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“Invade our bedroom again without warning, and I’ll kill you.”
“You’re not killing anyone. If you were, you would have done it tonight.” Ria stepped from the bathroom.
Mercury swung around, and something inside him stilled instantly.
She wasn’t pale or crying. Her eyes glittered with irritation, and a flush of anger mounted her cheeks. She was dressed in jeans and a bulky sweater and there was nothing to threaten whatever primal rage had built inside him at the thought of her nakedness being revealed in front of the others.
But she wasn’t happy with him either. He could hear it in her voice, seeing it in the look she shot him.
“Hell,” Dane muttered. “Rye, did we bring the knapsack?”
Rye grimaced. “It’s in the living room.”
“Don’t worry.” Dane was limping as they helped him from the room. “I have your fucking bribe.”
CHAPTER 13
Ria laid her bling on the cabinet. It was quite a nice haul: several nearly perfect diamonds, emeralds so brilliant they were nearly blinding and a tiger’s-eye stone that swirled with magic and majesty.
She slid the stones into a velvet bag, tied it off and tucked it into the pocket of her jeans, then flipped her sat phone closed and erased the speed dial set to go straight to Leo’s emergency number. Her threat to Dane. Had the bribe not pleased her, she would have called and tattled to hell and back.
She wasn’t mercenary. It wasn’t the worth of the stones or even the stones themselves. It was the fact that they seemed to keep Dane from involving her in games that were too messy to consider allowing Leo to catch them in. She was a sucker for the games herself, but she did have a bit of caution. Dane had none.
To say Mercury was upset over the payment was putting things mildly. There were still tiny, rumbling growls echoing in his throat. And those tiny sparks of blue hadn’t completely left his eyes.
Feral displacement was a phenomenon that Breeds couldn’t control, though, and he had all the signs of it, but it was firmly under control. Dane still had his heart in his chest, and Rye still had his head on his shoulders. Ria was contenting herself with that even though she suspected Dane might have lost more blood than was wise.
“Look at her, Rye.” His tone was amused despite the pain in it. “I’m surprised she didn’t pull her jeweler’s glass out.”
She turned to face him, her insides still shaking, the knowledge of how close Dane had actually come to dying horrified her.
“You have a trip scheduled to Asia next week,” she told him. “I expect natural pearls when you return.”
He gave her a hooded look and glanced at the velvet bag. “I just paid you a fortune.”
“Two fortunes aren’t enough for what you put me through tonight,” she snapped, feeling the tears clog her throat again. “You’ve lost your mind, Dane.” She couldn’t control the accent that slipped into her voice either, and she knew every man in the room could smell her pain and her fear.
Dane grimaced at that, his gaze sliding to where Mercury attempted to place her behind him once again.
“I’d say you’ve slipped the path a bit yourself, love,” he drawled. “Why doesn’t it surprise me that you’ve mated a feral?”
“There’s no mating.” Mercury snarled the denial, and Ria thought her heart was going to break.
Hell, he could have just remained silent.
Dane stared between them, his golden brown eyes thoughtful for long moments.
“My mistake,” he finally said slowly as he glanced to Rye. “She can’t do anything the easy way, can she?”
Rye laid his head back on the couch and stared at the ceiling while Dane settled into the corner and stared back at the other Breeds in the room. Especially his brothers.
“Don’t start,” she warned him as she slid around Mercury once again, certain Dane was going to begin baiting Callan and Jonas. “This has gone too far.”
Dane shrugged. “Very well. You called for extraction. Pack your bags and I’ll have the limo sent from the private airfield we landed at. Rye and I hiked in. I doubt you want to take that path out, though. We’ll have you safe and sound in your own bed within hours. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Her lonely, cold bed. Without Mercury’s hard, warm body.
She turned back to the others, her gaze moving over Callan and Jonas’s suspicious, savage expressions. They weren’t pleased, and they knew something was going on.
