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Jem opened his mouth, but Black raised a warning hand.

“Not another fucking word.”Black pointed at Jem. “You, especially. Or I’ll have you hit with a tranquilizer dart and thrown in a room until you can control yourself.”

Black didn’t wait for Jem’s reaction.

He focused back on the girl. His eyes remained unwaveringly on her face.

Unlike Nick, Black didn’t soft-pedal his words.

“Why did you come in here?” he asked, blunt. “What do you want with Nick?”

The girl tore her eyes off Jem. She looked faintly caught as she looked from Black to Miri. Her face flushed that pink color again.

Now she looked both embarrassed and angry.

“He’s mine,” she said.

A stubborn, immovable note entered her voice. She glared at Dalejem, as if daring him to disagree, or maybe challenging him openly.

“He’s fucking mine,” she repeated coldly.

22

THE BOYFRIEND

“You need to calm the fuck down,” Black growled. He glared at Jem, and now he made the warning in his eyes and voice overt. “You need tocalm the fuck down,brother. I don’t know what’s going on between you and that fucking vampire…”

Jem opened his mouth, but Black cut him off.

“…and I don’t give a shit. It’s none of my business, and frankly, I don’twantto know, not unless I have to. I’m your boss, not your shrink.” He glared at those pale green eyes with their violet rings. “But you need to hear me on this, Dalejem… from everything I’ve seen between the two of you these past few weeks, I’m with Nick. One hundred percent. Nick seems like the reasonable, sane one to me. He’s also the one who’s acting more or less the same as he always has. Whereas you’re acting like agaos-damned lunatic––”

“Excuse me? You just said––”

“I know what I said,” Black growled. “And I don’t want details. Or your reasons. Not unless there’s abuse involved, or some kind of manipulation, and believe me, I’ve got seerslooking at your light for both… and for venom addition. So far no one’s found anything.”

Jem’s face turned bright red. “You fucking––”

“I don’t care,” Black growled. “You’ve become a problem for me, so I’m dealing with it. You’ve no one to blame but yourself.”

“How about I just quit?” Jem snapped.

“Go ahead,” Black threw back without hesitation. “Fuck if I care. But it won’t change anything, Dalejem. I’m telling you, as a brother seer, how it looks from the outside. You’re acting like you’ve lost your mind, not to mention any reasonable control over your light. You’re acting like an immature, fixated adolescent with an insecurity problem… and as much as it pains me to admit it, that shit isbeneathyou, Jem.”

The older seer’s mouth opened again, his green eyes ice.

Black cut him off without a second thought.

“I know you left him out in the water at Santa Cruz,” he growled. “I know this because he had to call Kiks in the middle of the night for someone to go get him, and whileshepromised Nick she wouldn’t tell me about it, Jax told me plenty… mostly because he agrees with me that you’re acting like agaos-damned psycho and he doesn’t want you doing anything to Kiko, not to mention Nick… who most of us consider family.”

Fury filled those green eyes.

Before the handsome seer could voice it, Black raised his voice more.

“And don’t get mad at Nick. Did you hear me? He told Kiksnotto tell me, and she didn’t. His only other option would have been to spend the night in a hotel, given you’d taken his only ride home and fucked off togaos-knows-where and he can’t be out in the sunlight. He tried to rent a car, but what the fuck car rental company is open at two in the morning? If you didn’t want anyone to find out about that bullshit, you shouldn’t havebailed on him when it’s going to wake up my second and her very irritated boyfriend…”

Jem continued to glare at him.

Black sharpened his voice still more, enough to make Miri jump.