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“It’s just nice seeing you smile.” She shakes her head, grinning bigger.
“You’ve seen me smile before.” I frown.
Eden looks up at me, grin gone and replaced with a thoughtful furrowed brow. “No, I’ve seen you do kind of a half-smile thing when Knox makes a dumbass comment you don’t want him to know you think is funny and um… I’ve seen you grimace. That’s kinda like a scary smile, right? And—”
“I understand. I’m an irritable bastard.”
“Come on, Titan. You and the guys have been all work and no play since I started working for you. The search for the Keystone and the Relic Room has taken up every waking second you weren’t on the security beat. I know it’s important, but it’s just nice to see what Titan off duty looks like.”
“The Keystone isn’t just important, Eden. It’s everything. It is what we were created for. The Pull is constant.” I bark my words out more harshly than I mean to, and a grimace marks my face as I feel the Pull even now.
“There! That’s it.” Eden points excitedly at my face, practically jumping with excitement. “That’s the scary smile.”
I shake my head with a silent chuckle. “I miss when you were afraid of us.”
“She’s never been afraid of us, boss.”
I look up to see Rook calling out from the doorway of the library, tension holding him ridged from the top of his wings to his clawed feet. When I turn back to Eden, she is giving him a firm, thin-lipped smile, a sudden distance in her green eyes.
“Let me know if Julianna needs anything from me. Understand?”
“Got it.” Her lips turn up lightly, just at the corners, as she returns to her tablet.
By the time I enter the library, the brotherhood is restless. The long mahogany table in the center of the room is covered in magical tomes and a large map of the city of Los Angeles. The map is spread out in the middle of the table with various marks scrawled across the crisscrossing lines and landmarks. They are locations we have searched for the Keystone and found nothing, places where the Relic Room has appeared and then disappeared before we could arrive.
The walls of the library are stacked with ancient texts. A single wall at the far end is made up entirely of floor-to-ceiling windows, giving the room a view of the expansive downtown skyline and bringing in light to an otherwise dark space.
“Hello, Titan.” Drusila Flores, high priestess of the local coven, steps out from behind Knox. Petite even for a human, Drusila has long, dark, wavy hair and light brown skin. Her startling violet eyes and seemingly endless wardrobe of long, flowing dresses marked her as a witch before I ever sensed her power.
“Thank you for joining us, Dru.” I give her a firm smile and nod in her direction.
“Took you long enough.” Knox raises an eyebrow in my direction, his mouth curving into a smirk as he drops down into our custom-made monster-sized chairs.
“Don’t.” I glare at Knox as I take my seat at the head of the table. While the library is on the opposite side of the penthouse from my bedroom, almost everyone here has supernatural hearing. They heard exactly what Julianna and I were up to. I just hope Drusila did not.
“What? I can’t ask about our guest?” Knox leans back in his chair and crosses one clawed foot over another, resting them on the table, his wings casually draped over the back of the chair.
“A guest?” Drusila asks curiously. She sits down next to me, laying out what looks like a rolled-up map in front of her.
“Maybe more than a guest.” Knox laughs.
I let out a possessive snarl in Knox’s direction before I can realize what I’m doing. The memory of the soft, firm curve of Julianna’s ass is still imprinted on my palm, and the feel of her fingers sinking into my thigh lingers like the last bit of warmth from the sun’s rays before nightfall.
“Fine, fine.” He raises his hands in casual surrender upon seeing my face. “You win.”
“Can we get back to the matter at hand?” Stiel, ever the diplomat, calls from the other end of the table, several ancient texts stacked in front of him.
“Gods, I hope so,” Dredd murmurs from the corner of the library, not quite low enough to go unheard.
“If you have something to say, say it,” I snap, slamming my fist so hard on the table the books jump.
Dredd’s always been surly. He has more reason than most to be that way, so I’ve given him some amount of slack. But since the Keystone’s arrival in the city, he’s become much worse, and while I can take it, I won’t tolerate it being directed towards Julianna.
He lets out a forceful puff of air from his nose as he stalks out from the shadows of the library to plant his claws wide on the table. He glares at me. “I feel it. Don’t you?”
“The Pull? Yes, we all have.” I eye him and then the rest of my brothers. “It has taken years of working with Dru and the coven to get where we are now. We can all feel how close it is, not just you, Dredd. Nothing is going to impede our retrieval, no matter how long it takes—”
“The coven might know where the Relic Room is,” Dredd interrupts.
