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His voice was controlled, and despite the fact he stood only inches from my claws, he still showed no trace of fear.
Why did this giant trust I wouldn’t kill him? The broken one had told them of what we’d done. Of our shame and all those we’d killed. Even now, I wore the blood of his enemies like a second skin.
Yet this man showed no sign of believing I would add his blood to the mix.
Seeming satisfied with my silence, Dex returned his attention to the three men on the forest floor. With his boot, he rolled one of them over.
The man stabbed at him with a blade he’d hidden beneath his body.
Instantly, my claws sent the attacker’s hand flying, the knife going with it, and his head followed. Both tumbled away to be lost among the underbrush, food for whatever creatures feasted upon fools.
“Holy shit!” one of the blond twins exclaimed.
I ignored them. “One less to lie now.”
The remaining two soldiers were shaking so hard, I could see their chest plates quivering in the shadows.
For a moment, Dex didn’t move, his eyes on me, and then very carefully, he bowed his head an inch. “Thank you.”
I froze. He… thanked me? Yes, I’d saved him. But I was the demon.
Nobody thanked the demon.
Nothing in his expression changed to hint that it was a trick. None of the giants around me showed any disgust for his words or for how he’d expressed gratitude to something like me.
I didn’t know what to do.
“Clay,” Dex continued to one of the blond twin giants. “You think you could…” He nodded at me, not explaining, and instantly I was on alert.
“Yeah,” the blond man said as if agreeing. “How, uh… how about we get you something to cover up with a bit, eh, buddy?”
My alarm grew, but before I could demand to know something as foolish as clothing could be more important than the bastards who’d attacked my treluria, the man called Clay gestured and muttered something under his breath.
Clothing materialized on my body.
I snarled, twisting this way and that at the sudden sensation of being trapped within leather and fabric. But the pants and shirt remained, both of them cut with holes to allow my wings and tail to pass through.
And nothing else happened. The clothing did not attack or attempt to poison me. It was just… there.
I stared at the blond man, speechless with confusion. Why had he done that?
“Let’s get this over with,” Dex said.
My gaze snapped to him, but he wasn’t referring to anything about me. Instead, his focus was on the soldiers. Surveying them briefly, he twitched his chin at Clay and the blond man’s twin. Both men started toward the soldiers.
I rolled my shoulders, made uncomfortable by more than the sensation of fabric and leather on my blood-covered skin. These giants were odd. They behaved unexpectedly over and over again. I didn’t know what to make of them.
The twins drew their weapons as they neared the soldiers, and I cursed at myself silently as I shoved my perturbed feelings down where the broken one stayed. Clothing was a distraction. So were these giants. These soldiers had attacked my treluria, and for that they would pay.
Let the broken one deal with these irritating emotions. I had a greater mission.
Inside my mind, the broken one didn’t react. But Dex’s words and the blond man’s actions had thrown him, that I could tell. Plenty of times over the years, his friends had thanked him for things. Helped him with things. But back then, they hadn’t known the truth about him. About us. He’d been as certain as I was that scorn and fear and hate were the only responses I would ever elicit from others.
Yet now I had thanks, and he didn’t know how to feel about that.
Growling low, I shoved my awareness of his shock away too.
The twins aimed their weapons at the soldiers, one pointing at the piss-covered man on the left, while the other leveled his sword at the guy on the right. Clay grinned, his expression like a mockery of humor, as cold and sharp as a blade of ice. “What do you say, eh?” he asked the soldier on the right. “You answer our questions, or we hand you over to the big guys.” He jerked his head back toward me and then again at the furred beast.
