Page 16 of Piece You Saved

I paste a casual expression on my face. “I’m sure it’s just procedure. You know, so a person’s family can’t sue if someone drops dead after leaving the hospital.”

His jaw tightens, and I mentally kick myself for saying exactly the worst thing I could have. “I didn’t mean that. Just—”

“Let me see.” He tugs my shirt up as I fight to keep it down.

“No. We should be trying to see Aden, not focusing on a bruise.”

I move to get up, but Kade lets go of my shirt to press me back onto the bed. “Your health is a priority, angel.”

“Well, it shouldn’t be,” I snap, suddenly angry.

Kade stares at me in silence. “And why shouldn’t it be?”

He goes for my shirt again. I hold on tight and glare. “Because the people who prioritize my safety have a habit of getting their throats ripped out.”

The cab driver who made the mistake of stopping to help me when I ran from Rylan was the first. Simon Trevor was next. And now, Aden. I don’t intend to add another name to the list.

Kade halts our ridiculous tug-of-war to study me with an unreadable expression. “The doctor. Simon Trevor.”

I nod.

After another searching look, Kade places his hands on the tops of my thighs, eases them apart, and steps into the gap he made. Lowering his face to my hair, he slides his arms around me in a hug. Not a tight one that makes my bruised belly hurt. But it’s nice.

“I’m going to assume you didn’t put a gun to his head and demand he help you or else.”

Despite the fact we’re talking about Simon, a man who would be alive now if I hadn’t entered his life, a reluctant smile stretches my lips as I wrap my arms around his hips and press my cheek into his bare chest.

“No one says things like that. Only…” A blast of memory hits me right between the eyes. One I haven’t thought about for so long I’d believed I’d forgotten. “Things like that only happened in the cowboy films my dad used to watch.”

“They’re too violent for you,” he said. “Bed. Let’s go, squirt.” He’d found me after I’d crept down the stairs to peek at the TV through the banisters.

“But the men take too long to fall down and sometimes they grab the wrong place on their front, so they can’t be dead.” I pouted.

He laughed as he carried me back up to bed. “Take too long to fall down, huh? Just how long have you been watching?”

I denied having seen anything at all. He snorted at my blatant lie, kissed the top of my head, tucked me into bed, then read me a story.

“You sound like you might be smiling, angel,” Kade says, his amused voice returning me to the present.

“Well, I’m not,” I lie. “You’re just hearing things.”

He sighs again, draws me even closer, and inhales. “Fuck, angel, I thought we’d lost you today.”

They should have found my dead body in the attic.

Rylan lost his temper over the most innocuous things, like the white wine at dinner not being cold enough. He’d tear into one of his packmates for not giving him the respect he felt he deserved, leaving behind a body in need of being buried. And yet, I slashed Nathan’s throat open and let him bleed out on his bathroom floor.

Why didn’t he kill me when he didn’t hesitate to kill others for lesser evils than that?

“I don’t understand how this mate bond can make him so desperate to destroy me, but still keep me alive,” I whisper. “Because whatever it is, it isn’t love or anything close to it.”

He kisses my hair. “Don’t worry, angel. He’ll be dead soon enough.”

I struggle to believe Rylan will evernotbe lurking in the shadows.

“Sure,” I say, because I can’t bring myself to tell Kade not to get so attached to me. I can only see things going one way: Rylan still breathing and me dead at his feet.

Kade lifts his head and peers down at me with a furrowed brow. “Angel—”

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