Page 122 of Storm and Tempest

“You’re assuming I’m going?” He had just said that neither of them was fit to travel.

She eyed him. “Are you?”

“Of course. It’s Maizie.” Jax figured he could maybe get her to stay in the car with Preston and his father. Between the two of them, they could protect her if someone tried to take her again.

The idea someone might do that made him want to flip out. Stick with her every second, constantly standing in front of her. Permanently attach himself to her side. Be that stick-like-glue husband who would be overprotective and completely annoying, because deep down he wasterrified.

He touched her cheeks. “Am I going to feel this way forever? Like at any moment I could lose you all over again, and this whole nightmare will happen a second time.”

“They’re still out there, and they will be unless we destroy them.” Kenna held on tight to his hands. “However you’re feeling, I’m right there with you. I’m as scared as you are. But saving Maizie is a job that was given to us, and we have to do it.”

“Zeyla gets that as well.”

Kenna said, “I want to meet her.”

He’d forgotten that she’d never actually spoken with her sister. Cousin. Whatever they were to each other, it would probably grow to be more like sisters. “She’s terrified that they’ll capture her again, but she’s tougher than she thinks and a lot like you—one of the strongest people I know.”

“And everyone else? Ramon, Bruce, and Amara? Stairns and Elizabeth?”

He gave a rundown of Stairns, Elizabeth, and her dog, Cabot, all of them in California, protecting Jax’s family. Ramon, and how he’d stuck with Jax the whole time Kenna was missing, even when Jax didn’t want help. Bruce’s presence with them, pitching in, and how Amara used all the skills and clout she had to get them access to the facility.

“You never stopped looking, did you?”

Jax shook his head.

“I love you.”

“That’s why I didn’t stop.”

Kenna squeezed his hand. “We need to go get Maizie back.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

The airplane wheels screamed against the tarmac, and Jax gripped the chair handles, staring past Kenna out the window where the sun set behind the ocean off the coast of Washington. Nothing but coffee and some pretzels in his stomach. Maizie and Zeyla—then food. That was the order of priority.

“Still feels like a dream.” Her voice sounded wistful, and a little sad. But both of them were on a rollercoaster of emotions right now.

“You aren’t asleep.” Jax motioned to Ramon, across the aisle. “He is.”

The guy had been snoring since they left Anchorage.

She smiled. “Bear is meeting us on the ground?”

He nodded.

“I can’t believe I missed months. So much has happened.” She grabbed her bottled smoothie and took another sip. “There’s so much I need to tell you. Random things that keep popping in my head.”

“We have time,” he said. “I want to hear all about the pregnancy stuff that I missed.”

Kenna nodded, leaning her head on his shoulder while they taxied to the hangar, and the small plane came to a stop, her arms hugging his right arm. The jitters had stopped, but it wasn’t as if the detox was over.

He’d been ready to throw up when the plane took off and spent the first fifteen minutes in the tiny airplane bathroom. Whatever the doctor had given him worked better than anything he’d ever taken during a detox. Last time it had gone on for days, but after the surgery on the platform and the days since, he hadn’t felt too bad.

Which only made him suspicious that the doctor in Anchorage was somehow connected toDominatusand it was all part of their larger plan. Because how else could the guy have figured it out?

Jax didn’t have the brainpower to figure it out right now. He’d live to fight that battle another day. Right now, he just needed to get to Maizie and Zeyla, wherever they were, and not spend the next four months looking for them. The last thing he wanted was to lose Maizie when things had been so tenuous between them before he left to get Kenna back.

Kenna touched his knee, and he realized he’d been bouncing it up and down. “You’re different.”