Page 123

I shook my head and poured myself a coffee. It’d been three days and still not a call or a text from Warrick. I was exhausted and worried, and also pissed the hell off.

I sipped my coffee and leaned on the counter. Iris sat on Brody’s lap at the table, Nia at her side. Bram was beside Mags. He was still sticking close to her after what happened, but then he always stuck close to her, and Mom had just finished loading the table with food.

“Come and have some breakfast, Wills.”

I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t think, and forget about sleeping. I hadn’t slept since Warrick vanished.

“So they just left, the hellhounds?” Brody asked, looking confused. “They just up and left town?”

Iris gave him a sharp look, but Brody missed it completely.

“Yep, they just up and vanished, like they’d never been here,” I said and sipped my drink. He was coming back, I knew he was. Warrick didn’t lie, and he promised he wouldn’t leave me. I believed him.

“Are they coming back?”

Iris said something under her breath to him and he pressed his lips together.

Did they all think he’d left me? That things had gotten too serious, too real, or he wanted a change of scenery? “He wouldn’t just leave without telling me.”

“Of course,” Mom said.

But judging by the note in her voice, she was starting to have doubts.

“He’ll call,” Iris said.

Mags frowned. “Of course he’ll call. Warrick loves Willow. You saw what he did in that field. He’ll do anything for her.”

“He’s a hellhound, Mags,” Brody said. “Nothing more than an animal. They’re territorial over what they think is theirs, like a lion in the wild fighting over a lioness.” He shrugged. “But when mating season’s over, they move on. His loyalty is to his own kind, females are disposable.”

Iris slugged him. “Brody!”

The guy looked genuinely confused. “What? What did I say?”

“Warrick wouldn’t leave her unless he had to. And he’s not just some animal. He’s in love with her, right, Wills?”

Everyone turned to me and my face heated.

“Wills?” Mags said again.

I curled my hands around my mug tighter as Brody’s words morphed with something Warrick had told me, something I’d put to the back of my mind. It suddenly all became clear. Brody had been right, partially, anyway.

I knew where he was.

And I knew whose power had saturated the clubhouse when Iris and I were there.

“I’d return if Lucifer asked it of me. My loyalty is first and foremost to my king. My creator. He comes before anyone.”

Warrick’s deep voice filled my head, his answer when I’d asked him if he’d ever return to Hell.

“We’ve all seen the way he looks at you,” Iris said.

“Like she’s a slab of prime beef,” Brody added.

I felt like I was suffocating all of a sudden.

“You’re really starting to piss me off,” Mags said and shot to her feet.

“Your wounds,” Bram muttered and eased her back into her seat.