6. Dominik

Istand at the floor-length windows with my hands stuffed in my pants pocket, absorbing the sight in front of me.

Twenty years wasted playing a feral beast in a crazed man’s cell. Decades of my life stolen. Now I’m back here.

Home.

It doesn’t feel like home at all. Not the New York skyline, not my clothes. Even the scent of this apartment. Polish, cedarwood, and leather are unfamiliar.

I bet no one even noticed I was gone.

As long as my cleaners got paid, and the trust I set up to manage my expenses dealt with my regular bills, no one would have noticed, and no one would have cared what happened to me.

It’s why I set up the trust in the first place. So no one would bother me with boring household tasks.

They had their orders: clean my apartment, replace the contents of the refrigerator on a weekly basis, deal with my laundry, and stay out of my locked office.

After I had landed on my roof terrace, carried Jade inside, and put her to bed, I delivered a short list of requests to the concierge. I hadn’t recognized his voice. Given twenty years had passed, the older concierge must have retired or died and this one replaced him.

But he knew about me. Knew I was an owner who preferred to be left alone, was often away for weeks or months at a time, and that sometimes I had my helicopter land on the roof.

Then I had gone to my ‘office.’

Not an office, but my hoard.

I took the key I kept in a vase in the hallway, unlocked the door and absorbed the sight of the only thing that had mattered to me.

A room I filled with my gold, jewels, priceless art, and statues.

But I had felt nothing.

I closed the door on my hoard and returned to the bedroom where I’d left Jade until a soft knock pulled me away. The concierge had delivered what I had requested. A nightdress for Jade, a brand new cell phone, and a shaver to return me to the man I had been before.

For years—decades—I believed there was no more of my kind left alive, but I was wrong. There was. Jade. I bound us together, and now she hates me for it.

A faint scuff behind me returns me to the present.

I lift my chin slightly though I don’t turn. “I won’t hurt you.”

Jade is quiet, but her footsteps are not nearly silent enough.

“I locked the elevator, and I have the only key. The only way you’re leaving my apartment is by learning to fly.”

But Jade is emerging, and if I don’t turn her hate to the love I crave, she will fly away from me.

She mutters something that might be a curse.

I hadn’t wanted to look at her until I was sure I’d regained control of myself. Her muffled curse compels me to angle my head toward her.

Jade, who had been silently creeping toward the elevator, stops and turns to face me.

“Your eyes changed.” Her tone is so accusatory that I look away.

I resume my focus on the bright city lights in the distance. Releasing a heavy breath, I pull my hand from my pocket and massage my forehead. “My control is not as it should be. It will take time to become the man I was once before Atticus chained me. I won’t hurt you.”

It’s been a long time since I felt shame. If I ever did. The burn in my throat and my reluctance to meet Jade’s beautiful deep-green eyes hint at it.

Her steps move toward me, stopping two feet away.

She doesn’t tell me that she doesn’t believe me. She doesn’t need to. The gap she leaves between us speaks volumes.

I focus on the skyline I’d longed to see again. But like my hoard, the sight no longer brings me any joy. Only my mate does that.

For the first time in so long, I’m not alone. I have Jade. I have a mate and a child.

I have a future.

Now she threatens to leave me.

I will never allow that. She is mine.

“I need my family and I need my friends. I cannot stay here with you, Dominik. This is not my life,” she says.

“I could give you everything you could ever dream. My hoard would be yours. I could make you happy, and I would keep you safe.” I speak without looking at her, hardening my voice and willing her to believe I mean it.

All she has to do is stay and I will give her the world.

“Things don’t make me happy. They never have. People do, and all my people are back in Oklahoma.” Her voice is soft, but there’s a steel in it I don’t recall hearing before.

She does not know how strong a Kaida can be. Yet. But I do.

Do I tell her more when that knowledge will ensure she leaves me?

“You need me, Jade.” Now I look at her, absorbing her soft, dark beauty, her jewel green eyes. Mine. She is mine.

Her chin lifts. “No, I don’t.”

“There is so much I could tell you of your heritage.” I don’t mean to impose conditions on my knowledge. Or maybe I do.

Her eyes flash. “You left my father to die. I don’t care about my heritage. I just care about him.”

Again, I fight the need to look away. Is this shame or guilt? I saw an opportunity, and I took it. What man would let an opportunity to have the thing he’d always wanted pass him by?

“It was too late to save him. He was falling from the sky as I pulled myself out of the ruins of the compound. There was nothing I could have done.”

“But you could have tried. You just snatched me up and carried me away.”

“You are with child. My child. If Atticus knew, he would tear this city apart looking to claim what he has wanted for decades. It is not safe.”

“This child is mine,” she says fiercely, cradling a hand over her still-flat belly. “No one is taking it away from me. No one.”

Her pupils flicker red-yellow.

She’s descended from one of the most powerful lines in our history, and she has no idea how to use her powers. No idea about her heritage at all.

Perhaps I can use that for my benefit.

And then she says, “I won’t stop trying to escape.”

“You cannot escape from a penthouse twenty stories up,” I remind her.

She tilts her chin. “Yet.”

Our stare extends.

Seconds pass, and Jade’s expression doesn’t become any less stubborn.

Despite my growing need to lock her in a room to prevent any further escape attempts, I swallow my smile. “If your eyes hadn’t marked you out as a Kaida, this would have.”

“What would have?”

“Stubborn.” I hadn’t believed she would do something as ridiculous as to climb out of a bathroom window. It hadn’t been easy to ignore her pale, slender legs as she fell out of the window, but I had. “Kaidas were always stubborn.”

I wonder if that’s what killed her mother.

Jade was curious about her heritage in the compound. She told me her father had kept a lot from her, so I wait for her to ask about her mother like she did before.

She doesn’t say a word as I watch the sun disappearing in the distance.

I feel her studying me as I consider my options.

She hasn’t come into her powers yet, so it would be easy to cage her.

I could lock her in my hoard again. Until her emergence, she could never escape. And I would if I didn’t have such intimate knowledge of how that felt.

Locking her in my hoard had been a deeply, deeply uncomfortable experience.

I knew what it was to pound at a door, to kick it. To yell.

For twenty years Atticus caged me, and the first thing I did when I freed Jade was cage her in turn.

My mate and the mother of my child.

If I cage her long enough, I will teach her to hate me as much as I hate Atticus Chira.

But if I take her back, I might lose her.

Three men will be in Oklahoma. She hasn’t asked to see them, but she will want to see them. This is more than just her wanting to see her father.

I need to do something about those men.

“I will arrange a private plane for tomorrow morning.” I search her face for her reaction.

Which will give me more time to persuade you that you don’t want to go back at all.

Her brief smile quickly melts away into suspicion, then frustration. “Why not now? My dad might need me now.”

“A plane will be faster, and it will enable us to return quickly once the task has completed.”

“Chicago is my home. I won’t be coming back to New York.”

So you think.

I pull my cell phone from my pocket. “First, you need clothes.”

Her eyes flick to the black dress I picked out for dinner. It’s a beautiful dress, but Jade would look striking in color. Maybe green or blue.

“I don’t see how clothes are important now.”

“This isn’t an argument you will win. We go shopping now, or we don’t leave this apartment at all.” I harden my voice.

The clothes aren’t as important to me as I want Jade to think.

That isn’t the point of this shopping trip. I want those men she thinks she needs in her life to take one look at her and know she is mine. To know that I can provide far better for her than they ever can.

She gives me a searching look, then sighs. “Okay. Fine. It’s nighttime. Nowhere is even going to be open.”

I lift my phone to my ear. “They will open for me.”