Page 43 of Furever Loyal
“This isn’t your fault,” Kincaid said, his voice harder than her own internal one.
He didn’t let go of her hand as he spoke. Instead, he gave it a reassuring squeeze. “It’s not my fault either, okay? You were just doing your job. This is the fault of the traitor in my house.”
Something sounded in the hallway outside, and she spun to the right. Kincaid kept a tight grip on her left hand. The grinding of stone on stone increased in noise for a few more seconds, and then a wall across from them slid open, brighter light spilling into their area.
A giant black bear padded through the opening. It stopped to sniff at the cells, growling low in her direction. Brown eyes tinged with just enough red to give them a crazed look swung in her direction. The nose worked frantically, looking back and forth between the pair of them.
Then it roared.
Haley jumped backward, forgetting that one of her arms was through the bar, and it brought her to an abrupt halt, pain lancing up to her shoulder briefly.
“That’s enough,” Kincaid growled, his voice filling the chamber. “Stop trying to scare her, you asshole.”
The bear went through the same sickening shift she’d seen Kincaid do at the warehouse. A moment later, Kvoss stood in front of them, completely naked. Haley didn’t even have to fight to keep her eyes averted. He wasn’t attractive at all, his figure didn’t beckon her eyes to roam over it. Not the way Kincaid’s did.
“She cowers in fear,” Kvoss rasped.
“No shit,” Kincaid rumbled. “You came through a secret door as a nearly two-ton black bear. What the hell did you expect?”
“I said fear,” Kvoss repeated. “Not surprise. Not shock. She is afraid because it is me. Not because ofwhatshe sees.”
The Assassin looked at her, and Haley shied away. He was right. She wasterrifiedof him.
“What’s your point?” Kincaid was trying to protect her, but she knew he was weak. They had beaten him savagely, and it would be days before he was well again, no matter how strong he made his voice sound.
“She knows about us.”
Kincaid snorted. “You just gave it away yourself, you idiot. I’m sure plenty of the others will be intrigued to know that you just shifted in front of a human.”
“She already knew,” Kvoss repeated. Looking at him through the corner of her eyes, she saw a grin spread across his face, sending fresh tremors through her body. Then he walked away, the stone door grinding closed behind him.
The instant it shut, she tried to pull away from Kincaid, to retreat across her cell. She didn’t belong here. She should have been back at the office, behind a desk, doing exactly as she’d done for years on end. Shapeshifters and traitors, secret wars and all this clandestine stuff, this wasnother.
“No,” Kincaid said firmly. “Haley, stay with me.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” She tugged on her arm again, but he wasn’t letting go.
“You’re panicking. You need to listen to me.”
“Look what happened the last time I listened to you!” she shouted, gesturing at the cell with her free hand. “I got a five-star stay in a private jail that shouldn’t exist, and now my life is in mortal danger from that psychopath.”
“Haley!”
She was losing her composure. Warm tears tracked down her face as she spilled them at last, the tension of the past few days breaking over the dam of her will. She shook.
Kincaid pulled gently on her arm and she could no longer resist. She shuffled back up to the bars until she was pressed right against them. Kincaid’s other arm, large and muscular, came through another opening and wrapped around her, pulling her into the best hug they could manage with four inches of steel bar between them.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said quietly, repeating it over and over again as his palm rubbed the center of her back. “I promise. It’s going to be okay.”
“This is your fault,” she said through the sobs. “All of these problems are your fault. You made me break the rules. That’s what it is. I’m not a rule breaker, Kincaid! I don’t do that. This is why. It always ends like this, I know it does!” Tears came again.
Kincaid’s hand slid up her back, down her shoulder and cupped her chin, lifting it until he was staring directly into his face through the opening in the bars.
Then he kissed her. It was awkward, trying to fit their faces through the cool metal, but the bars were built for shifters, and her head fit most of the way through. The instant his lips brushed hers, she forgot about the awkwardness of the moment, of sharing their first kiss through a jail cell divider. It didn’t matter, because in that moment, she suddenly knew everything was going to be okay, just like he’d said.
Kincaid started to pull back. Instinctively, she leaned forward, wanting to hold on to the moment a few seconds longer, but the hard, unyielding steel prevented her. Slowly, she opened her eyes, trying not to wallow in the disappointment that it was over just like that.
He was still right there, a paltry few inches from her own face, his eyes scanning her. “It’s going to be okay,” he told her. “And it’s okay to be scared. This is all new for you, it’s a big change to the world you thought you knew. But I want you to know, we’re going to make it.”
