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The sudden tension in the room was so thick, it felt like shrugging on a jacket. The tension might’ve warned lesser people to back off, to stop before things could escalate.
Not Darien. He lived for this shit.
So he stared Blaine down. “This is your last warning,” he said darkly. He bared his teeth, pointed again at the door and snarled, “Get…the fuck…out.”
Loren pushed to her feet and crossed the room, heart sprinting at the sound of the angry voices floating up from downstairs.
Shay jumped off the couch and followed her. “Hold on.”
Loren crouched to open the door. “I’m going down there.”
Shay crouched beside her, stilling the door with a slap of her palm. “At least let me check first.” With a heavy blink, the Sight swallowed her pale green eyes with black.
“You can see through the spells?” Seeing through spells wasn’t easy, which was why Darkslayers were so deadly. But there were some that were difficult for even the best slayers to see through, and Loren was certain Roman’s spells were the best on the market.
“I can see through a lot of things,” was Shay’s only reply, her words washed with a tone Loren couldn’t place.
Loren watched Shay as the Selkie stared through the floor, at whatever was happening several floors below. Watched her all-black eyes flick about, clearly following movements Loren couldn’t see.
Finally, Shay whispered, “I think they’re leaving.”
But Loren’s heart continued to race. Because she could hear those voices again—the shouting, the snarling, the threats. Darien was the one doing most of the threatening, Roman and Jack chiming in once in a while. Kylar and Tanner made attempts to defuse the situation, but none of them worked.
As soon as Loren heard the slam of what she assumed was the front door, Shay lifted the hand that was blocking their exit and helped her pry up the attic door.
She descended the ladder, Shay following behind her.
Darien stood at the closed front door with the others, looking through the frosted windows as the jeep drove through the gates.
Two sets of footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Darien turned in time to see Shay and Loren coming down.
Kylar was the first to speak. “They didn’t tell him.” A mixture of surprise and relief coated his words. He looked at Roman. “They haven’t told Don.”
Roman started pacing. “They will now.”
Paxton piped up. “How do you know? Maybe they won’t—”
“They will, kid,” Roman said, working to control his tone. “I have no clue why they haven’t already, but I can tell…I can tell just by looking at that bitch Larina, that the first thing she’s gonna do now is tell Don.”
“It’s because of Darien,” Ivy said quietly. Her eyes were on him, her mouth set in a frown. Roman and Shay stared at her in confusion. Ivy explained, “Larina has a thing for him—I think that’s why she didn’t tell Don the first time. Now, though…” Her eyes flicked toward Loren.
Jack said to Darien, “You could always take one for the team and have a quickie with her.”
“Absolutely not,” Loren piped up, the words razor-edged. “I mean…that’s not the answer, that’s not…a solution. He shouldn’t have to do that—”
“I’m not,” Darien cut in softly. He leveled Jack with a hard look. “That’s not the answer.”
Roman waved a hand in dismissal. “It wouldn’t even matter. She’s probably tattling to Don as we speak.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I’m going for a smoke.” He turned and headed for the balcony at the back of the house. No one followed him, not even Pax.
But only a few minutes went by before the kid left, too—heading toward one of the training rooms. Darien blinked the Sight into his vision—easy, considering he was fighting a Surge—and read Paxton’s aura as he stomped away.
Pax was hurting—suffering far more than he was letting on. He was a shaken bottle of emotions, just waiting to explode.
Darien would give Pax a few minutes, and then he’d be in there to check on him.
Darien found Paxton striking a punching bag in one of the training rooms. His aura was coated with so much pain that when Darien entered the room, it felt like a blow to the stomach.
The kid didn’t notice him—not even with all the mirrors on the walls. Not even as the distance between them shrank with Darien’s every long stride. There were tears in Pax’s eyes—angry moisture blinding him.
