Alterant (Belador #2)(34)

“I’ll concede that you have a point, but why are you so angry with me? What do you want from me?”

She scowled. “What do I want? For you to carry out my orders for the mind probe and deliver me the head of that traitor. And for you to accept that I have a responsibility to the Beladors. It’s best we stop pretending that our relationship will ever work out so that we may both move on with our lives.”

He heard her message loud and clear this time, every word slashing what they’d shared in the past to pieces.

“You got it, Your Highness.” He couldn’t enter without her invitation, but he could sure as hell leave without her permission. He lifted his hands and withdrew his hologram from the castle in the brittle seconds before she could dismiss him.





ELEVEN




She should have let Tristan kill her.

Evalle sat on the fern-covered ground, knees propped up, facing the tangled jungle growth ten feet away that had been ripped to shreds and beaten to pieces by a beast. Tristan. The same Tristan-beast that stood glaring down at her with the promise of reprisal in his hollow black eyes.

The only thing preventing him from killing her was that invisible spellbound wall between them, which he’d failed to destroy in the past three hours.

Sunrise had to be coming soon, even though it was hard to tell with this dense cover of greenery and thick clouds constantly shedding rain and holding the dark close. At this point, she honestly didn’t care if her skin fried.

Like fatback on a hot skillet, as her Nightstalker buddy Grady would say.

Evalle had no way back to Atlanta, no weapon and no ally here.

Tristan turned away and made two steps when the air around him distorted, the way heat warped away from an explosion. His body started changing, shrinking from the ten-foot-tall creature to a just-over-six-foot human, arms and legs returning to normal size.

Which meant his jeans no longer fit.

They fell down around his feet, then he stepped out of them and walked away as naked as the day he was born.

She stretched her neck, looking for him, then gave up.

Why would he come back, when he couldn’t get his hands on her? He’d left her dagger right where he’d kinetically stuck it in the ground—inside his protected area.

Probably using her dagger as bait to lure her back inside.

Evalle dropped her head onto her arms, which were crossed over her knees. Failure would be easier to accept if no one else paid the price but her. She didn’t want to be locked away like Tristan, but at this point she’d accept that over leaving Brina to face down the Tribunal.

Not to mention disappointing the entire Belador race, including Tzader and Quinn, who had to be out fighting Alterants.

Now she was letting down all humans as well.

“Thought you wanted to talk.”

Tristan? Evalle jerked her head up and there he was, still inside his area, but now he wore a pair of khaki shorts with pockets everywhere. His body was clean, his blond hair slicked back as if he’d taken a quick dip in water.

And his eyes were chameleon green again.

“Yes, I do want to talk.” She pushed to her feet, dusting off her mud-crusted jeans. Something bit her neck. She slapped at the bug and brought back a bloody smudge on her palm.

Just great. Vampire bugs.

Tristan moved forward and she took a step back.

But this time he didn’t ram his body against the invisible force keeping him walled in. He sat on the ground and leaned against a gigantic tree that appeared to be growing half in and half outside his prison. His left arm pushed against a flat surface she couldn’t see, which must be the wall of the enclosure.

If he wanted to kill her, he could have done it inside his area. Maybe he wanted some company after all, but she wasn’t stepping back inside with him to test that theory.

In a show of camaraderie, she eased over and slid down on the left side of Tristan against the same tree. But she kept a few inches of separation from him even if he couldn’t touch her.

What do you say to a man you’d sent back to hell? “How you doing, Tristan?”

He ignored her, looking up into the canopy of tree cover. His lips moved with whispered words she couldn’t hear. She waited for him to say something to her next, but he sat quietly for a few minutes, then a monkey high above them screeched.

Tristan couldn’t leave his area, but any animal could.

She tensed and glanced up in time to see a yellow bomb falling at them.

Evalle dove away to her left.

Tristan didn’t even flinch.

He caught a large bunch of bananas that filled his hands. Snapping one free, he placed the rest of them on his right and said, “So what do you want?”

Could he direct an animal on her side of the wall to do his bidding, too? Like sending a predator to get her?

She sat back up and kept an eye on her surroundings while she considered how to answer him. What was the point in searching for a diplomatic way to put this when she’d already told him the same thing once? “I was sent here to find the three escaped Alterants.”

Tristan bit the banana and smiled briefly around each chew. “You ask Brina where she had them caged?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Evalle could see no reason to shade the truth, not if she had any hope of Tristan answering her questions honestly. “Because the Tribunal forbade my asking her and she’s sworn to secrecy about the Alterants for some reason.”