Page 57 of Furever Loyal
“Are you sure?”
“Normally I’d say yes,” she told him with a smile. “But…I don’t want you to go. Not yet.”
Kincaid kissing her cheek, his free arm coming around to stroke her forehead. “I’ll stay as long as you want me to, Haley.”
She smiled happily.
“As long as you want,” Kincaid echoed.
She wanted to fall asleep, just like that, in his arms, feeling safe and secure, but with their fiery session over, the rest of the room came into focus again, and she was reminded of where they were, of the predicament they were in. Most importantly, she was reminded that she had exactly no idea what the hell they were going to do next.
“Hold me,” she whispered, pulling his arm in tight, needing his presence more than ever.
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He eased the floor plate back into place as quietly as he could, hoping it wouldn’t disturb her. Pausing, he listened for sounds that he’d awoken Haley, but the soft breathing from through the doorway below continued unabated.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Kincaid crept down the last of the stairs, depositing the contents on the counter. It wasn’t precisely early, but the two of them hadn’t gotten to bed until very late, and he wanted Haley to get as much rest as possible. Things were bound to get more intense as they put the pressure on the people trying to frame him, and he needed her in top shape.
Other than getting them some breakfast with cash he’d left stored in the safe house, Kincaid had spent most of his morning trying to wrestle the various pieces into some semblance of a picture, with almost no luck.
They had plenty of angles to work with, but no matter how he turned them, nothing seemed to fit the puzzle. They were missing a key piece. In his mind, it was the piece that held it all together, linking the various puzzle fragments.
There was the Canis attempt to frame him.
The dead rogue mage Samuel Girard.
The restaurant.
Krawll’s attempt to kill him.
Laurent Canis, Reaver of High House Canis.
Somehow, all of those things came together. Probably. It was entirely possible they were completely unrelated, but he doubted that. Occam’s Razor said that the simplest explanation was often the correct one.
Now, if only I had a simple explanation.
To add to his frustration, after their escape from Ursidae Manor last night, Kincaid knew he would be locked out of all his accounts, and unable to access any of the resources of his House. That left them with one black SUV, around twenty-thousand dollars in cash, two sets of ugly brown sweatpants, and a week’s worth of non-perishable food.
How was he supposed to use that to unravel a mystery so far becoming more and more obscure the more they learned about it? His frustration was mounting, not to mention his pain.
Nothing physical, by now he’d long recovered from the tickling Kvoss had given him. The Assassin might be an excellent killer, but he was not adept at torture, that was for sure. Kincaid had dealt with worse.
No, the pain he felt was the insult to his honor—to have to not only escape from the custody of his own family, but to know that they believed so firmly in his guilt that they would come after him relentlessly, using whatever method they could to track him down. That cut deep, in a way nobody could see and only he could feel.
Kaelyn is on your side, that’s all that matters.
It might be all that spared his life if they caught up to him, but it wasn’t going to be enough. Her position as head of High House Ursa was still shaky. She’d only come to power because the King, her mate, had been killed during the uprising.
Normally, the succession would fall to the Knight of the House, a position not of blood, but designated by the sitting ruler. Whether the ruler chose to step down, was killed, or simply died of natural causes, the Knight would be the next ruler of the House. The problem was, the Knight had been killed as well.
Normally, Kaelyn, as the mate to the ruler—whether it be the Queen to the ruling King, or King to the ruling Queen, it mattered not—would normally never be allowed to take the throne. With nobody else to assume the position, however, she had stepped up and taken the reigns. So far, no one had seriously assailed her seat, but until she had secured more allies, Kincaid could not count on her help.
He was on his own.
“Kincaid?” Haley called softly from the bedroom.
Well, maybe not completely on his own.
