Chapter 6
KAZAN
The bastard would pay for touching my mate.
Maisie was safe back at the house. Two of my most trusted farmhands guarded the door, and I’d given them orders not to let anyone through unless I came with them.
Then I went back to the cidery. The bounty hunter was still in the refrigeration unit.
Good.
Cold air rolled out when I hauled the heavy door open. Fog curled along the floor and around my boots. The hunter had wedged himself into the far corner between two racks of fermenting cider, arms wrapped around his knees, lips blue from the cold.
He looked up at me and started shaking harder.
The cold barely touched me. The smell did. Sweet star-figs, fermenting cider, metal, fear. He’d been in there long enough to piss himself.
I couldn’t find it in me to care.
I unwrapped the rope from around my forearm and stepped inside.
He flinched at the sound of it dragging over my palm. “Wait. Please. This was just a job.”
I grabbed his wrists and dragged them out from where he’d tucked them against his chest. “No,” I said, binding them tight. “Your first mistake was coming here.”
He hissed as the rope dug into his skin. “I had papers. I had legal authority.”
“Your second mistake was thinking that mattered.”
I yanked the rope and hauled him up until his boots slipped on the frosted floor. He scrambled for balance and found none. I lifted him higher until his face was level with mine and his feet kicked at empty air.
His eyes went wide.
Now he understood.
Men like him crossed galaxies chasing frightened women and told themselves they were enforcing the law. They put hands on people weaker than them and called it duty.
He’d never stood in front of someone who could end him.
I let him feel it. A growl built low in my chest, and his breathing turned ragged.
“Your last mistake was touching her.”
He made a sound behind his teeth. A whimper. A plea. I didn’t care which.
My grip tightened on the rope.
It would be easy. One twist. One hard pull. Humans were fragile, and this one had put his hands on Maisie. He’d scared her. Hurt her. Tried to drag her away from me.
From my home.
From where she belonged.
I’d spent five years telling myself the Bastion was dead. Buried with the rebellion. Left behind with the arena and the blood and the men who’d made me into a weapon.
But he wasn’t dead.
He’d only been waiting.
“Kazan, stop,” Lorkin said from the doorway.
Damnation. Someone had been telling tales.
I didn’t look away from the hunter. “Leave.”
“No.” Lorkin stepped into the cold room, filling the doorway behind him. Soot and forge-grime streaked his maroon hide, and he still wore his leather apron. His hammer was shoved through his belt like he’d come straight from the smithy.
He probably had.
His horns swept back from his skull, blunter than mine where he’d ground them down years ago. Heat still came off him in waves, turning the cold air around his shoulders to mist.
He looked at the hunter. Then he looked at my hand on the rope.
He knew exactly what he was seeing.
That was the problem with old friends. They remembered every monster you’d ever been.
“Do not meddle in my affairs,” I warned.
“Do not make me.” He came closer, slow and careful. “I felt the ground move from the smithy. Half of New Knossos probably did. You roared loud enough to wake the dead, and now I find you in here with a human dangling from your fist.”
“He tried to take her.”
The hunter tried to speak, but I’d gagged him with the cuff of his own jacket. All that came out was a muffled whine.
I shook him once, and he went still.
Lorkin’s jaw tightened. “I know what he did was wrong.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know killing him won’t help.”
“It’ll stop him.”
“And bring the Council down on this entire world.” Lorkin took another step. “Five years of peace gone because one Earth thug put his hands where they didn’t belong. Is that what you want?”
I wanted the hunter dead.
I wanted Maisie safe.
Those weren’t the same thing, and I hated that Lorkin was making me remember it.
“She’s my mate,” I snapped.
Lorkin went still. The words hung in the cold between us. For a moment, the only sounds were the hum of the refrigeration unit and the hunter’s panicked breathing.
Then Lorkin exhaled. “That changes things.”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t change enough.”
I bared my teeth at him.
He didn’t move. He’d stood beside me in the arena too many times to be impressed by a snarl. “His blood won’t make her safer, Kazan.”
No, it wouldn’t.
Nothing would make Maisie safe enough. Not walls. Not guards. Not the dead body of one bounty hunter who’d been foolish enough to touch what was mine.
She was back at my house, probably still shaking. I’d left her there because I couldn’t trust myself to be near this man and not kill him.
But she needed me.
Not the Bastion. Not the weapon.
Me.
The thought cut through the rage sharp enough to hurt.
I saw her in the cidery, trembling as the fear moved through her. Saw the way she’d pressed against me and let me hold her. Saw the way she’d kissed me beneath the fig tree, soft and brave and still so afraid.
She was mine.
And I was wasting time with him.
I lowered the hunter until his boots touched the floor. He sagged, breathing hard through his nose.
I wanted to tighten the rope again.
I resisted the urge.
Lorkin moved in before I could change my mind. He pulled another coil from his apron and crouched to bind the hunter’s ankles. I kept one fist twisted in the man’s collar while Lorkin worked.
Between the two of us, it didn’t take long.
When we were finished, the bounty hunter was trussed tight enough that he couldn’t do much more than twitch. He’d live.
That galled me.
But he’d live.
I hefted him over my shoulder and carried him out of the refrigeration unit, through the cidery, past the spilled crates and the dent his body had left in the cooler door. Outside, dusk had settled purple over the farm, and Lorkin’s truck idled near the path.
I dumped the hunter into the bed hard enough to knock the breath from him.
Lorkin threw a tarp over him.
The static storm that had been threatening all afternoon finally broke over the eastern ridge. Violet and gold light rolled through the clouds without sound. Above us, the thin ring around the planet had started its nightly glow.
It should have been beautiful.
It wasn’t.
Not when a man had crossed half the galaxy to drag my mate back to a cage.
Lorkin braced his forearm on the side of the truck and studied me across the bed. Storm-light flickered over the old scars on his face.
“A human mate,” he said.
I didn’t answer.
He shook his head. “I told you that program would bring trouble. They’re fragile, Kazan. One bad winter. A fever. One fool like this.” He jerked his chin toward the tarp. “And they break.”
“She didn’t break,” I said. “She fought him.”
Something shifted in his expression. Not approval, but close enough.
Lorkin hauled himself into the cab and started the engine. “I’ll take care of this.”
I looked back toward the house.
Maisie was there. Waiting.
Alive.
Mine.
Lorkin put the truck in gear. “Go take care of your mate.”