“Kick his arse, yeah?” She laughed shakily.
His answer was to kiss her. A sweet, languorous, luscious kiss that was given as if they had all the time in the world.
They didn’t.
Which was proven not long later when Haruto approached to tell them it was time.
Kiyo nodded and shrugged out of his jacket, handing it to Niamh. His black T-shirt was whipped off and he handed that to her, too, his scent and heat on it proving a comfort as she watched him stride fluidly through the small crowd to meet Emil in the center of the park.
Niamh watched Sakura whose eyes were trained on Kiyo.
Uncertainty moved through Niamh.
What if what Sakura felt for Kiyo wasn’t merely infatuation?
What if she was dangerously obsessed with Niamh’s mate?
But if that were true, wouldn’t she have spent the last twenty-five years searching for him?
Something was off about it. Niamh just couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.
The sound of steel hitting steel startled her attention back to Kiyo. Niamh took a step toward the spectators. Her mate and his opponent were brandishing katana that had appeared from who knew where. Kiyo hadn’t told her this was a sword fight!
While the seemingly civilized men and women watching jeered and snarled like wild animals as they rallied behind their chosen fighter (with the majority apparently behind Emil), Niamh’s entire focus was on her mate.
It was the opposite of what she’d promised herself when she walked into that park.
But watching Kiyo was hypnotizing. The crowds grew more agitated as his skill became more obvious. The way he moved was a like a dance. So graceful and powerful. Heat and love and pride suffused her watching him push Emil into a corner over and over again.
Finally, his blade met flesh, scoring a cut across Emil’s pecs.
The spectators went wild as Emil’s face darkened with anger.
He came at Kiyo with harder blows, but her mate’s feet moved swiftly, agilely changing direction this way and that before powering back against Emil’s katana.
“He’s bloody magnificent,” she murmured in awe.
“Hai.” Sakura’s voice caught her off guard.
Niamh startled, gazing down at the alpha who’d crept up on her.
“I hear you are pretty magnificent too.” Her gaze flicked behind Niamh’s head. “Do it.”
Before she could compute what was happening, something slammed into her lower back like a blade of the hottest fire. A hand clamped over her mouth as a wail of agony wrenched from her throat. Black dots peppered her vision as the misery of a pain she’d never experienced the like of overwhelmed her senses.34He’d been focused.
Learning Emil’s tells, weaknesses, and strengths as quickly as possible.
It was a balancing act. Giving the crowds a show but ending the fight as expeditiously as possible. Kiyo would allow this to draw out for another twenty minutes and then he’d end it so he and Niamh could get the hell out of there.
Blocking Emil’s increasingly aggressive swing, sensation blasted into Kiyo, sending him stumbling backward.
The feeling was pain.
Agony.
He felt it as if through a barrier.
Like he felt Niamh’s emotions.
Fear lurched in his chest as spun to stare out through the rows of spectators to where he’d left his mate.
He couldn’t see her.
Moving forward, he scanned the park, not seeing a familiar head of pale-blond hair.
Or Sakura.
Or Daiki or Haruto.
Fire slammed into his temple, taking him to a knee, and he couldn’t see in his right eye.
Blood.
There was blood in his eye.
Turning just in time to stop another blow from the hilt of Emil’s katana, Kiyo channeled all his fear and rage into the German.
He forced the hulking giant back and moved at supernatural speed, a blur, spinning until he was behind the wolf. With two quick slashes, he cut the wolf’s Achilles tendons and watched him sprawl to the grass in a roar of pain.
Dropping his katana, he straddled Emil, took his head in hand, and snapped his neck.
Then he was moving.
Niamh.
What had happened?
Was it Astra?
Why was Sakura, Daiki, and Haruto missing too?
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” A werewolf dressed in a tuxedo stood in his path. “Get back in there and give us a real fight.”
Kiyo broke his neck in less than two seconds and watched in satisfaction as the rest of the complaining crowd melted away. He ran. He ran at full speed, cutting through the crowds as he followed his mate’s scent out of the park and into the city.
The skies opened above him as if in answer to his anguish and rage. Kiyo cared nothing for the humans witnessing his super speed, for the way he lunged over moving cars like an animal in the jungle or the way he handled the rain-slicked streets the way an ice dancer’s skates became one with the ice.
Humans in his way were shoved aside by his speed and strength, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t in him to care about anything but Niamh in that moment. It took him only five minutes to reach the hotel where Niamh’s scent was the strongest.