Page 60 of Mated

But seeing her here and now, observing her… she would have to be the best actress in the world to pull off this display of ignorance and tempers. Underneath her irritation, I can quite literally smell her fear. That does not happen when someone is pretending.

I am supposed to be looking after her. When I recovered her from St. Infernus, I promised myself that she’d never suffer that way again. But here she is, incarcerated again, being treated like a criminal and an outcast. I know she deserves better. When I look into her eyes, I do not see someone who successfully pulled off a spy plot and returned to the bosom of her family. She lookslike she has been neglected and brutalized by everyone in her life, and everyone is starting to include me.

The fearful theories which cast her as some kind of super spy evaporate in the face of her reality. Every time I am in her presence, I know that she is exactly who I always thought she was. She is innocent and she is vulnerable, and she has been used by those who have an agenda.

My protective instincts make me want to wrap her up in my arms and kiss her and tell her everything is going to be okay. But my mind tells me there is still a mystery to be solved, and that if I give into my instincts now, before I have any answers at all, I will be right back where I started, too mate-smitten to think objectively.

“I want to go over the events of the past few weeks. You said your aunt called and wanted you to come home?”

Kira sighs, because she has been asked this question many times before, and answers it every time.

“Colton is always getting arrested, because he’s the one who earns money for the family. He goes out, does crimes, and gets caught from time to time.”

“I assume that is what happened to you?”

Kira nods, her expression a clear mask of shame. “My aunt worked out that I knew who I was, mostly because I told her. And once she knew I could take a wolf form, she told me I had to work like Colton did. So I did.”

This aunt has much to answer for. Kira’s introduction to her wolf self was difficult as it was, complicated by interactions with my pack and the limited time I had to help her fully understand thatside of herself. Now, instead of learning from me, she has been influenced and corrupted by a woman who clearly only cares for herself and the many ways she might manipulate the situation.

“That aunt… she’s a piece of work. Evil.”

“I thought it was my father who was supposed to be the evil Russian?”

She’s being sassy, but it is possible both sides of her lineage are foreign in origin. However, that seems unlikely given Colton’s wolf form. He’s a standard American shifter. He’s a filthy, scrappy mess, but he doesn’t have any dilute in him. I don’t think her immediate family are the source of the Russian bloodline. I think her mother had an unfortunate meeting with someone who should never have been in this country, and I think she probably paid for it with her life.

“I just want to be free,” Kira says. “I never meant to cause you all this trouble. If you let me go, I promise I’ll never bother you again. I know your pack thinks I’m…”

“Quiet.”

Kira

He takes a step toward me, his eyes lit with intensity. I feel our connection flare to even more powerful life. There’s something very dark inside him right now.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he says. “Not ever, do you understand?”

“What are we going to do, then? I can’t live down here forever.”

“You wouldn’t be the first mate to be kept in a dungeon and bred,” he says. “In my lineage alone, that has happened three separate times. There is a birthing suite down here for that reason, and a nursery.”

I stare at him, marveling at how casually he says such insane things.

“Why would anybody ever do that?”

“The mate bond is unbreakable, but sometimes a mate cannot be trusted. In that case, she can be contained and bred as necessary.”

Bred as necessary.

And I am supposed to be the secret monster. Cain regards me as his possession. That’s hot sometimes, but other times, it’s just fucking broken. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that I might have a different opinion that is just as valid as his.

“Cain,” I say, my voice soft and dangerously calm.

“Yes, my love?”

“If you try to do that to me, I will kill you.”

Cain

She is not joking. She is not even threatening. She is stating a plain fact, for my information.

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