Page 71 of Golden Eagle

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The voice in the back of his mind, which he guessed was his conscience, sounded uncomfortably like Jamie.You’re ruining things, you dumbass.

And then a voice that really was Jamie’s:You guys are all I have.

He watched Trina’s expression lock down. Watched all the hurt and anger get smoothed away beneath a mask she’d only ever worn around suspects, and never around him. Because right now,hewas a suspect. Someone who was lying, who wouldn’t give her straight answers, and who she couldn’t trust.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He opened his mouth to say something, still wrestling with his own anger and frustration – and she just…got up. “I need to take a walk.” And did just that, walking away from the desk, from the bullpen, from him.

Two reactions occurred within him, simultaneously. That had happened before, in the past – when he was human – but never quite like this. This…this almost frightened him, it was so intense.

The first was a petulant kind of anger: that she’d left. That he hadn’t expressed himself with any kind of elegance. That she didn’t believe him; that this conversation had happened at all. The kind of reaction that usually left him kicking a chair leg or swearing nastily just to vent.

The second reaction was pure vampire. Half-fury, half-panic, because his mate was abandoning him. A snarl built in his chest, and he clenched his teeth to keep it in check. His hands flexed on top of his desk, tendons standing out stark, throwing shadows. His vision sharpened, and he wondered what his eyes looked like now; if his pupils had tightened to catlike slits.

He was on his feet before he registered moving. Out of the bullpen – he collided with someone, and growled.

“Jesus, what the–” A voice faded out behind him as he kept going. Fast. Faster than he should have.

Her scent filled his nose as he went; crisp, bright, fresh. His brain tagged it asTrina, yes…but also asmate. Ashis.Mine. Mine, mine, mine, you can’t run away…

He was horrified, well and truly. But it was a secondary emotion, one overburdened by the drivingneedto catch her, and stop her from leaving. To make herunderstand.

Bad at romance, sure, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love. That he didn’t want, and need, and couldn’t go without.

He jumped over the rail of the second-to-last landing and hit the vestibule floor with an echoing smack of his boot soles on old tile. The desk sergeant looked up with a start, and a tired group ranged across chairs jerked and gasped and exclaimed.

Trina’s scent trail led out the front doors.

He followed.

She stood at the base of the wide concrete steps at the front of the precinct, hands on her hips, throwing a hostile vibe down the sidewalk. He looked that way first, already growling – but no, there was nothing there but regular, bustling foot traffic. The hostility was for him, for their argument.

Too bad he couldn’t tap into any kind of gentleness right now.

He was in front of her before she’d registered him, and then her face went blank with shock, for one moment, mouth open, eyes wide. She closed it down fast. A damn good detective, his mate.

“I said–” she started.

He growled.

Her mouth closed, but her eyes blazed.

Lanny choked it back, and swallowed with difficulty. “I – I don’t know why I did that.”

“I do,” Trina said. “Because you’re an asshole.”

He growled again, louder.

Her brows lifted. “Really?” she asked, too deadpan to mean she was unaffected. She wasn’t just furious, he knew, but disappointed, and that was the most dangerous thing of all.

Right now, though, he had trouble seeing through the red, vampire haze. When he opened his mouth, he felt the impossible length of his fangs. The growl built in the back of his throat, and vibrated along his tongue. “You can’t leave,” he said, and his voice was not his own.

“Excuse me?” she asked, expression growing stormier. She looked a hell of a lot like Nikita when she got like that, eyes translucent in the sunlight, normally-soft lines of her face hardening into a stark mask.

“You can’t leave,” he repeated, more growl than words.

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