“No,” Mr. Tom replied. “Anyway, miss, let’s get you into the house for a cup of coffee, wouldn’t that be nice? We’ll leave a very competent Tristan with the hopefully not-dying mage, and we’ll prevent a heavy-handed Nessa from accidentally killing Sebastian. All will be well.”
“I need a holiday,” Jessie muttered as she let them escort her from the garage.
“Yes, miss. Of course you do,” Mr. Tom soothed her. Edgar, thankfully, followed them out.
Tristan waited for a moment before checking the mage’s pulse. It was definitely weak, but not terminally so. Just enough to shift blame if there was any when the morning came.
He stowed his items up high, where the vampire wouldn’t be able to reach, then went around touching and messing with other things under the guise of being bored, but actually to spread his scent around the rest of the garage. After that, he really did look for something to cure his boredom.
It took about an hour for the alphas to show up, hard-eyed and keyed up the way shifters got when protecting their territory. They hadn’t seen anything else of note, and it had been too dark to check out what the mage was up to. They’d have to leave all that for tomorrow.
Tristan had been anticipating that Kingsley and Austin would want to ask some questions of the mage. Then they’d talk about, and likely argue about, how to get the information the mage was unwilling to easily give up. The next argument would be about what to do with the mage once they no longer needed him. Tristan one hundred percent agreed with Natasha’s assessment on that.
Tristan’s solution was to wait until the mage came to before enforcing an additional injury （a precise blow to the head with the right amount of force and in a way that wouldn’t bleed or show the bruise）。
Given Sebastian was drugged and asleep, everyone else was dead tired, and any hope of an interrogation session was impossible because the mage was currently unconscious, the crew at large having decided to postpone the question-and-answer session until the following day, after the meeting.
“I can take over,” Brochan told Tristan after the alphas had left, standing just inside the side door to the garage.
Tristan paused in sitting down in front of his half-formed statue made out of nuts and bolts. He glanced at the statue, then at the slumped mage, and straightened a little.
“Natasha has some dessert for me, anyway, don’t you, Natasha?” he called, feeling her walking toward them.
“What’s that?” She entered with raised eyebrows, stopping beside Brochan before giving him a sly glance. “Hello, Mr. Sue. Fancy meeting you here.”
Brochan’s expression didn’t change, nor did he react.
A smile lit her face, playful but devious. Her posture changed, slinky and sexy, hips and bust accentuated. A wanton joke, perhaps. She was clearly teasing him.
A small sparkle of energy kindled between them. Shared desire. The energy wasn’t dancing and playing, though. It didn’t zip between them. They weren’t connecting in a way that would allow the spark to grow and flower.
The why was obvious…to everyone but the lovely Natasha. Even Brochan knew, Tristan was fully sure.
No matter. He’d let her play her games and dance around her desires, watching the circle get smaller and smaller until she did what she longed to do: beg Tristan to be fully sated. To be pleasured in a way she’d been missing all her life with the ineffective good boys she met in bars.
Treasured in a way that would make even Austin and Jessie’s relationship seem dull.
He finished sitting down by his statue. It was the perfect excuse to send Brochan away, anyway.
Them both away, he guessed. She’d want to go with him. At least he could then get things underway.
“I’m good here. I haven’t done much today. Get some sleep, Brochan. Alpha Steele is going to need a heavy hitter those shifters understand, and that’s you.”
Brochan assessed Tristan in that way of his before looking at the mage. “Do you have your crew for backup, or do you need extras?”
Tristan didn’t bother looking up. “I don’t need a crew—his magic doesn’t affect me. But they’re here to guard Jessie, just in case. We’re all good here. Enjoy my dessert.”
Natasha paused with her hand on Brochan’s arm, her head snapping to Tristan in confusion. The moment was over in an instant.
“Slap me five.” She put up her other hand, always playing the clown for him, to help him find his way out of the darkness. It was noble, what she did, for him and for that weird mage. Why couldn’t she see that those were the traits of a hero, not a villain?