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“There won’t be trouble from you?”
“You know by now that—”
“You are trouble.”
My fingers danced more.
Searle approached. He caressed the small strands of hair at my temple. Pain flitted through my battered nerves. He said in his soft, quartz-still voice, “It will be over soon. I will be with Demetrius and Henri most of the night. There’s preparations to be made at the Meeting site. You need to stay hidden here.”
I nodded once.
His fingers continued to caress my hair and the soft skin around my ear. “You can be trusted to stay in this room, yes?”
“Yes.” We were so close to the end, I wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize the duel.
He stroked the skin behind my ear. I hid a flinch and a crush of misery. He said, so softly it almost passed for loving, “It will be over soon, Summer. By this time tomorrow, it will all be over, and you and I will be back in AmberHowl.”
Leave Me Behind
You can go. I’ll be fine.
You don’t really sleep much the night before your mate is scheduled to fight to the death. And when you do sleep, your dreams are being locked in the back of a SUV at that airport in Seattle, except instead of Sterling, it’s the Mother Wolf with her swirled face wearing Sterling’s suit and asking where you’d like to go next. And she’s got her claw hooked under the vial, which you’re wearing around your neck, with puppies at your feet, and the scar on your arm bleeds silver.
I gave up sleeping at six and turned on the television to watch whatever animated cartoons seemed most colorful.
Searle stretched, squeezing his pillow as he usually did, and rolled over to face me. He cracked one eye open. Then he extended one muscled arm and looped it over my hips. “It isn’t at first light.”
I caught myself before I reacted to the embrace. Sterling wasn’t dead yet. I managed to sound bland. “I know.”
Everyone needed to get their coffee before they watched a fight to the death.
Searle tightened his arm, tugging me lightly, then released me and rolled out of bed. The entire mushy mattress swayed on its frame. He lifted the lid to the pizza box from the night before. “You didn’t eat.”
Half a piece of pizza was a fully valid thing to eat on an occasion like this. Not to mention the two pizza joints in this town were fairly bad. Searle had selected (wisely) to obtain pizza from the less-bad place. The other one probably made their dough from dirty dishwater.
I swallowed and for something to say while he ate the cold pizza, I asked, “Is everything ready?”
“Yes. All you need to do is show up.” His tone saidyou don’t have to think about anything, and in fact, no one wants you to think.
Good. Because all I was going to manage would be showing up.
You can go. I’ll be fine.
Searle put the pizza box on the bed. “Eat. You’ll be less-prone to fainting if you have a little something in you.”
Then he headed towards the shower.
I managed to choke down another half slice of pizza before I gagged with the effort of swallowing. While Searle was in the shower, someone knocked gently on our door.
Demetrius, wearing the attire of a male wolf expecting trouble: kilt, sandals, and nothing else. The scent of Sterling wafted down the hallway. A painful crush went through my spine and hips, and my left hand started a painful tune on the world’s worst piano.
“We’re leaving,” he said. “You and Searle will follow with the others.”
I managed a nod.
He looked me up and down, taking in my twitching left hand. The twitching had spread up my shoulder into my trap, causing my neck to twitch slightly too. “Remember.Noreaction from you.”
“I know.” I would not doanythingto jeopardize Sterling, or endanger the other AmberHowl who had gotten us this far and had had no real say in any of it.
