Page 98 of The Piece You Stole

Now, what the fuck do I do?

Women don’t climb into my bed to sleep. They crawl in it to fuck, or I toss them out of it when I’m done fucking them. They don’t stay. Ever.

Not even Mona stayed. She always went back to spend the rest of the night in Dariel’s room.

I gaze down at Saige, for the first time in my life, torn by indecision.

“She feels safe with you,” Aden’s soft voice comes from the doorway. I jerk my head up to find him standing with Dariel alongside him. “You look like you could do with the sleep as well.”

Ignoring the second part of his statement, I return my focus to the woman sleeping beside me, her small, bandaged hand resting on my bare hip. “Why would she feel safe with me?”

“You got her away from there,” Aden says.

My fingers continue to itch with the need to sweep the fine strands of hair from her face, but conscious that Leandro is watching, I keep my hands to myself. For now. “Wegot her away.”

Lifting my head, I’m not surprised to find Dariel gone, and Leandro peering into the room, naked curiosity filling his gaze as he takes in Saige snuggled up beside me on my black sheets.

I can’t say I blame him. After all my threats of violence, I doubt he expected to find Saige cuddling up to me.

She makes a soft sound in her throat, light and breathy, and hugs me tighter.

Leandro angles his head. “Maybe she’s mistaken you for her teddy bear.”

I snarl at him. “Get the fuck out of here.” But I lower my voice, so I don’t wake her.

“I’m going, I’m going,” he mutters, not moving as fast as I’d like but moving.

Aden gazes down at her for a long moment. I don’t know what he’s thinking or feeling. Jealousy, frustration that Saige came to me and not him. I don't fucking know. “She’s going to come to us for different things,” he says, his voice as low as mine. “But it’s hard not to think of…”

Mona.

There were some parts of us she liked, and the rest, she pretended not to see at all. What will Saige do with those pieces of us she doesn’t like?

I lift my hand and stroke back the dark strands from her still too pale face because it’s just Aden here now. “She’s different.”

“I know.” Movement makes me lift my head, and I catch Aden turning away. “Sleep. Dariel is awake, and so am I.”

Quiet footsteps announce Aden’s departure.

For several seconds, I do nothing but gaze down into Saige’s beautiful face, relaxed in sleep. I take in her soft pink lips, her gently sloping nose, and her thick lashes like dark wings resting on her pale cheeks. Nearly two days of sleep and she still looks like she needs more.

She didn’t go to Aden even though she would have heard him talking with Dariel and known where he was. Was it because she doesn’t feel safe around Dariel? Is that why she came to me?

When her brow furrows in a deep frown and she makes a soft whimper in the back of her throat, it’s clear whatever dream she was having, must have just turned dark.

I lay down, slide my arm around her waist, and draw her closer, tucking her face against my throat.

She murmurs something inaudible, but it’s not a tense sound. When her grip loosens on my hip, I hope I’ve distracted her from whatever nightmare she was having.

I carefully drag the sheet up from the bottom of the bed. Usually, I spend more time fighting to get it off me, since I’m more often hot than cold, but that’s the case with most shifters. Tugging the sheet up over the both of us, I breathe out a sigh of relief when Saige makes a soft contented sound.

She’s okay.

Lowering my head, I press my lips to her hair and wrap my arms around her, just as I did back at Rylan’s private land, land I hope has burned to fucking ash.

Rylan didn’t throw her at the fire because he wanted to kill her. He did it to distract me so he could kill me. Wherever Rylan is now, he’s not dead. A man like that is not easy to kill.

He’ll be coming for us soon.

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