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He couldn’t tell if it was curiosity, pent up from years in that tank, or sheer Alphaness, needing to question everyone and everything. Needing order in the world.
Ithan put a hand on Sigrid’s elbow to alert her of his presence, but again she flinched. Ithan backed away a step, hands up as the opal dealer watched warily. “Sorry.”
She didn’t like being touched. She’d only let him touch her to wash her hair that first night, when she’d had no idea how to do it.
Ithan motioned her to walk back toward the males, and she fell into step beside him, a healthy distance away. Most wolves needed touch—craved it. Had the instinct been robbed from her by those years in the tank?
It made it hard to be annoyed with her when he thought about it like that.
“How do you get used to it?” Sigrid asked over the hiss of cooking meat and bartering shoppers. Behind her, the sprites were still hovering by the array of opals, exclaiming over the stones. How the three sprites had adapted so quickly to this strange, open world was beyond him. They’d been trapped by the Astronomer, too, locked in his rings.
Ithan asked, “Used to what?”
Sigrid peered at her hands, her thin body beneath the sweats. Passing shoppers noted her—him—and gave them a wide berth. “Feeling like you’re stranded in a rotting corpse.”
He blinked. “I, ah …” He couldn’t imagine himself in her shoes, suddenly a body of flesh and blood and bone after the weightless years in the isolation tank. “You just need time.”
Her eyes lowered. It didn’t seem to be the answer she was looking for.
“Sigrid,” he said again. “You’re … you’re doing great.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?” she asked.
“That’s the name Sasa chose for you,” Ithan said, offering a friendly smile.
“Why do I need a name? I’ve lived this long without one.”
“An Alpha should have one. A person should have one. The Astronomer let you take the Drop—you’ll be alive for centuries.”
When pressed, she’d revealed that she’d somehow made the Drop in the isolation tank. She couldn’t tell him when or how, but he’d been relieved to hear she had that protection.
“I don’t want to talk about the Drop.” Her voice was flat, dead.
“Neither do I.” He would have liked some answers about what she’d experienced, but not now. Not when they’d reached the three waiting males. The sprites, finally emerging from the depths of the opal stall, raced over, three plumes of flame streaming across the bone-dry warehouse.
“So, do we go knock?” Flynn asked, pointing to the metal, vault-like door at the top of the stairs. The entrance to the Viper Queen’s private lair.
Marc caught Ithan’s eye. Had he explained to Sigrid that Marc would escort her home?
Ithan cringed. No, he hadn’t.
Marc glared. Coward, the leopard’s look seemed to say. But he tensed, going still. “Stay quiet.”
The others obeyed, the two Fae males reaching for the guns at their sides. The Meat Market bustled on unawares, selling and trading and feeding, and yet …
Marc’s tawny eyes scanned the warehouse, the skylights. He sniffed.
Ithan did the same. As shifters, their senses were sharper than those of the Fae.
From the doorway behind them, the blend of smells from the open night leaked in, the reek of the sewers beyond …
And the scent of converging wolves.
3
“I don’t know what language the tattoo is in,” Bryce insisted. “My friend got it inked on me when I was blackout—”
“Do not lie,” Rhysand warned with soft menace. He’d kill her. Whatever the language was, it was apparently so bad that it might as well say Stick knife here.
