Page 32 of The Mafia Bloodline
Malakai. Or worse… Caesar.
The rage built, slow and hot, until I could almost hear the pulse of it in my veins.
Because the truth that I couldn’t tell her, the thing I buried every time I saw her smile, was that I hadn’t been in control that night. Not really.
When that first Irishman looked at her like she was something to claim, every civilized part of me had fractured. All that was left was instinct, possession and fury.
I’d torn through them not because they were a threat to the mission but because they had looked at my mate.
And I’d wanted to kill for it. No. I had killed for it.
I’d held back that side of me for years, kept it buried under discipline, under duty, under Roman’s code. But with her… the balance was slipping.
Every time I saw Runa, her smile, her clumsiness, the fire in her voice when she argued, I felt the bond pull tighter.
She was light, and laughter, and trouble.
And she had no idea how close she’d come to being snuffed out of existence tonight.
My fists clenched again, knuckles white.
If she’d been hurt, If even one bullet had found her, there wouldn’t be enough blood in this world to wash away what I’d do to the men responsible.
I’d bathed in blood before for vengeance. I’d bath again.
But I hadn’t let her see that rage. Not tonight. She didn’t need to know that the moment she screamed my name, something inside me snapped so violently that I barely remembered dragging her into that car.
I’d kissed her just to make sure she was real. To taste her breathing, because if I’d looked away, even for a second, I would have gone back and kept killing until there was no one left standing.
That was the truth of being mated to a Dragic. It wasn’t romance, or myth, but blood, and fire, and the constant, gnawing fear of losing the only person that mattered.
I exhaled hard, forcing myself to steady the storm raging in my chest. When I turned back toward the car, the night air felt colder, sharper.
Somewhere, out there in the dark, Malakai and Caesar were moving their pieces across the board, and they thought they could touch what was mine.
I smiled then, slow and humourless. Let them try.
Chapter 12
The mansion was quiet, the kind of quiet that only came during daylight hours, when the vampires were deep in their death-like sleep and the rest of us could finally breathe without feeling the weight of their presence filling the walls.
Sunlight streamed through the tall windows, filtered by the thick velvet curtains the brothers hated but tolerated for our sake. Dust motes danced in the light, soft and gold, like the world had briefly forgotten what darkness was.
I sat curled on one of the long sofas in the sitting room, the faint sound of laughter carrying from the adjoining play area.
Layla’s son, Aleksander, was sitting on the rug surrounded by a small army of wooden animals and toy soldiers. Beside him, Sorcha’s daughter, little Suraya, was trying to teach him how to make the toys “fly.” Mostly, it ended in laughter and toppled blocks.
There was a kind of calming peace in this house, but peace, I’d learned, could be a fragile thing.
Sorcha entered from the kitchen, a tray in her hands stacked with cups of coffee and a plate of pastries. Layla followed close behind, a smile tugging at her lips even as she looked over her shoulder toward the hallway.
“They’ll sleep until sunset,” she said softly, catching my look. “Roman and the others could sleep through the apocalypse if they needed to. Especially after last night.”
I took one of the cups she offered, fingers curling around the warmth. “Do they always do that?”
“Disappear before dawn and come home covered in blood?” Sorcha asked dryly, settling beside me. “Yes. Unfortunately.”
I smiled faintly. “I thought it was just Volken.”
