Page 68

I took a drink of tea, burned my tongue, and drank again anyway.

Then, because apparently I had no instinct for self-preservation, I looked toward the Fenhall table.

Kaelen Vance was sitting in his usual place at the head of it, eating breakfast with the same cold, measured composure he brought to everything else. His hair was immaculate. His jacket was immaculate. His expression was closed and unreadable.

His lower lip, however, was split.

The cut was deep enough to have swollen overnight, a dark crescent running through the soft flesh. It looked as though he had bitten down hard enough to draw blood and then kept going.

He did not look at me. Not once.

Instead, he regarded his breakfast with such grim concentration that I almost laughed again.

Almost.

The tips of his ears were red.

I set my cup down before my hand could betray me.

"Buenos días, reina."

Jax dropped onto the bench across from me as casually as he did every morning and immediately reached over to steal a piece of my toast, also as he did every morning.

Then he stopped.

The toast remained halfway to his mouth while his nostrils flared.

He breathed in slowly.

I watched several expressions pass across his face in quick succession before understanding settled over them. Then his mouth curved into a grin that was entirely too pleased with itself.

"Good night, mi reina?" he asked with exaggerated innocence.

Beside me, Tamsin made a strangled sound into her tea.

I considered climbing under the table and remaining there for the rest of my natural life.

Jax leaned closer, still smiling, until his voice was low enough that only I could hear him. The grin stayed exactly where it was, but something in his eyes changed. For the briefest second, gold caught in them, and his attention sharpened.

"You smell like wolf, reina," he murmured. "All over your pretty throat."

"I scrubbed it raw."

"Soap won't take off a mark like that. You have to wait for the scent to fade." His gaze lingered on my throat for another moment, and the teasing slipped out of his expression. "I don't love it."

Then he leaned back, took a bite of the toast he had stolen from me, and launched into a long, scandalous story about a Pride senior and a laundry basket as if the previous ten seconds had never happened.

I heard almost none of it.

Something had changed at the far end of the hall.

Silas sat alone on his usual bench against the wall, but he was no longer eating. His fork had been placed carefully beside his plate. He was looking past the crowded tables and over the heads between us, directly at the Fenhall table.

At Kaelen.

There was something in Silas's expression I had never seen before, something so controlled that it unsettled me more than open anger would have. After a moment, he lowered his gaze to the hand resting on the table and slowly opened his fingers, one at a time.

I looked away from him and from Kaelen, only to find myself staring directly at Delphine Marrow.