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“Just pass me some fucking toilet paper!” hollered a voice from within the nearest stall. Beau.
Azaire let out a put-upon sigh. “Fine.” He threw the shirt over the door. “Here.”
Beau spluttered a curse. “That’s my tee, asshole.”
“It’ll feel nicer than any paper, I can tell you that,” said Azaire.
Shaking his head in amusement, Teague walked past them and turned down a particular aisle of lockers.
One of the two guys there, Felipe, looked up from dabbing some kind of ointment on his burned arm. He smirked as he said, “Nice brand, Sullivan.”
Teague grinned. “Ain’t it, though?”
“So it’s true, huh? You’re dating Knox Thorne’s sentinel?” Felipe let out a low whistle. “You’re a ballsy bastard.”
So he was often told by guys whenever they glimpsed the brand.
Stopping at his locker, Teague twisted the dial this way and that to unlock it, and then pulled open the door. He wondered if Larkin knew that a lot of males had avoided dating her because they feared Knox so much—to hurt her would be to piss the Prime off, and few people were tempted to do that.
Teague wasn’t the type to let others keep him away from what he wanted, no matter what the consequences might be. Hence why he’d broken his word to Khloë. Which he hadn’t yet fessed up about, but he would.
He retrieved his duffel from the locker, slid an abandoned granola bar wrapper further along the wooden bench out of his way, and then dumped his bag on said bench. Speaking of granola bars, he was pretty sure he had one in his duffel. He was always both thirsty and hungry after a race. He’d already downed a full bottle of water, along with two power bars.
Gripping where he’d knotted his towel, Teague sat on the bench beside his duffel. He dug out a snack and a sports drink and then got to work on both.
Person after person left as he ate, until there weren’t many guys lingering.
Somewhere, a toilet flushed. Soon after, there was a gale of laughter followed by a full-on rant. Teague looked to his left as a chuckling Azaire and a furious Beau made their way to the door. Since Beau was wearing his tee, there was a good chance he hadn’t first used it to wipe his ass.
Probably.
After he’d demolished his drink and snack, Teague chucked both the wrapper and empty bottle in the nearby trash can. That was when Felipe and his brother said quick goodbyes to Teague, their shoes squeaking against the tiled floor as they crossed to the door.
Alone, he dried himself off and fished his set of fresh clothes out of his duffel. Once fully dressed, he dumped the towel in the bin that was set aside for used ones. He then zipped up the duffel, gripped the handles—
Smoke and brimstone.
Both Teague and his demon froze at the scent.
A shadowkin jumped out of the murky corner . . . quickly followed by a second humanoid.
Motherfucker.
They didn’t give him a moment to react. One attacked instantly—hitting him with an orb of hell-acid that caught him right on the face—while the other vanished behind the row of lockers.
Gritting his teeth with the searing pain, Teague pitched three balls of hellfire right at his attacker’s chest. Within him, his demon went postal. He bolstered his mental defenses, not willing to let his beast take over this time. Why should it get to have all the fun?
He half-turned his body so that his back was against the lockers. If the other shadowkin thought it could come at him from behind, it was wrong.
As the first humanoid recovered from the hellfire orbs, Teague effortlessly lifted the bench and hurled it through the air. The bench whacked the shadowkin hard, sending its head whipping back as it promptly hit the floor. He might not be able to injure this breed with an everyday object, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t feel the pain from the impact.
Sure enough, the other humanoid appeared at the other end of the aisle, its white eyes laser-focused on him. But he was ready for it. The ball of hellfire he’d conjured sailed through the air with a whoosh of sound and crashed into its chest. He hurled two more, but the bastard lurched to the side, causing both orbs to smack the concrete wall behind it.
The bench scraped the floor loud as the first shadowkin shoved it aside and jumped to its feet. Then both shadowkin glared at Teague, each holding a black swirling orb in one hand.
Great.
Wicked fast, he tore the door off an open locker and slammed it up, using it as a shield against one orb while he deflected the other with a ball of hellfire. More orbs came his way, and he pulled the same move each time—shielding and deflecting.
It didn’t always work. Patches of burning skin soon blistered courtesy of both hellfire and hell-acid. And when a flaming orb smacked right into a still-healing wound on his thigh, reopening it, he felt his upper lip curl back.
