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“Don’t be a bitch,” Patricia said.
“No, no—I meant that in the best way possible.”
I was tempted to roll my eyes, but I still kept them on Dominic as they went at it, like always.
What was he thinking? I wanted to get in his head so badly, know exactly what he felt right now as he looked at me, because his face might have been made out of stone from the amount of expression on it. Did his heart skip a beat, too, when he saw me?
What does it matter? an ugly voice whispered in my head.
It was right, though. I reminded myself of just that morning, how I’d seen him fighting with his wolf in his sleep. I remembered how I’d told him to leave, too. I remembered all the reasons why it was the right thing to do.
And even though it hurt, I wasn’t going to let myself fall in that trap ever again. Dominic knew it, too—he wouldn’t need Crackdown anymore because I’d taken it upon myself to not let him close to me again, no matter what. We were no good for each other. We were so much better off apart.
At least, he was.
“Hey.” A hand on mine made me turn to look at Hunter, smiling at me. He squatted in front of me and squeezed my fingers. “You okay? Like, for real?”
I smiled, too. “Not right now, but I will be.” And if they thought it was because of the wounds on my body, they weren’t completely wrong. I mean, I was hurt, scratched in a few places, but at least it was just superficial wounds. Come to think of it, the wolf bite on my arm still hurt more than anything else, and even that was just a light throbbing.
“Yeah, you are,” he said. “I didn’t actually think you had it in you, woman.”
“No shit! I didn’t know you could fight, pixie,” Patricia said with a grin.
“I saw you shooting one of them in the face—twice,” Eva said, holding up two fingers. “Not bad, Pink.”
“White,” Patricia corrected her, wiggling her brows at me.
I smiled anyway. “Thanks, guys. You were all pretty great, too. Especially you,” I told Hunter. “You saved me back there.” When I’d reached the other end of the ship, those three men would have probably shot me long before I could get to them, but Hunter knocked them down with his wind instead.
He grinned, his cheeks turning pink.
“Hey, it’s what I do. I save people,” he said, and Eva kicked him in the knee.
“You’re so full of yourself,” she told him playfully.
“Why wouldn’t I be? I am pretty great,” Hunter said, and the girls laughed while he dusted off his shoulders.
I looked ahead at Dominic again, except he wasn’t there anymore. I searched and searched, heart in my throat, but all I saw was soldiers and ODP crews.
Where the hell did he go?
“De Ver,” the Chief called as he came closer, raising his hand to wave at me.
As much as I’d have preferred to just go home right now and sleep all of this off, I still needed to talk to him. Reluctantly, I got up from the bench.
“Hey, Chief,” I said when I met him halfway. “How are you feeling?” He got shot in his arm from what the nymphs told me, but the bullet barely grazed him, and he even refused to put a bandage on it. His face was clean, but splatters of blood were still on his clothes and the sides of his neck.
“I’m okay, kid,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder, which surprised me. “You did well tonight.”
My heart all but burst out of my chest. “Thank you,” I said with a nod. “We lost a lot of people, though.”
“Yes, we did,” he said, looking at the ground for a moment. “And those suckers will pay for each one of them.”
“There’s still work to do. Those people we caught are going to give us a name. I’m sure of it.”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about,” the Chief said, straightening his shoulders. “The high ups want to interrogate them personally.”
“What?” The high ups were literally the high fae who owned the ODP. They almost never stayed on Earth, and they most definitely never got involved personally on missions.
