Page 151 of Cruelly Bitten

“Shouldn’t you be busy flying the jet?” I asked him conversationally.

He gave me a look. “These things practically fly themselves.”

So he says, I thought, glancing out a nearby window, my lips curling down. “If you somehow harm my mate with this recklessness, I’ll?—”

“Shoot me,” he finished for me. “Yes. I know.” His golden eyes rolled and he shook his head. “Izzy just called.”

Well, I supposed that was somewhat worthy of him putting our lives in jeopardy. “What did she say?” I asked as I pushed away from my chair. “Tell me while you continue flying the plane.”

He gave me a look before turning around and returning to the cockpit.

“He’s right, you know,” Kylan said as he joined me. “These jets truly do fly themselves. You really only need a pilot for takeoff and landing. It was that way when humans ruled, too.”

“I seem to recall frequent reports about plane crashes back then.” Perhapsfrequentwas an exaggeration, but my point remained—Damien needed to get back in his seat and fly the damn jet.

“Technology failures were more at fault than the humans who flew them,” Kylan replied.

I ignored him. Mostly because Damien was obeying and settling behind his controls once more. “What did Izzy say?” I asked, driving straight to the point.

“I had no idea your maker possessed a fear of flying,” Kylan murmured.

“He never feared anything until he found a mate,” Damien muttered, both of them apparently ignoring my commentaryand instead continuing the conversation about flight safety. “Now he’s obsessed with keeping her safe.”

Kylan glanced over his shoulder toward the couch our females were lounging on. “I suppose I can’t fault him for that.”

“Good. Can we focus on Izzy now?” I asked, done with their side conversation.

Damien sobered, his tattoos moving along his burly arm as he squeezed his hand into a fist. “She didn’t say much, but something’s not right. She didn’t sound like herself. At all.”

Kylan’s relaxed demeanor shifted in an instant, his dark gaze suddenly sharper. “Do you think we’re heading into a trap?”

“I don’t know.” Damien loosened his grip, only to fist his hand once more, his stiffness something I’d thought was just related to my commentary about flying the plane, but it seemed to run deeper than that. “I can’t explain it. But my instincts are firing.”

I’d known Damien for a very long time. If his instincts were afire about something, there was a reason. “It’s too late to turn around and land elsewhere, isn’t it.” I didn’t phrase it as a question because I already knew the answer.

However, Damien confirmed it anyway by saying, “Our options for landing would be limited now, yes.”

Which made the timing of Izzy’s call more than suspicious. Why reach out at the end of our journey and not earlier? Was she trying to find a way to warn us? To tell us to turn back?

Kylan studied the flight map on the monitor, his familiarity with this technology superior to my own. This was his jet, after all. “What are our options?” he asked, his tone all business.

“Helias Region, Sofia Region, or Robyn Region,” Damien muttered, the last location making Kylan flinch. “We could also attempt to circle back up to Cormac Region, if you want to test his hospitality. I suspect he’ll be the most agreeable of our choices.”

He would be, yes.But that would entail running from our current fight.

And I wasn’t the type to run.

“What’s our weapon situation on board?” I asked.

Kylan and Damien had been in charge of preparing for this journey, so I knew there had to be at least a few guns. Maybe some explosives, too. Assuming Damien had been provided with enough time to secure them, anyway.

My trusty progeny immediately listed what we had on board, causing Kylan’s eyebrows to lift. “Have you lost your damn mind? One wrong move and we could explode with all that shit below.”

“Oh? Now you’re concerned about him crashing?” I gave him a look of mock surprise. “How shocking.”

Kylan growled. “I had no idea we were sitting on a fucking military arsenal.”

“What did you think I had in all those bags? Clothes?” The exasperated note in Damien’s tone told me he’d had enough of the flying concerns. “Look, we have enough to defend ourselves if we need to. But we’ll be neck-deep in foreign regions with Ernest Clan being our next known ally. If we lose the jet…”