I snorted, and I wasn’t the only one. The Compasses turned as one and leveled a single glare in his direction. Of all the things Louis had ever done, his use of the word “sister” seemed to have set them off.
“What did you say?” Tyson was the closest in terms of distance, and as he straightened he blocked my view of Louis. I wasn’t tall enough to see over him and he was far too broad to see around. “Jess is not your anything, you need to learn your place.”
“Hey!” I muscled my way out of the men. “I think I can speak for myself, Tyson Compass, and I can also kick your ass if you need a reminder.”
He arched one of his well-shaped brows at me. “I think I’d enjoy a good ass-kicking, if it was you delivering it.” His eyes flicked across to his brothers. Even Maximus had finally stopped pacing and was now standing on the other side of Jacob. “But seriously, Louis needs to take a step back. You’re our sister, our pack, and he is not a part of that.”
I sighed. “I’m not a possession, I belong to no one.”
The clearing of a throat had my lips twitching. I couldn’t help but tilt my chin and meet Braxton’s stare.
“Okay, I maybe … sort of … a very tiny, little, minute amount belong to Braxton Compass.” The other quads faces fell. Oh shit balls, they were tugging on my heart.
“Fine, I belong to all of you, as long as you know you belong to me also. And … Louis is part of that. He is my brother from another mother. We are cool in that way.”
Braxton placed his huge, warm hand on the center of my back, his thumb ever so gently rubbing up and down my spine. “I like brother much better than when he was trying to date you, which could only end one way: blood, guts, and magic splattered all over the floor.”
I snorted, surprised Louis didn’t call Braxton on that statement. The sorcerer must have noticed my expression. He gave a nod, his demeanor content. “I will not argue with his possessiveness. I would not have accepted any less strength from your mate. Braxton is a good fit, he is worthy.”
“I concur,” said my father, and my heart warmed that Jonathon was happy with my mate.
He wasn’t actually that over-protective most of the time. Really, he had spent a lot of my life grieving for Lienda, or absent running his packs and council. But he was a wonderful father, and I would never ask for anything more. And speaking of wolf-mother, in a smooth motion mine stood and walked over to me.
Seeing the look in her eyes, I started to protest, but she swooped in before I could. I was pulled into the warmth of Lienda. And it was kind of nice. I let myself have a real mother-moment for just a few seconds.
I pulled away when I reached the limit of my hug-time; Lienda looked really happy.
Mischa was practically bouncing in her seat now. “Can we unlock the dragon mark? I’m so ready.”
I growled as my thoughts were dragged to that moment my mark was released, to that vampire who’d had his hands all over me. The emotions were dulled now. I was mentally healthier, and thought myself lucky I had been saved before anything worse had happened. As a shifter, I was naturally resilient, my wolf stepping in when I needed a break from human emotions.
“You might want to take her outside,” Braxton said. He curved an arm around my waist and lifted me back into him, his expression shuttered. “There was a veritable explosion of energy when Jess … when I found her in that room.” That explained the expression, he was having the same dark thoughts as me.
“That is a sound idea,” Louis said in his I’m-an-ancient-supe dialect.
My dark thoughts continued further along the path. “Did Kristoff go to prison?” We’d left Stratford before his trial.
Scents of unease trickled through the room. I stepped forward, Braxton’s arm sliding off my waist. “What happened?”
Jonathon rose off the couch and met me halfway, face to chest. Even though he wasn’t tall for a supernatural, he was still taller than me. “Don’t panic, sweet wolf, but there was a bit of a mess-up with the Kristoff trial.”
A mess up? What the hell did that even mean?
“The reason it was so easy for Vlad and his cohorts to knock you out and move you around Vanguard was because they had help … help from Kristo–”
“No shitting way.”
“Fuck off.”
“What?”
The roars came from the Compasses. I was too pissed to speak. We’d all thought Kristoff’s plan to imprison the quads had been a separate incident to the attack-crap which had happened to me inside Vanguard. But now it seemed they had been connected. Jonathon’s eye’s shifted across the snarling quads and his growl reverberated around the room. He did not like them interrupting, so his wolf popped up to let them know who was boss.
Maximus was clenching and unclenching his fists at his side. “Tell me that you killed that slimy dickbag sorcerer.”