From the Ashes (Syndicate of the Legion #3)

1. Kovu

CHAPTER ONE

KOVU

PRESENT DAY

T he panic beating through the warehouse is nothing compared to what has taken root in my chest. I shut this part of me off so many years ago I forgot what it felt like to care about something.

About health. About safety. About another human being.

But my little lamb brought that back. The cold, fearless monster I was two months ago has been replaced with something worse, something more terrifying. Because a monster that has something to lose will stop at nothing to keep that thing safe. There’s no line he won’t cross, no one he won’t hurt, nothing he won’t do, and as my eyes dart around the smoky warehouse, I realize just how far I’ll go for Camilla De Marco.

I can hear Crew and Bishop behind me, but I’m too far gone. The itching beneath my scarred skin is becoming unbearable, and the only thing that will soothe it is the woman who took my cold, dead heart in her hands and made it beat again.

“Kovu, slow the fuck down.” Bishop grabs my shoulders from behind, but I twist out of his hold and keep moving down the hall.

I throw the office door open and find it empty, but through the smoke, I can smell sex lingering in the air. No one outside the four of us has a key to this room, so it must have been Kaos and Camilla.

When I notice the door at the end of the hall wide open and the cool evening air wafting toward us, I don’t bother checking any other rooms.

As we step outside, I force a deep breath of fresh air into my lungs, but it does nothing to settle my raging heartbeat.

“Over there!”

Bishop pushes me forward, and before I realize what I’m doing, I’m sprinting toward the two figures with their backs to us.

Camilla’s silver dress is rumpled, and even from behind she looks freshly fucked, but then I notice the tension in her shoulders, and it makes me pause for long enough to take in Kaos’s huge form. He’s holding onto her like his life depends on it.

There’s someone standing in front of them but I can’t quite make them out. Is that why Kaos is holding her like that? Is someone threatening her?

An explosion vibrates across the ground, and I turn back to the warehouse, to the fight club I built from the ground up, as the flames climb higher and smoke billows from the roof.

By the time I turn around again, the man who was with Camilla and Kaos has turned his back on us, and he’s lost in the sea of bodies escaping the warehouse.

Who was that? And why do my girl and my brother both look like they’ve seen a ghost?