Kaiden Grey stood at the mouth of the loading bay behind the Meridian Galleria, eleven feet of concrete between him and the young men who had called his ladies cosplayers. They had just worked out who he was.
Then all three of them looked past him at the costumes, and the costumes looked back.
The red one was not wearing paint.
The red one was the axe from the mountain pass, the woman the entire country had watched hold a ridge open while the range got swarmed. She was smiling at them now, and there was nothing in that smile that wanted them to feel better about anything.
The tanned one had not looked at them once. She had a hand on Kaiden Grey's arm and she had kept it there through every word they had said about her, as if the words never even existed.
"Bro." The wiry one had gone the color of the wall behind him. "Bro. Bro, that's not paint."
"Shut up."
