. Thick blonde hair hung in a loose spiral braid down her back, though several wayward tendrils had come unbound and framed her feminine features.
It was official: Ava was the most beautiful woman Remmus had ever seen.
Chapter Sixteen
Remmus was a mess. Aidan’s savage beating had broken his temporal bone and the frustrating Raeth hadn’t said a word of complaint. He was covered in multiple cuts and contusions from where the alpha’s fists had landed.
Ava knew those fists weren’t soft. As a youngling, she’d sparred with the other werewolf for two hundred years before she’d gone on to be beta of her second pack. Even when he’d been pulling his punches, they’d left more than a bruise at times.
No one gave a beating quite like Aidan did, and poor Remmus had weathered it all with little more than a grimace. What did that say about his tolerance for pain?
She glanced up to study the man who hid so much. What she’d intended to be a quick glance changed when her eyes found his instead.
Gone was the cocky façade and lopsided grins, the humor he wore like armor. In their place was the unvarnished intensity of a man who had experienced too much pain and revealed far too little.
For the first time, Ava knew she was truly seeing him.
The scant few inches of distance between them disappeared when she dropped the cotton ball and claimed his mouth instead. Demanding, Ava pressed into him where he sat on the stool, her hands fisting in his shirt.
When his arms encircled her moments later, the overwhelming safety that swelled up inside her washed away any distrust that lingered. The sins she’d held his breed accountable for had never been his to bear.
Ava lost herself in the storm that was Remmus. Electricity crackled between them, sparking through their physical connection. Everywhere they touched became a nexus of pleasure. Once they’d lost themselves in each other, giving in to the passion that seemed the pulse between them, something new made itself known.
Weak, barely formed, it spanned between them like a supernatural bridge. The burgeoning connection tethered them to one another, and an influx of emotion followed in its wake. There was no mistaking what it was.
A mating bond.
