Page 156 of The Piece You Stole

When he lowers both our hands, I hide my quiet sigh of relief. “What now?”

He squeezes my hip and kisses my throat before stepping back. “Now? Now we hurry up and wait for Dariel and Kade to shout up those stairs that it’s over.”

“And if they don’t?” I ask as I turn to face him, confident I’ve smoothed away all signs of pain from my expression.

There’s no concern, no panic, nothing but readiness on his relaxed face. “Then we kill anything that comes through that door. For now, I want you sitting, resting your arm. When I tell you, and only when I tell you, you get up and hold the gun just like I showed you, okay?”

I nod again.

Why am I not surprised he knew about the pain in my arm?

He squeezes my hips and kisses me again, this time softly on the lips. “Good.”

As I settle down on the ground two feet back, exactly where he points, he moves to the table.

I think I knew the gun he was going to go for even before he took a step toward it. When I remember he didn’t answer my question about whether he was going to go for headshots, it makes sense why it wouldn’t matter if he did.

He picks up the big bulky machine gun and aims it at the door. I take in the strength in his tanned, muscled arms and I wonder how long he can hold it. And I hope that all he has to deal with are sore arms from holding a gun for too long.

A gun like that would cut a wolf in two.

I train my gaze at the door, hoping that if any wolf bursts through, it’s Rylan who gets cut in two.

And then we wait.

CHAPTER 36

DARIEL

“You should have kissed her.”

Halfway down the staircase, I dart a rapid glance at Kade, now shirtless, gripping the front of his sweatpants. He pulls hard. Fabric tears. He tosses the torn scraps of gray material on the steps behind us to join the remains of the shirt he’d ripped off moments before.

I’d been tempted—morethan tempted—but I know exactly what would have happened if I had attempted it. “She would have punched me in the eye.”

Kade barks out a laugh.

It’s not the time or the place to laugh, not with the wolves prowling our garden—our territory—but Saige’s surprisingly stubborn tendencies makes me want to.

“He’s not crazy. He’s a jackass.”

She would have known I could hear her as she’d walked away from me in the garden, yet she’d done nothing to quieten her voice.

More glass shatters and the quiet click of claws on the hardwood floor drags my gaze away from Kade, down to the entryway. I’m picking up three male scents in the house, and another five outside. None of those scents include Rylan Treveiler. But he’s out there…somewhere. And it won’t be long before he makes his presence known—likely right before he tries, and fails, to kill us.

I should have kissed her.

We land at the bottom of the stairs together as a soft thump upstairs signals Aden has Saige up in the attic. The attic door isn’t strong, but if our plan goes right, it shouldn’t matter because none of Rylan Treveilers’ wolves will be going anywhere near it.

Aden and his weapons are the last line of defense, and one we shouldn’t need.

All the downstairs doors are closed. Even the kitchen door is closed, a door we’ve been mostly leaving open to prevent Saige from asking even more questions. Without the light flooding in through the kitchen window, the entryway is darker than it usually is.

“You remember the plan?” I move toward one of the closed entryway doors, a specific door that’s going to be the key to our plan coming together.

Fortunately, Saige has spent more time upstairs, mostly sleeping off the worst of her injuries, so she never took the time to explore the bottom floors of the house. If she had, she’d have wondered why the only door we kept open on the ground floor was the kitchen. And she’d have learned that we’d fitted an alarm on every single door, barring the kitchen and den.

“Plan?” Kade drawls. “What’s that?”

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