Cole didn’t return to the hotel that night, or if he did slip in, he didn’t make it back to our suite. To say I woke on the wrong side of the bed was too mild for the snit brewing in me. I felt turned inside out, like I was a suit put on wrong. I missed Cole like an amputated limb, and the sensation only worsened when I emerged from the bedroom to find the rest of the coterie looking anywhere other than at me.
Santiago lounged on the couch, buried under three tablets, a laptop, and a phone. Miller sat in an accent chair too small for his height and held a book in his hands. It wasn’t upside down, nothing so obvious, but his eyes kept straying from the words to the blonde staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The longing I glimpsed there made me grateful when a knock on the door announced Wu’s arrival.
“Come in.” I didn’t have to raise my voice. His hearing was phenomenal, the same as the others’. “I have clothes to last another twenty-four hours,” I told him when the door opened. “After that, we’ve got to stop long enough for me to hit a dry cleaner.”
Wu crossed to me and waited until I gave him my full attention. “I was curt with you yesterday.”
“You did seem to have your tighty-whities in a bunch,” I allowed.
“I’m not used to having a partner to gut-check myself against, but I am trying.” His peace offering was a chai latte and an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink bagel. “Have patience with me.”
“You’re bribing me.” I confiscated said contraband. “I like it.”
His smile was a hesitant thing that made me think he was being earnest. “Am I forgiven?”
A sip of the latte made me sigh happily. “Bribe me again around noon, and I’ll give you my answer.”
“Are you leaving?” Maggie turned from the window. “When will you be back?”
I set down my goodies, crossed to her, and wrapped my arms around her. “Yes, and soon.”
Hugs used to be awkward affairs. They still required coordination on my part to make sure everything fit where it ought to go. Casual affection was getting easier, but I still had a ways to go before it came naturally.
Balance was required to maintain a healthy coterie. I was learning that, remembering it maybe, and it reminded me of being a kid. When Dad planted his food plots for deer in the spring, I would help myself to his wildflower seeds. I sat in the grass cupping the small kernels in my palm for hours on end, hoping one of the birds interested in us might trust me enough to land. None ever did. I had to hope my odds were higher with the coterie than the wild cardinals.
Chin propped on my shoulder, she whispered, “Miller is staying?”
“Yes,” I promised her. “He’s staying. Santiago too.”
“Okay.” She withdrew, nodding to herself or maybe to Portia. “That works.”
“You’ll be fine.” I willed her to believe me. “Both of you. Call if you need anything or if you just want to talk.”
“We have your number.” After a quick glance at Miller, their gazes connecting and snagging, she turned back to the window. “Be careful, Lucey-goosey.”
“That goes double for you, Magpie.”
I caught Wu staring at us when I turned and gathered my things. “Problem?”
“No,” he said thoughtfully. “Have you said all your goodbyes?”
“The others won’t take long,” I promised. “Santiago, don’t be an ass.” I sipped my latte and burned my tongue. “Miller, don’t let him be an ass.” I raised my eyebrows at Wu. “Good enough?”
“Yes.” His gaze touched on each door in the suite. “Good enough.”
We exited together and stepped on the elevator. The doors rolled almost shut before a broad palm speared through the gap and pried them open. Cole stood in the hall. A short woman with black hair cascading to her waist stood behind him. Her coloring reminded me of Santiago, but she read about as predatory as a baby bunny to me. Granted, my charun power scale was skewed thanks to the coterie and Wu, but I sensed none of that killer instinct in this woman.
I didn’t like finding them together, him wearing yesterday’s clothes, so early in the morning.
What Santiago implied—that she couldn’t wait to have him all to herself—I liked even less.
Hands framing the doors, forcing them wide, Cole asked, “You were just going to leave?”
“All signs point to yes.” I met the woman’s wide-eyed stare, and she flinched. Huddling closer to Cole, she hid behind his back. “You weren’t here.”
“So I see.” I flicked my gaze to her then back to him. “You should probably get back to it.”
Faster than I could track, he fisted the front of my shirt and hauled me from the elevator, slapping the button to close the doors for good measure. Cole loomed over me, his favorite trick, but I kicked my head back to hold his stare. Where I had expected anger, his meltwater eyes glimmered with . . . amusement. He was laughing at me.
“You don’t know who she is, what she is, or why she’s here.” He flattened his palm against my sternum, a tiny smile forming. “You’re also growling.”
There was nothing human in the noise reverberating through me, and that ought to worry me more than it did, but only Cole brought out these instincts in me. “I’m not a morning person.”
He buried his face at the point where my neck met my shoulder and inhaled, filling his lungs, pressing our chests together. “You’re jealous.”
“You’re not mine.” I gasped when his hot breath hit my skin. “I don’t get to be jealous.”
“Luce,” he breathed my name. “How could I want anyone else?”
That list stretched longer than I was tall, starting with how Conquest had slaughtered his people and razed his homeland and ending with the fact she had enslaved him and hauled him from his world and beyond.
No, that wasn’t right. It ended with the bone-deep fear that despite all those things, he might view me as a watered-down version of her, an echo of what drew them together in the first place.
As much as my name on his lips warmed me, I had to get out the words. “You’re free to choose someone—”
“No.”
“Cole—”
“No.” He straightened enough to put us at eye level. “You’re mine.”
“I want to be.” I sagged against him, the wind taken from my sails. “Yours.”
“Call me when you finish.” The rhythmic vibrations through his chest melted my knees. “I’ll keep my phone on me.”
“You’re purring,” the woman, who I had forgotten, yelped and stumbled back.
An instant of blinding rage that she had heard, that she might have felt, clouded my vision.
I sucked in oxygen then blasted it through parted lips. The urge to rake my claws down her face eased. A skosh. Not much, but enough.
This would be the other side effect of coterie bonding. The touch aversion they were healing had gone deeper, unlocking facets of my inner charun. Mostly my protective streak where they were concerned and my possessive urges toward Cole.
I wasn’t convinced it was an improvement, but it was done. There was no going back. If we had any hope of me learning to tap into the power at my core, this was a firm step down that path.
“Okay?” Cole asked, understanding how close I was to losing my temper all over his informant.
“Yes,” I hissed, words more difficult to form when I was this riled.
“This is the difference between you and her.” He drew a scarred knuckle across my jaw. “You’re fighting your instincts. You’re choosing to walk away and leave me here when you could order me to follow. You’re giving me my freedom and trusting me to honor you with it.”
I wrapped my hands around his wrist as far as they would go. “I don’t own you.”
The reverence in his expression shifted into a bittersweetness I could almost taste.
“Yes, you do.” He took my hand and placed it over his heart. “For the first time since my world fell, I’m proud of that fact.”
“Go take care of your business,” I told Cole, and this time I sounded like myself, not petulant or scorned or seconds away from committing homicide. I nudged him back so I could step around him. “I’ll call with an update as soon as I put the visit to Sariah behind me.”
Cole leaned over and mashed the down button on the elevator. “I’ll wait with you.”
“That’s okay.” I pivoted on my heel and started walking. “I’ll take the stairs.”
Better I pound the steps to cool my temper than his informant’s pretty face.