Page 89 of Lethal King

Tytus cranks his neck, ready to fight for me, as we both share a long look.

I nod up at him, and he reluctantly nods down at me.

“Fine,” he says, walking back around the bed. “Do you want me to stay here while you two talk?”

“Stay close,” I ask him. “But I want to speak to Drago alone.”

“I’ll be in the hallway.”

With that, the door to this unfamiliar bedroom is pulled open.

At first, I don’t turn around. I just listen as Tytus gives Drago a mumbled warning.

I only turn around when the door clicks shut again.

Sure enough, there’s Drago.

He looks even worse than he did in the cave.

The man who once terrorized entire criminal empires might as well be a ghost. There’s hardly any muscle left on his once impressive frame, and the last bits of color on his pale face are all concentrated on the deep red scars that claw across his dead eye.

“How are you feeling?” He asks when the silence draws on too long for his comfort.

“Better than you look.”

“That’s not saying much,” he chuckles.

A raspy cough quickly follows.

“I heard you saved me.

Crossing my damp arms, I try not to think about how close I was to dying.

Fuck. If I had gone out like that, I might have killed myself.

“No,” Drago says, dropping his head. His thin strands of hair still look wet, and they fall over his face like curtains as he stares at the floor. “Tytus saved you. I only made things harder on him because he decided to save me too.”

“I wonder why he did that,” I sneer.

“I wondered the same thing.”

When Drago steps forward, I instinctually reach down to where my thigh holster would be. Obviously, it’s gone.

“Where’s Leander?” I demand to know.

That slimy asshole was so smug about everything last night. I don’t care how he can help us anymore. As far as I’m concerned, he’s my enemy.

“He’s decided to give you some space,” Drago quietly explains. “We both agreed that things didn’t exactly go as…. desired. And that was our fault. I should have known better than to spring that all on you, Roz. I’m sorry.”

“Stop fucking apologizing, you creep,” I rasp.

My headache takes a backseat as I force myself onto my feet. It takes a second to adjust, but this time, I manage to fight back the stars and stay standing.

Drago opens his mouth, but stops before he can apologize again.

“Understood,” he says.

But that’s just as infuriating.