Page 50 of Rivers and Roads

I said nothing as I put my hands on his hips, and I held him steady as he stepped backward, over the lip of the tub. I followed and laughed a little because he was right—we were too fucking massive to fit for more than a quick hand-job.

In that moment, though, I didn’t want that. I wanted to luxuriate in the closeness—of having him now because promises or not, there was no room in war for love. There was only room to pray you got back safely so there was the chance of living again beyond battle.

Grabbing the soap, I lathered up my hands, then scrubbed them down his chest, through the hair that was sticky with our come. He leaned back into the spray with his eyes closed as I cleaned him, and when the suds began to rinse away, he took me by the hips and kissed me.

It felt like a goodbye, and it felt like a vow, and I wasn’t sure I was emotionally strong enough to embrace either. So I kissed him back and accepted his offering, then let him put space between us.

“I’m gonna get something going for dinner,” he said as he turned the water off. “I figure those guys will want to eat after all that driving, and Kor’s last message said we’d head out in the morning once he got word that the road home was safe.”

I had no hope at all that the drive would be uneventful, but there would be more than just two of us, and none of us were grievously injured. I also trusted that Kor—and more than him, Misha—would vet the team that accompanied him so we wouldn’t have to worry about another traitor.

Orion and I parted ways in the bedroom, and I took my time putting clothes on, then gathering up our things into the couple of duffle bags we’d grabbed on our very last outing. I’d purposefully avoided any place that might have shown the news since I was still reeling from hearing that bastard’s voice, but I knew I had to prepare myself for facing him.

Orion hadn’t said as much, but I knew he asked Kor for information on the guy. He was Misha’s brother—that much evident from how much they looked alike, but I had read the kid’s file when Danyal presented it to the Council when he first arrived in the caves.

My instinct had been to throw Misha out—a counter to Lior’s proposal that he be killed, but the two of us were outvoted by Mikael, Theo, and Francisco, and I never thought I’d be grateful for it.

But I was.

And there was some small blessing that I hadn’t seen his face during my torment, because Misha sounded nothing like him, and I could allow myself that disconnect.

When I was done with the bags, I wandered into the kitchen and found Orion setting the phone down. He glanced at me from the stove where he was frying meat, and offered me a short quirk of his brow. “They’ll be here in about forty minutes.”

My stomach sank in spite of wanting to the chance to go home. “No trouble on the road?”

Orion turned away, shaking his head. “Nothing worth reporting, I guess. He sounded tired, but I figured everyone’s gonna be pushed to their limits in the next few months.”

He wasn’t wrong. But at least we had been born for this.

I walked around hm and moved to the cutting board where a pile of onions and peppers waited to be chopped, then I picked up a knife and began to meticulously carve them up. “Orion.”

He glanced over at me. “Yeah?”

“Which brother is he?”

Orion’s brows furrowed, then lifted when he realized what I was talking about. “The uh… Him? Misha’s brother?”

“Alexei or Ivan?”

He swallowed, and I heard it catch in his throat. They were both in politics, but Ivan’s attention had been overseas as a foreign dignitary, trying to win over governments to the anti-Wolf cause. Alexei had been running mostly successful local campaigns on the east coast for years, but he’d been quiet—which was the perfect strategy for a man who was helping his father’s experiments.

“Alexei,” he eventually said, his voice gruff. “Alexei Kasher.”

I dragged my lip between my teeth and forced myself not to bite a hole through it. “Does Kor have a move?”

Orion set down the wooden spoon he’d been using to stir the meat, and he made room for me to tip the vegetables into the pan. “No. He said he had a few ideas, but shit was going sideways, and he didn’t want to talk about it over the phone.” He waited ‘til I was done, then grabbed a lid and covered the pan before putting his hand against the side my neck to hold me there. “He’s not going to leave either of us in the dark.”

“No, I know,” I said with a breath. And I did. Kor had never been the type of Alpha who believed the only safe information was the shit he kept to himself. But being apart from the action for so long meant I had no idea what else was going on. “I want to know what they found at the compounds.”

Orion bit the inside of his cheek. “As far as Kor said—nothing. They were gutted. A couple of bodies,” he added, swallowing thickly, and there was emotion in his voice that surprised me. I frowned at him, and he huffed before shrugging. “I don’t know if you remember me telling Kor, but I had to kill a Wolf to get to you.”

The shock of that hit me like a physical blow, and I took a step back. “What do you mean?”

His eyes instantly went watery, and he dragged a hand down his face. “Bryn. He uh…fuck. I didn’t recognize him—his scent, his face. He was half-shifted, and his face was a mangled mess, and…”

My head began to spin, because it all made sense. I had been forced to fight—forced to claw the bodies set in front of me, and I knew they were Wolves, but it hadn’t mattered at the time. They were faceless, scentless beasts who would have killed me if I hadn’t been capable of defending myself.

But knowing one of them was Bryn…

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