Page 50 of Guarded By the Spider

We both heard the minotaur retrieving his headphones. “What’d I miss?” he asked, when he rejoined the line.

“Nothing,” I lied. “How long is this flight, anyhow?”

“Another nineteen hours and change.”

Nia’n’an brought his hands up and stroked them over my body. “You should rest and eat, my love. You will need all your strength when we arrive,” he said, and it sounded like a promise.

I quickly did math in my head. Assuming Nia’n’an lived inside the city’s limits, and it wasn’t rush hour when we got back—it was T-minus-twenty-one hours from mating at the longest.

I could make it.

Barely.

Forty-One

NIA’N’AN

Sloane did as I suggested,which I appreciated. We were in much smaller quarters here inside the chopper than we’d ever been inside the caves, and her scent was inescapable. If she’d tempted me more, I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d have been able to resist—the urge to take her completely suffused my body, and I felt like my last pair were twin bullets inside me, ready to shoot out at the slightest provocation.

And luckily for me, after that, Ellum was in full mission mode, pressing Sloane for all the details about her kidnapping. I kept a close eye on her, judging her levels of stress, but she was as frustrated as he was—she wanted that chapter in her life to be over.

I charged up the tablet and went through Shiranak’s orc team’s footage again, hoping to find additional clues. Some of the caverns they were in seemed familiar now—and thenI heard Ellum tell Sloane that no one knew she was alive yet, and that he’d decided it was safer to keep that information among the three of us, for now, considering the situation.

When Sloane realized this, she lit on the idea. “Maybe I could just stay dead?”

I was aghast, and set the tablet aside. “Why would you say such a thing, my love?”

“It would make my life so much easier.” When I inhaled to protest, she set her palm against my mouth. “You really don’t know half of what’s waiting for you, Nia’n’an, if you’re going to be with me.”

“The problem is your dad’s been telling people you were hospitalized for weeks now. Not that you were missing,” Ellum explained to her.

“Oh,” she said softly. “So...no one knows that I was gone?”

I watched her parse this information. “It’s what he thought was best.”

“And no one else knows that he didn’t pay my ransom?”

“Yes. I disagree with his methodology, of course.”

She sighed, and shook her head. “Well—that’s his cover story. Fuck him if it explodes in his face. Can’t we take this chopper someplace else? And just get off and live our lives?”

“Slight problem with that, as I’ve placed a flight plan,” Ellum said. “Plus, this bird isn’t mine, it’s your father’s.”

“Of course it is,” Sloane said with sorrow. “He’s going totry to buy you off, Nia’n’an.” It was my turn to be confused. “Like with money,” she went on. “He’ll bring up a blank check, and promise you as many zeros as you like.”

I made a low growling noise. “How would that be any different than offering your kidnappers their ransom?”

“You tell me,” she said, hugging herself. “I just wanted you to be prepared, was all.”

I still feared I didn’t fully comprehend. “How could he put a price on what is priceless?”

Sloane gave me a tight smile. “He can’t—but that won’t stop him from trying.”

“It will have no effect on me. Of that, you can be certain.” But the way she was acting now gave me pause. “Has he done that before? For you?”

“For one of the guys I dated in high school, yes. Junior year was the year when I found out I was worth a Porsche. And then, what was great, was that after that, I was never sure if guys wanted to date me for me, or just to see if they could get a car out of my old man.”

I went very still, trying to constrain my anger. But if that was how he was going to fight, and how the world was about my Sloane?—

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