Reclaimed (Shadow Beast Shifters, #2)(15)

“No.”

One word, but it was clear that he would not change his mind. “Why not?”

“Strangers are not welcome here.”

“You let me be here,” I reminded him. More like forced me to live here, but the sentiment was the same.

He shook his head, those thick curls catching my attention before they settled again. “Don’t push me, Mera. She’ll have a room off the hall and will be perfectly safe.”

It didn’t make sense, but then again, so much of my relationship with Shadow didn’t. And maybe a tiny stupid girlie part of me liked that he’d let me into his private inner sanctum, when as far as I knew, no one other than his five friends—and two mists—had ever crossed that barrier.

I was slowly chipping away at him, and fuck, if that didn’t give me a sense of accomplishment I hadn’t felt before.

“Who are the two who know your weakness?” I asked him suddenly, and he jerked his head at the rapid change of subject. I didn’t take him by surprise a lot, but I had.

He laughed bitterly. “My sister and my mother. One who is my enemy, and the other I assume is dead.”

I grabbed his hand. “You will take your sister down. She stole from you, and it’s time for her to pay for it.”

Shadow’s face was darker than I’d ever seen, scarily dark, but he didn’t pull away. “She will pay. As will the shifters who hurt your Dannie.”

My voice was a shaky mess now. “Will she come back the same?” I asked, voicing a question that had been mentally freaking me out for some time.

Shadow released my hand, draping his arm around my shoulders, dragging me closer. “She’ll still be the Dannie you knew, even if she doesn’t look quite the same. You’ll feel her, though, and it will be comforting.”

He started to walk, mostly pulling me along for the ride.

“She’s my first priority after the Shadow Realm,” I told him. “Hopefully at that point, she’ll have had enough time to reform into Dannie again.”

He squeezed my shoulders but didn’t reply.

Needing to talk or my head would explode, I hurried to ask, “So Simone first and then we head into the Shadow Realm?”

“Food first,” he corrected. “You’re still too weak, and our journey into the realm isn’t going to be an easy one. We will have to go incognito, so minimal energy use. They cannot see us coming and have time to prepare.”

“Won’t they already be waiting, since the spell on the door has fallen?”

He shook his head. “We checked the door, and there’s no one waiting for us. Clearly, their arrogance is still firmly in place. A fact I told my sister would one day get her killed.”

He looked positively pleased by this preemptive thought coming to fruition.

This was Shadow’s scary face, and since it wasn’t directed at me, I could just enjoy the stark beauty of his features.

“Blood will be spilled,” he murmured, adding to the sexy serial killer vibe he was rocking.

Hard to believe that probably twenty-four hours ago I’d wanted to kill him, and now I found myself falling into an alliance like we were the best of friends. There was one truth I could never deny: I was stupidly obsessed with this dude. Since we were once again fighting on the same side, I wondered if I might truly fall for the one being I could never have.

Knowing my luck, the answer to that was a resounding yes.





8





A tray was already waiting for me when I sat down, courtesy of Shadow, who had disappeared to finalize shit before we left. Or maybe Angel had ordered it, since she dropped into the chair beside me not five minutes after I’d started to eat.

“Good,” she said, observing the classy way I shoved food into my mouth like I’d been starved for a month. “You need to fuel up as much as you can for the hard journey ahead.”

I chewed a few vegetables before swallowing my mouthful of stew. It was delicious, thick and hearty, and apparently needed for the hard journey ahead. “You could sugarcoat it for me,” I said with a sigh, stirring more of the dark broth. “Pretend we’re heading on vacation to a tropical island, where we’ll have cocktails and food brought to our lounger, while we sunbathe and swim in turquoise waters.”

Angel side-eyed me. “Been planning that vacation for a while, I see?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, there wasn’t much else I could do when I was a prisoner of Torma. Daydreaming about vacation destinations was my mental escape.”

She wrapped an arm around me. “Don’t worry. We’ll make it through the Shadow Realm, figure out your place in the world, and fit in a vacation to—”

Angel was cut off when someone screamed my name. As a reflex, her huge amber wings sprung to life as she spun to see who was causing the commotion.

I didn’t have to look. I knew that voice as well as I knew my own. Pushing to my feet, I was in the aisle, sprinting toward my friend. Simone and I collided, our hug lasting for what felt like days.

“Oh my freaking god,” she said, bouncing me in her arms, her thick blue-black hair flying around us. “This place is unbelievable. You must have been in heaven, Miss Book Lover, living in that incredible-as-fuck library.” Her words spilled out in a rush. “And there are so many other supernaturals, and worlds, and beings, and Shadow Beast lives here…”