“Where do you get off, D? A week ago, you wanted nothing to do with any of this,” Nolan spits, squaring his shoulders and standing tall, straightening to his full height—which is a few inches shorter than Donovan. “And now you give a shit about Callie’s sacrifice when you ignored her for weeks.”
Uh-oh. What the hell is happening here?
“Guys, you’re arguing about stuff that happened weeks ago. We’re cool. Callie is sitting right here, fine,” Felix reasons, but it falls on deaf ears, though his assessment of me being ‘fine’ is always a relative word. Nothing is exploding, so that’s always a plus.
“Fuck you,” Donovan growls, crowding Nolan’s space with his hands hanging loose at his sides. “You’re so desperate to get Felix back that you don’t give a shit what needs to be sacrificed along the way, so don’t get fucking high and mighty with me. You going along with this has nothing to do with you caring about Callie.”
“Obviously, I care more than you since I was here,” he hisses, his words dangerously quiet.
I leap from my chair, stumbling because my foot is half asleep and tingly, and wedge myself between the two of them. This gets Connor to his feet, ready to pull Nolan and Donovan apart to protect me. I issue him a hard warning stare, telling him I have this and he needs to sit back down. He doesn’t sit down, but he doesn’t come over, so progress.
With one hand pressed to each of their chests, I shove at them, doing my best to keep my magic in check so I don’t end up throwing them across the room. “Simmer the hell down.” I grab a fistful of Donovan’s shirt and tug hard until he looks down at me. “What did I tell you about defending my honor?”
“This is different,” he growls, glaring at Nolan and posturing forward. “This is real shit, and you’re risking your damn life to do it.”
“It’s her choice,” Nolan snarls, leaning forward over my head.
And to think, being sandwiched between the two of them is usually my happy place.
“Wait, Callie’s risking her life?” Felix questions, his worried gaze shifting from Donovan to me.
“Not any more than just existing as me does,” I reassure him, elbowing Donovan in the gut.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Felix challenges, his warm timbre dropping to a cold fear.
Kaleb stands and leans heavily against the table. “It means that the punishment for bringing someone back from the dead is death.”
“Damn it, Kaleb,” I snap, elbowing Nolan and Donovan more to get them to stand the hell back some, while the tension coiling inside Connor is seeping into me.
Felix’s eyes round, and I imagine he’d be paler if that was possible. Slowly, he looks at each of the guys. “You all knew this?”
A disappointed Felix is much better at breaking up conflict than I am, apparently, because Donovan and Nolan instantly back off, their anger draining away to be replaced by guilt.
“Yeah, we all knew,” Nolan rasps, shoving his hands into his pockets. He can’t seem to hold Felix’s gaze for more than a second or two.
Donovan, forever the combatant, which is only helped by his near perfect memory, states, “This isn’t new information to you, Felix. Even if we didn’t already know, Mildred told us months ago.”
My heart skips a beat at her name, and in this moment of panic and confusion, I miss her decisive cool head. If we weren’t doing something extremely illegal, it would be nice to dump this in her lap to handle.
“What are you talking about? Mildred doesn’t know what we’re doing,” Felix counters, tightly wrapping his arms around himself.
“He’s talking about my father. Remember him? In jail for kidnapping a woman that he wanted me to put my mother’s spirit into,” I answer, chewing on my words while trying to keep my anger in check. It’s always a challenge when talking about the Bastard. “The only reason the Council didn’t kill him outright for his first attempt to resurrect my mother was because he was a member of the Council himself and ‘beside himself with grief.’” The last bit is spoken with finger quotes.
“When you said it was a supernatural no-no, I just thought like bad juju or something,” Felix utters, his voice distant. “I didn’t know it was a literal price on your head, kill squad kind of deal.”
I tip my head toward the ceiling, looking for some of that patience Kaleb seems to always find up there, then close my eyes and release a deep breath. I flex my hands to resist the urge to smack all of the guys for causing this. Except for Connor. He performed admirably.I wonder if wolf shifters like dog treats.
After taking another deep breath, I open my eyes and look at each of them one by one. “I’m only going to say this once, and then we’re moving on. We figured out how to save Felix’s life. This is good news, and I’m not going to let it be soured by things that have already been decided.”
I pause for dramatic effect, running a hand through my hair, except it gets stuck in the tangles. Nolan attempts to look only mildly amused as he walks over and helps me retrieve my hand from the rat’s nest on my head.So much for dramatic effect.My pause is then extended more when Nolan disappears into the office bathroom to retrieve a comb.
Returning with the comb, he ushers me toward a chair, and has me sit sideways so my back faces him. Connor, always interested when my hair is involved, moves closer to the table and sits in one of the unoccupied chairs.
“We good? Can I finish my whole big speech now?” I question sarcastically, even though I’m enjoying the feeling of Nolan combing my hair.
“We’re listening, Callie love,” Nolan murmurs, a smile evident in his smooth voice, while he gently separates my hair into sections. Well, at least he isn’t mad anymore.
“Where was I?” I mutter, mentally backtracking to where I left off.
