“Yeah, that stays on.”
“My hands have been cuffed together all day. Do you have any idea how painful that is?”
“Yes, which is why your hands won’t be cuffed together.”
She shot him a questioning look and he walked over, clasping the other gauntlet on his own wrist.
“What-?” she snapped. And then, in a more irritated tone, “Oh come on!”
“Don’t worry, I don’t snore,” he teased, getting onto the bed and pulling her with him.
She reluctantly crawled over to the other side, movement awkward with one arm, as far as she could without wrenching her wrist.
Reykon used his other hand to turn off his lamp, darkening the room except for the faint city glow, coming from behind the sheer curtains.
He stole a glance at Robin’s face, her delicate features profiled beautifully in the shadows. Her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, deep in thought.
“You should try to get some sleep,” he whispered. He had the harder job of the two of them; strongbloods operated on two hours of sleep a night, meaning the other six were spent in utter boredom, laying still in the bed, or staying silent in the room. But still, too many of them tried to escape during night for him to not take adequate precautions.
She ignored him.
He turned back, staring at the ceiling and wondering what she was thinking about.
After a few moments, she broke the silence with a whisper soft enough that he could have missed it.
“God,” she muttered, “I can’t believe that I let you into my home…”
He let out a long breath. “You shouldn’t beat yourself up about it. I’m trained to do this. Even if you had turned me away, or refused to leave the bar with me, it wouldn’t have made a difference. It was a matter of when, not if.”
She swallowed, hard, like she was trying to compose herself. “What happened?”
He turned slightly, a questioning expression.
“… after you drugged me?” Her voice cracked on the last word.
“Nothing happened,” he assured her. “I promise.”
“I can’t trust you,” she whispered bitterly.
“You’re right.”
Another pause drifted, with neither of them close to sleep.
“You could have,” she said with a measure of loathing. “I mean before you drugged me. I would have let you.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, I could have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You didn’t know who I was,” he answered. “It would have been a violation.”
She scoffed harshly. “Oh, and that matters to you?”
“It’s one thing to do what I have to do because I’m obligated to my employer. It’s another thing if I take advantage of someone after intentionally misleading them.”
“That’s an honorable moral code,” she threw back. “Does that help you justify what you do for a living?”
“I have no choice in what I do for a living.”
“You always have a choice.”
“Some of us don’t have that luxury,” he stated dryly.
She turned, her eyes still bright in the near darkness, drilling into his. When she spoke, all trace of anger had melted into naked, vulnerable fear. “What’s going to happen to me?”
He felt a wrench inside his chest, a feeling he’d never experienced with an assignment before.
A dangerous feeling.
He forced himself to remember the context of the situation, and the gravity of his thoughts. “We’ll talk about that tomorrow.”
She remained there, staring at him, and he turned, closing his eyes and drifting into a shallow sleep.
Lucidia
Clay, her werewolf friend and closest connection to Portland, was having fun with this conversation. She could hear the smile in his voice as he drew the negotiation out. “I’m sorry, Lucie, slow down. What did you need me to do, again?”
Lucidia let out a harsh breath and gave her voice a menacing edge. “Don’t call me that.”
“Sure thing, Lucille,” he teased.
She ground her jaw together. “I just need you to track a strongblood for me.”
“Well, nothing would make me and the pack happier, but I need a pretty good reason to rally the troops. Some motivation, for example.”
Clay was a werewolf, which meant he was playful, carefree, and annoyingly laid back about everything but the history and respect of his pack. While irritating, they were highly skilled trackers, and Clay’s pack in particular still owed House Xander a debt.
The werewolves had recently been involved in a little tissy that had turned into a civil war – on one side, the traditionalists, who fought to keep the packs in rigid commitment from the matriarchal bloodline, and on the other, the progressionists, those who believed you could choose your own pack regardless of family affiliation.
When that had all broken out, the progressionist werewolves had turned to the vampires for help, because they were already partial allies from one of the wars on casters (witches), which had happened a little earlier and deepened the divides in werewolf society. When the vampires agreed to assist reform, strongbloods from all the allied Houses had been sent to take on strategic tasks for the werewolves.
Lucidia had actually been part of the group of ten assassins that ended the civil war.
It was about three years ago, when strongbloods had silently infiltrated each of the great packs and assassinated their alphas and all bloodline offspring. Since their entire argument rested on the fact that the alpha position had belonged to one family and would for all of time, their position in the war soon deteriorated, and the progressionist wolves overcame opposition with ease.
She’d worked closely with Clay Brooks, the young pup in a substantial pack whose territory spanned pretty much all of Washington and into Idaho and was now the largest voluntary wolf pack in history.
But even still, the link between werewolves and vampires hadn’t been without difficulty; the only group that hated vampires more than werewolves were the strongbloods (slavery does that to a person), with casters coming in a close third simply because they hated everybody.
“What motivation?” she hissed.
He gave a deep chuckle, and it brought her back to their time together, sitting around a campfire in the midst of a battle
