When she had first arrived at his home, he had made it a point to touch her, even if it was as simple as holding her hand.
But it had grown into something more than even he could have imagined.
He anticipated her movements and could sense what mood she was in without even glancing at her. He found that he missed her if they were separated. But more than anything, he savored the moments when she touched him without any trepidation. Each time she leaned into him and snuggled as they watched a movie, or curled up against his side as they slept, surprised him. The first time she had initiated their kiss, and every time after, felt like a gift.
As much as he craved to sequester them at his home and ignore the world, he couldn’t shake the sense that the sick fuck was more determined than ever to capture her. He knew that she wouldn’t be safe until he was dead.
Her hand squeezed his and he swung his gaze from the road to look at her. He had been driving around Snowfall for the last hour, making sure that no one had followed them on their trip to Kai and Liv’s. He never wanted to put Ara in danger, and because of his inattention the last time, she could have been killed. It still haunted him.
Other thoughts had crowded his mind since he woke up that morning.
Once he had eliminated the man who had hurt her, would it be fair to subject her to his life and all that it entailed?
All he knew, all he had been was an assassin, and although he would give that up in an instant to be with Ara, he couldn’t help but think that she would be in danger because of him and his past actions.
But the thought of letting her go had caused him physical pain, and he understood that it wasn’t his decision alone. It could be months or years before the threat was eliminated, and in the meantime, he was determined to prove to her that he would make a good mate.
Their drive hadn’t produced a sign that they were being followed. When he parked, he released her seat belt and without waiting for her to move, he lifted her onto his lap and kissed her as unfamiliar emotions swirled in his chest. His lips slid from her mouth and kissed a trail across her cheek and down her neck, before he buried his face underneath her hair. He inhaled her scent and tightened his arms around her. He smiled against her skin when she ran her fingers through his hair, trying to comfort him. He savored her curves pressed against his hardness, and after taking a deep breath, he reached for the handle.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yes.” She smiled.
Taking one last glance around, he couldn’t sense anyone near or hear movement, but his muscles tightened for action in case of an ambush. Grateful that they had removed the SUV and the evidence of the shooting, he grasped her tighter to him, ready to make a quick dash to the door.
Instead, the door opened and Kai signaled that the coast was clear.
Reaper lowered Ara to her feet and slid a hand around her waist, pulling her close to his side as they walked toward the house. When they were safely inside, he bent down and brushed a kiss across her lips, and as he started to pull back, she stopped his movements with a hand on his cheek. She smiled at him, a sweet smile, before she stepped back and looked around.
“How are you feeling?” Kai asked.
Reaper chuckled when a flush heated her cheeks.
“I’m good.”
Before Kai could start the conversation about what had happened the night before, Liv rushed up the stairs and stopped in front of Ara. At Liv’s worried look, Ara stepped forward and embraced the tiny woman. Ara tried to step back, and Liv tightened her arms for a fraction of a second, before she pulled back and gave Ara a watery smile.
“I need to know that you’re okay.” Liv indicated that Ara should follow her.
Nodding, Ara reached for Reaper’s hand and laced their fingers together before they trailed after Liv. When they reached the lab, Ara sat on the table where she was directed to, and Liv kept darting her gaze between him and Ara.
Reaper knew that she wanted to ask Ara to subject herself to tests, but the last thing that any of them wanted was to hurt her. They had known Ara for a short span of time, but because they understood that she was important to him, they treated her as one of their own.
Ara must’ve sensed Liv’s trepidation. “Do you…are you afraid that I would hurt you or the others?”
“No!” Liv, Kai, and Reaper all shouted the word at once.
Their adamant refusal to believe that she could harm any of them had an immediate effect. Ara relaxed her shoulders and her eyes softened at their acceptance.
“Liv, it’s okay to ask her,” Reaper said.
Liv swallowed, hard, before she took Ara’s hands in hers. “Do you…would you mind if I draw a small amount of blood?”
“Was that what you were worried about?” Ara asked.
When Liv nodded and happened a glance at Ara’s arms, the guilt and the pain shown on Liv’s face. She had discovered that some of her colleagues were using biological weapons to kill immortals and had done her best to stop them from killing again, but she never believed that Standard would hurt humans.
Ara laughed and hugged Liv again, a quick squeeze, before she rolled the sleeve up on her right arm.
“You’re a sweetheart. I’ve had success with this vein before.”
Ara pointed at the spot that hadn’t been damaged, and Reaper’s growl erupted past his throat before he could stop himself. Ara reached for his hand, and when he felt her cool palm in his, he relaxed a fraction.
He couldn’t even bring himself to watch as Liv inserted the needle. Instead, he glanced at Ara’s face, but she didn’t even flinch or tighten her grasp on his hand, choosing to watch Liv instead with a steady gaze. Within moments, the needle had been withdrawn and a round bandage covered the area.
“Thank you for making it painless,” Ara said.
Liv squeezed her hand before she turned toward her equipment with the samples for testing.
He heard before he spotted the others as they walked down to the lab. Xander was the first down, and when he spotted Ara on the table, he headed straight for her.
“Are you okay?” Xander’s voice was filled with concern.
“I really am,” she told all of them.
“Hey, can I take you on my next assignment? I won’t even have to get close to the target with your powers,” Ax asked.
Reaper’s arm shot out and he punched the lion-shifter in the arm, satisfied that he hit him hard enough that he spotted the wince on Ax’s face. He laughed when the lion-shifter rubbed the spot where the hit landed.
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“He’s not quite there—he hasn’t turned on the full Ax charm yet,” Jade said.
“Don’t give him ideas,” Reaper growled.
Another punch landed in Ax’s gut when he raised his arm to loop it over Ara’s shoulders. This time the hit didn’t have the same intensity, and soon, the fucker had Ara wrapped up in a tight hug. Ara’s laughter was the one reason he didn’t kill the shifter, and he managed to restrain himself. Barely.
He watched the scene in front of him, his arms crossed and his hip cocked against the table that Ara had vacated. With him and his friends, she relaxed and enjoyed the banter, joining in whenever she wanted to. He liked that she was part of the family, and she would never be alone again.
When he’d first been recruited by Ghost, he enjoyed long stretches where he could be alone. But soon the camaraderie he’d shared with the others drew him out and he found a place where he belonged. Because of the acceptance he’d felt over the years, it had been an easy decision to build his house in Snowfall. But the picture of his life was now complete because Ara was his, and the restlessness he hadn’t known existed before he’d met her had settled into happiness.
A movement brought him back to the present. “What is it?”
Liv glanced at the slide again, and when she lifted her head, her wide-eyed look gave him pause. “I found the HMGA2 gene in Ara’s blood work.”
Reaper reached for Ar
a and found her closer than he realized. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed her back to his chest as he laid his chin on her head. He relaxed his tense muscles, not wanting to alert Ara to his concern, and turned his attention back to Liv.
“The gene helps regulate cell growth and it’s correlated with increased IQ and higher brain output. I don’t have your original blood work, but I suspect that whatever they injected you with bonded with the gene already present, and increased your powers tenfold. I believe that healing is part of that new power. Because of the increase in brainpower, you can manipulate anything physical you want to. That’s why you were able to boil the man’s blood without touching him,” Liv said.
The fuckers had increased her natural-born powers. He almost laughed out loud at the irony.
“That’s the reason he wants her back. She was able to shield herself where she couldn’t before, and now he understands that her power has increased,” Reaper said.
“Which means that the gunman isn’t the only one coming after her.” Ghost had a calculated look on his face, and before Reaper could even ask him what he planned to do, Ghost had already run up the stairs.
Ara turned to him and with one look, he understood what she wanted.
“I need all of you to train Ara. Today we’ll start with evasion. You will try to get a hand on Ara, but if one of you hurts her…”
Jade was the first to speak. “We won’t.”
They headed up the stairs for the training session—even Liv, who preferred her lab. He watched as Hunter, Xander, Jade, Kane, Gunnar, and Ax had taken positions in a semi-circle around Ara. She tensed for a moment, but shook out her hands to relax her tense muscles.
Reaper’s nerves almost snapped when Kane blurred into action. For just a moment, he thought that she had lost track of the vampire, but when Kane jumped and landed softly behind her, she reacted quickly.
Kane flew across the room with his arms and legs flailing, and landed on the couch. Confusion marred his features as he glanced around to find out how he had gotten there.
Even before Kane had landed on the couch, Ax charged from the right, Hunter from the left, and she waited until they were feet away. They thought that she would be distracted by setting Kane gently down on the couch. Reaper smiled when he realized that she could balance and focus on multiple things at once.
He watched as Ara waited for both shifters to draw closer while she hovered in the air. As soon as they were within arm’s length, she moved herself back through the air and they ran into each other and toppled on the floor without realizing what had happened.
Xander had chosen that moment to leap for Ara, but before he could reach his hand out and touch her, he found himself sitting on the couch next to Kane.
Jade had leapt on to the rafters and patiently waited for the others to distract Ara, but when she silently dropped to land on Ara’s back, the red fox found herself hovering by the ceiling, unable to move.
Gunnar tried to attack low and reached for her ankles, but she sidestepped him with ease and he found himself flat on his back, glaring up at the ceiling.
Reaper growled as he spotted a blur headed toward Ara from the right. He took one step forward, but Kai put an arm on his to restrain him.
“She’ll handle it. Trust her,” Kai said.
He knew he trusted the vampire, but his worry for Ara took precedence. He opened his mouth to warn her when the two vampires split to hit her from different directions. He didn’t know that they’d even arrived. But she didn’t need the warning.
Within feet of reaching her, Thomas and Isaac found themselves running in the opposite direction. The bewilderment on their faces relieved the tension in his body, and he unclenched his hands. They tried to turn back toward Ara, but found that they couldn’t. Each time they tried, they found themselves farther and farther from her, until they needed to stop and regroup.
Reaper turned toward his friend, a smirk on the vampire’s face as he watched the highly trained assassins being thwarted with barely a wave of a hand. He noticed that Kai’s eyes tracked Liv more often than he watched the others.
“You still worry about her?” Reaper asked.
Without moving his eyes from Liv, Kai nodded. “I know that she’s strong, but she’s mine to worry about, and I will do so for our entire existence.”
“When did you know she was your mate?”
Kai didn’t even have to think about his answer. “From the moment I spotted her.”
“Do you ever worry that you’ll put her in danger because of what you do?”
Something in Reaper’s voice must’ve alerted Kai that he wasn’t asking to kill time, because the vampire turned and gave his full attention to the question.
“No, I don’t think our job would ever put those we care about in danger. I did that all on my own. For six months, I followed Liv from her job, to the diner, and to her home. Every night I told myself it was going to be the last night. When the contract came down, I knew that I wouldn’t hurt her—I couldn’t. It was also the reason I could actually talk to her for the first time.”
Reaper swallowed as Kai took a moment to gather his thoughts.
“Yet, I treated her as though she hadn’t mattered to me. I knew she was my mate the first time I tasted her blood—hell, probably even before then—but I was an asshole to her. I almost lost her twice. You remember when I flipped shit over the blood she drew from you, and then, I allowed her to be kidnapped and tortured? For the rest of my days, I will see Liv’s broken body, and know it was my fault.”
Liv sensed that Kai was in distress and darted to his side, reaching for his hand. He wrapped her in his arms and closed his eyes, breathing her in.
Reaper’s eyes found Ara, laughing as she dodged another swipe from Ax. He had given up in his human form and stalked toward her as a lion. At Ax’s powerful roar, Reaper watched as Ara’s eyes widened, but more from curiosity than fear. Ax stalked her, low to the ground with his paws sliding on the wooden floor, before he pounced.
Without moving, Ara flipped Ax onto his back with practiced ease. She scratched his belly, and laughed as she found Ax’s sweet spot and the lion’s leg kicked in pleasure. The others watched, and laughed at how easily the enormous lion could be tamed.
“I know you, Reaper. You question your decisions, even though your first instinct is the right one. If Ara is your mate, then you need to tell her. There is nothing, other than the man who is after her, that is a danger to her. If I thought being an assassin would put Liv in danger, I would quit without thinking about it, but we’ve never let the job come close to home,” Kai said.
“And she cares for you, too, Reaper. The anguish on her face when she thought you were dead…” Liv trailed off.
His gaze found Ara and watched as her eyes glittered with delight as she came up with an idea. Without completely realizing what she wanted, she forced Ax to shift back to his human form.
The shift completed within a flash and Ax, the flirt and ladies’ man, found himself naked in the middle of the living room. Time stalled as Ax’s hands shot to cover himself, and Reaper laughed loudly as he watched Ara’s eyes dart around the living room, avoiding the naked man in the center of it. She met his eyes and walked quickly toward him, before she buried her face in his chest.
“I didn’t know I could do that,” she mumbled.
A blanket floated off the couch and a grateful Ax wrapped it around his waist. He walked toward them, Ara unaware that he drew closer until Ax pulled her from the cocoon of Reaper’s arms, straight into his. Ax smiled at Reaper over Ara’s head.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. You can get me naked anytime.”
“If you don’t release her now, I will strangle you,” Reaper said through clenched teeth.
The entire room quieted as Ax’s hands raised and he took several steps back from Ara. Reaper pulled her back into his embrace, and she ran a hand over his chest to get his attention. When he stared down at her, her smile warmed his ch
est and he found himself relaxing. He kissed her, a brief, deep kiss of possession.
“You did well, Ara,” Ghost said.
“Thank you.”
Ghost then turned to the others in the room. When he spotted a naked Ax, he gave him a disgusted shake before he continued. “Tomorrow, you will teach Ara hand-to-hand combat and disarming an attacker.”
Ara’s smile widened as the assassins all groaned.
“Great, we got our asses kicked today, and tomorrow, it happens again, but with weapons,” Gunnar mumbled.
Reaper was surprised when a rough laugh erupted from deep in his throat; as his eyes met hers, her answering smile almost knocked him over.
As he thought back on his conversation with Kai, he realized that he could learn from the mistakes his friend had made. The concerns that had plagued him that morning were gone. He existed because he was meant to find Ara, his mate and love, and he would kill to keep her.
He hoped that someday, she would feel the same way about him.
Chapter Twelve
Ara
Ara paced around the living room of Kai and Liv’s house as she waited for Reaper’s return from his latest assignment.
Xander had found a lead on the money that had supplied Dr. Ames with the space and equipment needed to experiment on the immortals, and Ghost had ordered Reaper to go with the rest of the team. Reaper had argued about it, worried about leaving her unprotected, but the last thing she wanted was to cause a division between him and his boss. She reminded Reaper that the more they knew about the man who hunted her, the better off they would be, and he reluctantly agreed.
Although Ara wasn’t up to par quite yet, she had trained with guns, knives, and hand-to-hand combat for the better part of two weeks, and she found that she was a quick learner. Any assassin who wasn’t out on assignment taught her defense, fighting with a knife, disarming techniques, and target practice with her favorite weapon, a 9 mm. She had honed her powers, practicing evasive maneuvers and other natural powers that, if she were honest, scared her.
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