“No. I see it on your face. You know what I’m talking about.”
“I know what my orders are,” he insisted.
“The orders don’t matter.”
Reykon felt a wave of anger overtake him. “How can you say that? Have you forgotten our place in the world? The orders are all that matter for us. If we stop obeying them, they’ll just kill us and be done with it. Or, worse, they’ll start treating us like blood slaves.”
“Like how Magnus is going to treat Robin?” she fired back, eyes blazing.
A stab of rage ran through him at that thought, of the images that shot through his head: gray, drained bodies and terrified humans. He’d delivered many humans to Magnus. He’d walked them down the long aisle, while all of the other vampires watched with predatory eyes. He’d felt their shaking, trembling fear under his grasp, having to drag them to the person that would slowly drain the life out of them.
Reykon pictured the color draining from Robin’s brilliant blue eyes. But even though the thought of it enraged him, he couldn’t face the consequences of his rebellion.
“I can’t disobey Magnus.”
“You cannot bring her to him.”
He was wounded by her insistence. She was asking him to choose between kin and master. It wasn’t a fair proposition. “I have no interest in losing my head for your past mistakes. It was your fault for disobeying, and now, you’ve made your bed.”
“Don’t you get it?” she snapped. “I don’t care about me! I’m dead anyway.”
He froze, watching her face for any signs of a lie. There were none. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know,” she spat, her teeth grinding. “I don’t care that I broke the law, I don’t care about what’s going to happen to me. The important thing is that Robin must be protected.”
He shook his head. “Nothing can protect her from Magnus.”
“You can.”
“How can you even ask me to do that?”
“She’s affecting you. I can see it. You don’t want to take her to him, you don’t want her to die.”
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” he said.
Lucidia crouched, ready in a fighting position. “I won’t let you have her.”
Reykon tensed too, hand tightening on his dagger. A flicker of movement from behind a tree caught his attention, just as the other three strongbloods emerged, covered in blood, and closed in on Lucidia. She whipped around and readied herself.
Reykon backed away, just in time for her to shoot another glare at him.
He saw the anger in her eyes.
He also saw fear. But it wasn’t fear for her own life, faced with three trained assassins. Even in the face of her situation, it was fear for Robin’s circumstances.
Reykon’s head was still swimming from the strange encounter as he ripped himself away and started for the cabin. Robin was still in there with the wolves, and she was his priority.
Robin
The inside of the cabin was pitch black. Jax and Sonny had seemed to sober up on a dime, now securing the perimeter of the room. In an instant, they’d gone from jackass frat boys to experienced hunters.
Robin’s own head was swimming, her fear heightened from the adrenaline that had flooded her system.
Waiting in the cabin, knowing that Reykon was somewhere out there, had given her the distinct feeling that she was a sitting duck with a scope trained on her.
Her eyes darted to the table, where the pistol glinted in pale moonlight.
She ran over to it, and picked it up with a firm, determined grip. Her finger was close to the trigger, but not yet curled around it. She didn’t trust her reflexes to not shoot Carrie or Tucker. Wherever they are… They’d been trapped out there with Reykon, and he didn’t seem like the type of person to leave loose ends laying around.
She slowed her frantic breathing and waited for an attack.
Sonny was the first to speak. “Gotcha,” he hummed, eyes trained on the window.
A moment later, the men in front of her began to transform, shifting right before her eyes. Fur sprouted along their necks, their faces. Their backs arched out, elongating. The clothes that had once fit loosely now stretched, popping off like they were made of Velcro and falling to shreds on the ground. Within a few seconds, their bones and muscles had changed, their bodies now longer and taller, their faces now those of vicious wolves. Their eyes glowed pure gold against the dark room. The man that had been Sonny was now a wolf with rust colored fur and let out a vicious growl. It sent a shiver through her, and she took a couple of steps back.
She knew the threat was outside, but she couldn’t help the feeling of terror at the wolves standing a few feet away from her.
Robin steadied herself and trained the gun on the door.
For a moment, everything was silent.
Then, from behind her, she heard a familiar voice. “Hello there,” Reykon said softly.
Robin whipped around. In the time that she’d reacted, the wolves had already closed the distance across the room.
She lost sight of Reykon in the tangle of fur.
Snarls and snapping teeth filled the room, and Robin searched the space, eyes struggling to adjust in the dark. She backed up, putting herself between the wolves and the door. Her eyes flicked to it. She could try to make a run for it, but-
A whimper sounded out from the other side of the room. Robin saw Jax, in wolf form, now on the ground. The wolf that Sonny had turned into now gnashed his teeth viciously and charged at Reykon, who was crouched in position, ready to attack.
A bolt of fear ripped through her as she imagined what Sonny would do to him.
Reykon ducked down at the last moment, curling in on himself and catching Sonny’s underbelly with a mean, razor sharp blade. The wolf let out a bellow of pain and crashed to the ground, slamming against the far will with
