AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“For what?” Befuddlement clouded his expression.
“For making an effort not to be a royal ass.”
“Hey.” He shrugged and gave me the coy half-smile he had the night I’d first laid eyes on him. “I’m a work in progress.”
The moment we pulled away from the corner, worry began to gnaw at me. I still hadn’t figured out what had happened to the hour I’d lost at Columbia, and I needed a sounding board to brainstorm the possible explanations with.
“Dom, what do you know about magic?”
The blond werewolf grunted noncommittally and kept his eyes on the road. “I dunno. Witches do spells. Fae have natural magic. Why?”
“Do you know of any spells that cause memory lapses?”
“No, but shouldn’t you be asking your grandmother this?”
Smartass. Of course I should be asking Grandmere, but I couldn’t do that at four in the morning. She might be a witch, but she was also officially a senior citizen. Dominick had obviously never had to deal with a cranky, sleep-deprived witch when she’d been awakened from a peaceful slumber.
“Just asking.” I fiddled with the car’s heater, lowering the temperature slightly since neither of us needed the heat to be full blast.
“Penny keeps asking about you,” Dominick said, breaking the silence first.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, apparently a sword-wielding, leather-clad, and I quote ‘Taylor-Swift-like’ girlfriend of Desmond’s makes quite the impression on a twelve-year-old.”
It felt good to laugh. Desmond and Dominick’s younger sister, Penny, had been abducted over the Christmas holidays, and after I’d saved her, the Alvarez family had been pretty fond of me. Who knew the easiest way to win over your boyfriend’s family was to save its youngest member from having her brain chewed on by monsters? Penny also had an unnatural obsession with my blonde curls.
“I should call your mom. She keeps asking me to come for supper.”
“Forget supper, I think Penny wants to take you for show and tell.”
A few more blocks and I felt almost normal again. We fell into another companionable silence, and it was nice to be with someone who didn’t want or need anything from me. My time alone with Dominick always seemed like a gift, because he made me feel as close to human as I ever had. I wasn’t defined by my status as an assassin, a mate, a princess or a Tribunal leader. Nor did I have to present a false version of myself like I did whenever I was with Mercedes. With Dominick I was just a friend.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You just did,” he replied.
Ignoring his cheekiness, I continued, “Do you ever feel like you got the short end of the stick, somehow? In the pack, I mean?”
“How so?”
“Well, your father was Jeremiah Rain’s lieutenant, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And now Desmond is Lucas’s.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you grew up with Lucas, and he’s now your king.”
“He was always going to be my king.”
I’d never thought about it that way. “So it doesn’t bother you that Desmond is in a higher position than you?”
“No. But that’s not really what you’re asking, is it? You want to know if it bugs me that you are in a higher position than me.”
Though it hadn’t been the reason I’d asked initially, I had to admit he was right. I did want to know how the rest of the pack felt about me being so high up in the hierarchy, even though I’d never shifted with them and might never be able to do so.
