Page 29 of Kendrick

He left the house, strolling out as if he were taking a walk in the park. He wanted to show Kendrick’s father that he wasn’t scared. Why would he be when he could defeat the man without breaking a sweat?

He kept up his happy pretense until he was in the car, the door firmly closed behind him. He could feel both Kendrick and Ryan staring, but he gestured toward the road. “Weren’t we leaving?”

The smile Kendrick gave him made Jonas shiver. There was a promise in his gaze, and Jonas couldn’t wait to be home and find out what that promise was.

* * * *

“What was that?” Kendrick asked as he turned on the engine.

He was in awe of his mate. He hadn’t heard what Jonas had told Ryan’s mother, but he’d seen him writing something on her arm, and he could guess what that something was. Even though Jonas disliked her, he still wanted her to be able to call him ifanything happened to her. That was how much he cared. If she was ever in danger and managed to call him, he’d run to her rescue, no matter how he felt about her.

Kendrick really wished he could kiss him right now.

Jonas shrugged. “I just wanted her to know she had options.”

“She always had the option to leave,” Kendrick pointed out.

“I don’t know how true that is. You haven’t lived here for ten years, Kendrick. You don’t know what’s happened in those ten years. People like your father don’t tend to get better. If anything, they get worse. I don’t think he’s abusing her physically, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t another kind of abuse at play here.”

Kendrick nodded. In his anger at the way Ryan had been treated, he hadn’t considered that.

He’d liked his stepmother well enough when he was a child, but they’d never been close, and they’d drifted further apart as he aged. Jonas was right, though. If she needed help, she should be able to get it. Kendrick wasn’t sure he would have volunteered to be that help, but if Jonas had to come back, Kendrick would come with him.

“Can I ask you something?” Ryan asked from the backseat.

Kendrick glanced at him through the rearview mirror. His brother still appeared a little spooked, which wasn’t a surprise. “Anything.”

“It’s just that I want to give her a chance to do what’s right,” Ryan murmured. “Do you think we could get a room somewhere for the night? We can go to your place tomorrow, but just in case she decides she’s ready to leave him, I want to be close by.”

Kendrick and Jonas exchanged a glance. Jonas shrugged and took out his phone, probably to text Clay and Rowan that they were sticking around. He didn’t even ask because he already knew what Kendrick would say.

“Of course we can,” he told his brother. “If there’s anything you need, you just have to tell us. We’ll do our best to give it to you.”

“I’m not used to that.”

Kendrick remembered how that felt. His brother was eighteen, and he’d probably missed out on many things growing up with his parents. Their father wasn’t the kind of person who took his kids to the park or did anything fun with them. It was the opposite. He found something to criticize in everything they did, tried to push them harder every day, and took advantage of them and whatever work they did. He wasn’t a good man—he’d never been, not even when Kendrick was a child—and that was something that seldom changed. Kendrick was completely done with him, but it was clear that Ryan wasn’t done with his mother.

That was okay. Eventually, he would have to let her go if she didn’t try to get free. Hopefully, she would, but Kendrick was afraid to hope for Ryan’s sake.

He followed the directions Jonas gave him once he was done texting Clay and Rowan. Trust Jonas to find one of the few luxury hotels in town. The thing hadn’t been there when Kendrick lived in the area, and he wasn’t sure the town needed it, but it was better than a crappy motel, and when he mentioned the cost to Jonas, Jonas just winked at him.

“I’m one of the few who survived from my clan. Who do you think got everyone’s assets?” he said after they’d gotten the keys to their rooms and gotten into the elevator.

Kendrick gaped at him. “You mean that I can be a sugar baby now?”

Jonas shuddered in horror. “Please never use that word where I can hear it again. No, you can’t be my sugar baby. You’ll have to continue working and kicking Kudlak ass, because you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you didn’t.”

That much was true. “Well, I’m sorry that the way you got to be wealthy is through the deaths of everyone you loved,” he offered.

Jonas’s expression softened. “It’s fine. It’s been decades, and even though sometimes it hurts, I survived long enough to find my mate. What more could I want?”

“You guys are freaking weird,” Ryan muttered from the corner where he’d pressed himself. He was only carrying one backpack, which apparently was stuffed with his clothes and other necessities.

“We’re not weird,” Kendrick said as he swung his arm around Jonas’s shoulders.

“We’re just a bit weird,” Jonas contradicted, winking up at Kendrick. “But that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We’re mates, and we match each other’s freak.”

Ryan wrinkled his nose. “Aren’t you a hundred years old or something?”

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