Bleu cast him a suspicious look, eyeing him closely. “Because it would hurt and weaken you.”
Loren couldn’t lie to his sole friend. “No. I will not allow her to come to harm because she is my responsibility. I brought this upon her.”
Bleu snorted and folded his arms across his chest, stretching the thick black material of his jacket. “She is nothing but a mortal. She is expendable. If we kill her now, you will regain your strength before your brother can attack again.”
Loren whirled on his heel, grabbed Bleu around the throat with one hand and slammed him against the dark stone wall. He shoved Bleu up it, until his feet dangled above the floor, and tightened his grip until the male choked and grabbed at his arm, desperately trying to prise Loren’s hand off him.
He felt his markings flash, the buzz of them appearing adding fuel to the fire, pushing him closer to the edge.
“That is my ki’ara you speak of so ruthlessly. My female.” Loren squeezed harder, his fangs sharp points against his lower lip and the tips of his ears extending. He growled, exposing his fangs, and his ears flattened against the sides of his head. Bleu’s face turned red, veins popping out on his forehead and temples. He gripped Loren’s hand, scrabbling against the wall, pulling at Loren’s fingers. “Watch your tongue, Bleu. I will not hear another word against Olivia.”
Loren sucked in a harsh deep breath, struggling to tamp down the emotions running riot inside him, demanding Bleu’s head as payment for his cruel words regarding Olivia. He shut them down one by one, his grip on Bleu’s throat easing at the same time. The colour drained from his friend’s face and he breathed hard, wheezing and relaxing in Loren’s grip.
“Olivia?” Bleu rasped, his hands going lax against Loren’s arm.
Loren lowered him to his feet and peeled his hand away from his throat. He forced himself back a few steps, giving Bleu some room, still battling his heightened emotions. He didn’t want to hurt his friend, but he would if Bleu dared to speak of killing her again. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself. He might want to break the bond, might not have been looking to form one with Olivia in the first place, but he was still a slave to the effects of it. He would defend Olivia from anyone who sought to harm her, male or female, and he would kill any male who dared to attempt to take her from him.
“My female is called Olivia,” Loren said and Bleu bent over, grasping his knees and wheezing as he tried to breathe normally. “It is a good name. Beautiful.”
Bleu looked up at him, his black hair strewn across his forehead and wild around his pointed ears. The look in his purple eyes told Loren that he was dying to ask if he truly wanted to break the bond, but that sagacity that Loren admired in him won out, and Bleu held his tongue.
Loren knew he didn’t sound as though he wanted to undo what had happened. He could understand Bleu’s difficulty believing him. He would put his friend’s mind at rest.
Bleu straightened, swept his hair back out of his face, and exhaled hard.
“Sorry about that.” Loren wasn’t used to issuing apologies and he had done it twice this day. Once to Olivia and now to Bleu. Maybe the bond changed him in ways other than awakening his lust and making him volatile.
Bleu casually shrugged. Loren continued along the hall, banking left when he reached an intersection and heading down the stone staircase to the next level. This one was made of paler stone that glittered in the white lights, far brighter than the level where his rooms were.
“Olivia is going to work on finding a way to break this bond too, so you see, you have nothing to worry about, Bleu.” Loren turned right at the bottom of the pale staircase, heading along the grand hallway, past towering white statues of the former kings and queens of his bloodline. Vail had a statue once, opposite his at the end of the hallway, close to the throne room.
Someone had destroyed it.
“How is the female able to help?” Bleu sounded sceptical again.
Understandable.
Loren had felt the same way when the female had offered to help, but his lack of belief in her had frustrated her and then she had said a lot of words he hadn’t understood. They had all sounded very technical. He had also felt her belief in herself and her abilities, and that was the reason he had decided to grant her request. She felt she could find a way to break the bond by studying their blood. It sounded fascinating and he was almost looking forward to being with her while she worked on it.
“Olivia is a scientist. It would appear modern science is rather incredible. She is apparently able to study our blood and something to do with things called genomes, and other things I have no clue about. She is confident she can discern from it whether our link is a physical change that she may be able to reverse.” It still sounded incredible, even when he still wasn’t quite sure what those things were.