My entire body - including my tail - went still. "She's scared of men, Zasen."
"Just..." He sucked in a breath, looking away. "Kanik, just fucking answer the question."
"Yeah, maybe a little."
"Yeah," he said softly. "This gonna be a problem between us?"
"Nope," I said. "See, it all goes back to the same thing. Ayla's cute. Fuck, she's really cute. She's also sweet, innocent, and completely clueless. That means we can't touch her, Zasen. Doesn't matter what she says, because we know how bad the Moles fucked her up. We can't be sure they didn't train her to think she has to be okay with a man's attention. That she has to say yes when he wants anything."
"So we make sure no one else can take advantage of her either, right?" he asked.
"Right," I agreed.
Zasen just nodded. "Good. Sounds like we're on the same page." Then he gestured around the room. "We should also think about moving all of this to the workroom."
The change in subject confused the hell out of me. "My office?" I asked. "Rymar's?"
"Mhm," he agreed. "Because this room has a door and I'm getting real tired of sleeping on the floor."
Which meant Ayla was definitely staying a while. I felt a smile curl my lips as I began to nod. "Yep, that sounds like a plan. You going to give her your room or move her up here?"
Zasen flicked his brows up smugly. "I'm going to let her pick. Earn myself a few kindness points."
"Asshole," I muttered.
He just pushed himself to his feet. "Yep, but you're currently ahead, so I need to catch up."
And that, more than anything else, made my shitty day a little better. Not completely, because the truth was that liking Ayla didn't matter at all. What mattered was whether or not she'd ever feel comfortable and safe enough to feel that way about anyone.
And if she did, would it be a man? Could it be me? Or would I once again find myself smiling as one of my friends found his own happiness? Because I would. I'd also mean it. I loved these guys like brothers, and so far as I cared, they would always come first.
Fifty-FiveZasen
Ididn't have any orders for the next morning, so I slept in - or tried to. But when Ayla came gliding into the room, my eyes cracked open. She didn't notice me on the couch, though. The girl headed straight for the kitchen as if she'd already settled into her own routine.
Sitting up, I pushed the blanket to the far cushion, then headed for the bathroom. A little water on my face helped wake me up even more. But while I was doing that, I heard Kanik make his way downstairs. The guy must've been waiting to hear Ayla walking around the house.
"Ready for the next dose?" he asked, his voice muffled enough to make me think they were both in the kitchen now.
Ayla didn't answer for a little too long. When she did, it was soft enough I had to strain my ears to hear.
"Will you sit with me again?"
"Always," Kanik promised, "but this time shouldn't be nearly as bad. Then again, maybe we should use the couch? I mean, just in case it is."
"Okay."
"Go sit," he told her. "I'll make the dose."
Make. Putting a drop of venom in water wasn't exactly hard. Leaning over the counter in the bathroom, I tried to push that away. My annoyance wasn't really because he was "making" her dose of venom. No, my problem was how Ayla had sounded when she'd asked for Kanik's help.
I wasn't used to women like her. The ones I knew were loud, independent, and much too confident. They had opinions and weren't ashamed to share them. Ayla? Too many times, she'd looked up at me with fear in her pretty blue eyes. It bothered me, and not in the way I'd expected.
I wanted to push that fear away. I wanted to help her become stronger. I longed for the day she'd scream at me, letting me know exactly what she thought without fear of any punishment. Because every time she pulled into herself, it made me so fucking angry I could barely control it.
Moles had done this to her. All my life, I'd thought of Moles as killers. I'd assumed murder was the worst crime in the world. In my head, I'd been so sure I knew the bounds of their evil - and then I'd met Ayla.
Seeing her made me realize there were things much worse than death. The girl was twenty years old, and she'd never really had a childhood. She hadn't been allowed to experience joy. For two entire decades, she'd been systematically tortured - and couldn't imagine anything else.
They'd hit her, they'd twisted her thoughts to always make her be the one at fault, and they'd terrorized her. Anything she liked - such as books - had been off-limits. Her only recourse was to become fragile and submissive. Her only option to survive had been to learn the system well enough that she now believed far too much of it.
But I'd watched her kill.
I'd seen the look on her face when she swung the butt end of that gun at a man's head. Rage. Deep inside, this woman was filled with more anger than even I could carry, and she always hid it with her eyes turned to the ground and a soft voice for her questions.
A snarl burst from my lips and my tail lashed behind me. Yeah, Kanik was better for her with this. He'd be able to stay calm when she got scared. He'd make it all about her, not how badly he wanted to rip apart the fuckers who'd made something as innocent as friendship into yet another threat.
It took a moment, but when I finally came out of the bathroom, I found Kanik and Ayla sitting side by side on the couch. He turned back to look at me, then offered a weak smile. Beside him, Ayla was staring at the floor, breathing hard. Sitting on the coffee table was an empty glass of what must've had her daily dose of venom.
"How are you doing, Ayla?" I asked. "Hanging in there?"
She jiggled her head, but didn't answer. Instead, Kanik did. "Naomi was right. The venom hits Ayla harder than we expected, but she's pushing through it."
"You're doing good," I told her as I claimed the chair beside Kanik. "It'll get easier every day. Just keep breathing, Ayla. That's all you need to worry about right now."
She bobbed her head again, but something about her body relaxed. That pale skin of hers was flushed, turning it very pink. The color did not go well with the grey dress she had on today. It made her look sunburned again.
"It's a neurotoxin," I said, knowing she liked information. "The molecules in our venom attack your nervous system, sending confusing signals to the brain. That makes your body think you're being attacked in many ways. Your skin is probably hot. It might be tingling. Your fingers and toes are probably numb. Your heart should be racing out of control, yet your lungs are too tight to take a full breath. That's because the venom affects all those systems. It's how we kill Moles."
