BONDS OF JUSTICE

“Sophie.”


She turned to see Max holding the door. Walking out beside him, she considered whether she’d mourn her own parents when they died. No, she thought. They’d erased her from their lives so cleanly that she’d had to erase them from hers in order to survive. It had been hard, so hard to do that. She’d written letters at first. She’d begged.

Finally, a response had come . . . one that had made her parents’ position clear with brutal precision—she was no longer, it had stated, an “acceptable genetic heir.”

A wolf whistle pierced the air, slicing neatly through the pained numbness of her memories of the day she’d realized her parents were never returning for her. The whistle originated from the mouth of a small woman with coffee-colored skin. “I hear you’re single, Cop.” A blinding smile.

Max’s responding smile revealed the lean dimple in his left cheek that Sophia wanted to kiss each time she saw it. “Your intel is out of date.”

“I knew it—I’m going to die an old maid.” Her face drooped. “I shall now go drown myself in fantasies where three—no four—hot men await my every whim.”

Sophia didn’t say a word until they were back in the car. “I’m . . . glad that you no longer consider yourself single.” It took considerable willpower to say that, to admit how much his commitment meant to her. No one had ever before chosen her. No one.

Reaching out with a deliberate slowness, Max brushed his knuckles over her cheek. The sensation was a hot whip over her skin. “The things I plan to do to you, Sophie,” he whispered in a deep voice that made her toes curl. “Zara’s fantasies have nothing on mine.”


Lucas waited until after Max and Sophia Russo had left to turn to his mate. Fighting the urge to just cuddle the worry out of her, he leaned back against the wall by the door and folded his arms. “Now, kitten, how about telling me exactly what you were doing in the Duncan building?” His heart had almost stopped beating when she’d confessed her little field trip.

“Lucas,” Sascha said in a voice that would’ve normally made him calm down.

“That isn’t going to work.” He dropped his hands, moved to brace them on the tabletop. “I thought we agreed you’d stay out of the limelight while you’re so vulnerable. And God, you went—” He grit his teeth, unable to get the words out.

“No one realized I was pregnant,” Sascha said, rising to move around the table, “not even Marsha. She thought I’d put on weight because of my unregimented existence.” Her hand curved over his cheek. “I needed to talk to her.”

“Why?” He thought he knew, but he wanted to be certain after she’d sucker punched him with this stunt. “And sit.” Pulling out a chair for her, he took one to her right.

Placing one hand on his thigh in that way she had, his mate took another deep breath. “I wanted . . .” Her voice shook, and he could no more stop from reaching out to kiss her, pet her, than he could stop breathing.

“Kitten, you know you can tell me anything, anything.” Why had she felt the need to hide this? That was what had him so lost.

“I planned to tell you as soon as I got back,” she said at once, her fingers tightening on his thigh, “but you were so busy I thought I’d wait till tonight.”

“You’re supposed to tell me things like this before.” The panther snarled in agreement.

“I knew you wouldn’t let me see Marsha on my own,” she said, a stubborn angle to her jaw. “And I didn’t want you to worry—you do so much of it already.”

“Of course I do. You’re pregnant with our child—I have the right to go nuts looking after you.”

“And I love you for it.” An affectionate wave of emotion down the mating bond tied them together on the level of the soul. “But this, I needed to do alone.”

His panther caught the vulnerability beneath the steely will. Reaching out, he curved one hand behind her nape in a hold as protective as it was proprietary. “I still haven’t heard what you went to do.”

“Marsha’s been my mother’s advisor since before Nikita became a Councilor, since before she had me.”

The tenderness he felt for her made his soul hurt. “You went to ask her what Nikita was like during her pregnancy and when you were born.” His mate was so scared she wouldn’t be a good mother—when everyone around her knew she’d be an amazing one.

“Yes.” Her eyes were almost starless when she looked up. “But I couldn’t make myself ask any of those questions. I guess part of me was afraid of what she would say—that Nikita never loved me, not even when I was in her womb.”

It tore him apart to see her hurting. “Kitten.”