"Asshole!"
This mating thing was about to be a major inconvenience.
3
Lachlan
All we needed was a swinging, single light bulb, and this would be a full-on interrogation. Not that she didn't deserve it. Helping us out when Lyric had been taken didn’t erase the fact that Valor was a Moorehouse.
For all intents and purposes, she was the enemy…or at least she had been, according to Benedict’s ability to detect lies. We were in the middle of a war, not only to save our own species but the supernatural world, and this woman had the answers we needed to bring down the enemy.
She also had my mating mark on the nape of her neck, which was seriously fucking with my center of gravity.
Mates came first. They came before the king, species, country, or even the breath in our own lungs, which was exactly why I'd never wanted one.
My life had been dedicated to the Order for hundreds of years.
My priorities were simple:
Protect Alek and the royal house.
Oversee the armies and lead them into battle...which hadn't been necessary in the last two hundred or so years.
But now...now I had the best possible source of intel sitting in my living room, and I was fucking torn on what to do about her.
Valor had changed into a pair of jeans and one of Lyric's shirts...but Valor didn't have Lyric's body, which meant the fabric of the blouse was stretched tight, pressing the swells of her breasts to her neckline like a damned offering.
"Here, you can use this," Ransom said, handing her a permanent marker and pointing her toward the map we'd pinned up on the wall, his jaw tight.
Sergei, Alek's talem, was going to kill us for putting holes in the wall, but we sure as fuck weren't going to take her down to the command center where she could see all of our intel and take it back to her brother.
She might be my mate by some cruel joke of fate, but I didn't trust her. Period.
"Okay," Valor said, tucking a piece of auburn hair behind her ear and heading toward the map, marker in hand.
I folded my arms across my chest and leaned back against the opposite wall. The farther I stayed away from her, the better, though I wasn’t sure another country would be far enough at this point.
Just being in this enormous room, even with its high, vaulted ceilings, was torturous. The scent of her was everywhere, burning my lungs with every inhale, and it wasn't like I could hold my breath for the length of the meeting.
Staying away from her room today had been nearly impossible. There was a physical pull between us, like a spring that had been stretched and was protesting the unnatural distance.
"Here," she said, marking an X in an area that was firmly in witch territory. "This is one of them." Her hand slid over the map, and she marked another spot. "And another one here." She cocked her head to the side and pulled her hair over her shoulder, revealing the Celtic knot that made up my family's seal.
My chest tightened like a vise as my blood roared through my veins, my instincts screaming at me to bite, taste, and claim.
Mating bonds were a bitch.
"We have those, too," Ransom said, rubbing his chin as he looked over the map that Valor had marked up.
"Testing me?" she challenged.
"Yes," he answered with a shrug. Our combat master was the second most lethal vampire in the room, though you'd never know with his boy band looks.
The most lethal? That title belonged to the asshole leaning farther down the wall, flipping his dagger end over end like he was bored. Sure, Ransom and Alek could kill in the blink of an eye. I could tactically outthink anyone in this room.
But Hawke? He didn't give a shit if he lived or died, which made him far deadlier than the rest of us.
"What about this one?" She circled a house less than ten miles away, just outside the Edgemont limits.
"That's in our territory," I said.
"Sure is." She looked at me over her shoulder, the eye contact hitting me like a fucking live wire.
"Damn," Alek muttered. "What else?"
She marked another few places on the map. "The circles are the Moorehouse safe houses that I know about. The squares are research facilities, and the triangle is our corporate headquarters, which you already know about considering you raided it a couple of months ago." Her jaw ticked.
Looked like I wasn't the only one conflicted.
We hadn’t found shit on the corporate raid. Just a bunch of financial records pertaining to the business. The Sons were too smart for that shit.
"And where do the Sons meet?" Ransom asked, taking a step closer so his shoulder bumped hers.
A low growl reverberated around the space, and he immediately stepped back and shot me an apologetic look.