"Alaric cleared me. Relax."
"He cleared you for light training."
"Yes, and?"
"This is a combat. Identify the part of that sentence that qualifies as light."
"The part where I let everyone else do the heavy lifting." Gavriel spread his hands. "I'm logistics. I'm the compass. I stand in the back and look pretty. Lightest duty on the roster."
While this was happening, Dex and Fin both stiffened.
The stiffening was subtle, simultaneous, and aimed at the same target, which was Serena, whose emotional output had just spiked through both matebonds with a frequency that the necklace was dampening but could not entirely suppress. Both Alphas received the spike through the fog: anxiety.
Sharp. Directed. Carrying the specific texture of a woman who was worried about a person in this room and whose worry was producing a physical response she was trying to hide.
Both of them looked at Gavriel.
