To me, Ashton's conversation with Pâté was really sweet. It might be an odd way to do it, but I think death threats and stressing how important it is to keep a certain person safe is Ashton's way of saying "This person is very important to me. I care deeply for them." And it strikes me that he did it explicitly out of Laudna's and everybody else's earshot. I presume they didn't want to worry Laudna with their suspicion that a part of Delilah might be in Pâté. But I also think they aren't ready to tell Laudna to her face that she is very important to them, not even in this very roundabout way of theirs. This is more than saying "I like you. I dig your style". This goes deeper, they really care deeply for her and they are not very good with expressing feelings and stuff like that at all and they are pretty insecure about it. (Like when they asked Annaline to teach them some hammer stuff. Though I'm really happy for him that he DID fight through his inhibitions and asked <3 Go Ashton!)
Sidenote: It's kinda nice that Laudna not only understands Ashton's death threat language (telling Pâté "It's how they say they care"). She has also used it herself in the past, when she threatened to kill Ashton, if anything happened to Imogen. And later that episode Ashton made death threads to generally anyone trying to harm FCG. It's cute how Laudna and Ashton really have something in common there :)