Coveney was a basic, overly excited American tourist and he wasn’t even sorry about it.

“Look at this!” he exclaimed, dragging Ava from one ruin to the next, and she played along.

He winced, recalling she was born here - or anyway, some hidden valley not too far from here. “Sorry if I’m boring you.”

She beamed. “Not at all. I actually haven’t often come to Rome. I find the Forum fascinating. See there? These little holes on the old part of the building, the ones that weren’t renovated and reinforced? That’s an indication that the walls were covered with marble, a while back. They fitted it in that way. Sometimes, you can still see some stone stuck in there.”

“How about these bigger ones?”

He listened to her explain how the large blocks of stone piled up to build the impressive monument and were perfectly aligned, which was exceptional for a structure that old. They’d managed that by putting holes in the middle of each block, and fitting in a bar; that way, they could add the next block like a piece of Lego.

“They filled those holes with metal - bronze, mainly - and that was precious, so these holes were made to get to it after the Catholics came into power and started stripping down reminders of the old faith.”

He wasn’t the only one listening in, and a British tourist asked her a couple of questions, evidently taking her for a tour guide.

Coveney smiled a little sadly. How she fit in, in this ancient, beautiful, foreign city.

“You’re having fun,” she noticed, and he shrugged casually.

“First time abroad. It’s definitely different than learning about all this on TV. Besides, might as well distract myself from thinking about this insane plan of yours.”

That last part was grumbled, communicating his lack of enthusiasm. But he’d caved, for various reasons. Firstly, the damn plan made an awful lot of sense, and he would have nodded along, quite happy to execute it, if it had involved just about anyone else. Secondly, and he admitted it as begrudgingly as any dominant male might, his female was wearing the trousers. Now that she’d shed a lot of her shyness, it was apparent to him that she out-dominated him. If he had a dominance level similar to his Alpha, or his Beta, for that matter, it would have been an issue, but Coveney found that he didn’t care much. And, lastly, if she pouted and said please, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, he wouldn’t give her. He was putty in her damn little hands. And she knew it.

“So, what next?”

“Next, you need to do something no one stepping in Italy should ever forgo,” she said quite seriously.

He lifted a brow as he followed her.

Ten minutes later, he was moaning in pleasure.

“What the hell is this?”

She shrugged. “Ice cream.”

He gave her a look. Yeah, right. He’d had ice cream before. This didn’t qualify. Ice cream was refreshing and tasty; it wasn’t supposed to make him feel like he’d grown a set of wings of his own and tasted the food of the gods.

“Come again? Why the hell don’t you guys export that shit?”

She grinned. “Maybe it just tastes different when you eat it here.”

That made an awful lot of sense. He bobbed his head, repeating a word that had often been on his mind since he’d met her. “Witchcraft.”

He couldn’t come up with another explanation.

As the day drew on, somewhere between the Coliseum and the Pantheon, he felt her grow stiff. It wasn’t just that he saw her shoulders tense and smelled a difference in her; he felt it to his bones. His mate’s worry transferred to him.

He wanted to ask, but he knew he couldn’t.

Are they here? Are they watching?

Ava had said the second she’d return to Italy, the eagles of Dale would know it, and would go after her. Something about their ward warning of the master’s return. It had probably been set in place so her folks could get ready to greet their Alphas after they came back from a trip. Who knew?

What mattered was that now her enemies were going to come after her.

Which would have been all well and good, if she wasn’t expecting him to let them take her.

“They won’t want to spill blood in Rome. Firstly, it makes more sense to abduct me and deal with me on their own turf than to potentially have to fight whatever ally I bring with me. Secondly, if I’m close to home, they won’t be able to resist bringing me back to Dale, and parading me in front of everyone as their captive. They were quite dramatic with my parents and siblings,” she’d grimaced with distaste.

How that was supposed to convince him to let them take her, he didn’t know.

“Right. So, we let a merry band of psychopathic traitors take you where they can hurt you. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that this isn’t the very definition of insanity. Then what?”

She smirked.

“Then, we crush them all.”

He’d only caved after listening to every single detail, and had her answer all his theories, all of his questions. The damn woman had eliminated every logical concern he’d voiced. Still, it didn’t mean that he liked what he had to do.

“Just heading to the toilet, beautiful,” he said, kissing her forehead one last time.

He looked into her violet eyes and held her gaze one beat too long for it to seem casual, but he couldn’t say the words at the tip of his tongue. Stay safe. Come back to me.

So, instead, he simply told her, “I love you.”

Her jaw dropped, and he simply winked before turning his back and heading away from her. He’d never done a harder thing in his entire existence.