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Yeah, right.
I’m not so sure about that, but I nod anyway, forcing myself to keep my chin up. We haven’t gone far when a woman with fiery hair pulled back in a ponytail stalks up, her expression one of tightly leashed irritation. A tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired man follows close behind, his face an inscrutable mask.
“Barrett Chord!” the woman snaps. “Where the hell have you been? We’ve been trying to reach you for days!”
“I’m sorry.” Barrett looks uncomfortable. “There’s a lot to talk about. I shouldn’t have done what I did.”
“You don’t say,” the woman scoffs. Her gaze cuts to me, eyes narrowing to slits. “And who’s this?”
“Casey, Edirn,” Barrett says by way of greeting, seemingly unruffled by her hostility. “This is Cedara. She’ll be staying with us for a while.”
The man – Edirn – arches one dark brow but says nothing. Casey, on the other hand, lets out a derisive snort.
“Oh, I’m sure Jagger will love that,” she retorts. “You know how he feels about outsiders.”
A lead weight settles in my gut at her words. Will I be turned away? The thought of being left alone again makes me want to be sick. My fingers tighten almost convulsively on Barrett’s arm, seeking reassurance.
He doesn’t pull away. If anything, he moves closer, his solid presence anchoring me.
“Actually, you’re the one with the problem with outsiders, Stone; did you forget?” he says evenly, his eyes shifting to Edirn behind her – I pick up on something unspoken, and my curiosity is piqued, but not enough to find my voice to ask why. The woman looks sheepish for a moment before her face hardens again. I get the impression that’s her norm…like resting bitch-face or something. Barrett goes on, “Jagger asked me to bring her back.”
“Yeah, well, don’t expect a warm reception. He’s pissed, Chord. He’ll want a full report on what went down at the sanctuary. We all do.”
“And I plan to give it to him.” For the first time, Barrett doesn’t sound quite so confident.
“Where the hell did you go, Barrett?” the man, Edirn, speaks up.
“Something came up.” He looks distinctly awkward. I notice him tugging at the collar of his shirt. I happen to know that there’s an unhealed bite beneath the fabric.
Shit.
Was that why he didn’t go back to them? Was it when I’d attacked him?
I feel myself tense as I wait for him to tell them. He doesn’t.
“Something more important than the rest of us, Chord?” Casey presses.
“Look, something came up, okay?” Barrett repeats, running a hand behind his neck, not looking at me. “It was important.”
Casey’s expression sours further, if possible. “You’re telling me you took off to go play lone wolf while we were getting our asses kicked trying to shut that place down?”
My eyes flick uncertainly to Edirn, then back to her, and finally to Barrett. He goes from being mildly shame-faced to something more determined. “Like I said, it was important. Anyhow, you got out fine from the looks of it. What happened out there?”
Casey glances at Edirn, who remains as silent as before. “Well, for a start, my mate got locked up in that hellhole – thanks to you!”
“It had nothing to do with him, Case.” Edirn sets a hand on her arm, then looks at Barrett. “I went in looking for her. I caught Casey’s scent and thought that they had her. Turns out it was a trap.” His lips twist wryly. “I walked right into it.”
“But you wouldn’t have if—” Casey blurts, but Edirn stops her.
“I would have gone in no matter what Barrett had said, my love.” His fingers tighten on her arm. “Nothing would have stopped me. Just as nothing could have stopped you from coming in after me.”
She huffs out a breath but appears to give up the fight. “You’re right.” She shrugs at Barrett. “I guess it all went down so fast that you wouldn’t have made it in anyhow.”
“What exactly happened?” Barrett frowns. We’ve started walking again, making our way through a maze of alleys that I’m certain I’ll never remember.
“After they snared me, they jacked me full of some sort of drug that trapped me in my wolf form,” Edirn explains, snagging my attention. “I couldn’t turn back. And by the time Casey got there, I didn’t recognize her. I’d turned feral. The same thing had happened to the rest of the wolves they were holding there.”
“But it worked out in our favor, I guess,” Casey acknowledges. “When those fuckers came in after us, they got what they had coming.” She gives a smile that’s more than a little scary. “They were no match for a pack of shifters.”
