Page 5 of A Token of Blood and Betrayal (Kennedy Rain #4)

Awareness spiked through me. Blake. I hadn’t seen him in three days, hadn’t heard his voice or felt the air warm and shift with his movement. Heat tightened low in my stomach. It didn’t matter if we were inside the Null or outside of it, when he was near, my body became attuned to his presence.

It took effort to school my features, to let only my frustrations with Nora, Jared, Canyon—my whole life really—bleed into my expression. I shouldn’t be surprised Blake was there. He had a gift for showing up when I was running out of the duct tape patching my life together.

“Now is not a good time, Blake.” I kept my gaze on Nora. She hadn’t given any indication she’d seen Blake approaching. Even now, she remained focused on me with that familiar, infuriating arrogance.

“It’s never a good time for you.” Blake nudged Deagan with his shoe. “Is he dead?”

“No.” My response was curt and cold—a win considering my body’s reaction to him—but I made the mistake of breathing in too deeply. His rugged, earthy scent filled my lungs, promising a run through a moonlit forest followed by a tumble in silk bedsheets.

“He looks dead,” Blake said.

“He’s not.” I still didn’t look at him. If I met his eyes or saw a curve of amusement on his mouth, on those lips I’d tasted and kissed, he’d pull me off-balance. That couldn’t happen. Too many other, more important things needed my attention.

“Jared brought him?” he asked. I felt his gaze.

“Why do you care?” Nora demanded before I could reply. At least I wasn’t the only one she was snapping at.

My peripheral vision caught Blake’s shoulders lifting. “Just wondering if he was Jared’s departing gift.”

Blake’s voice was a drawl in contrast to Nora’s sharp words, maybe because his reply wasn’t really directed at her.

He was analyzing me as if I was the reason Deagan was alive.

The answer was yes, but Blake couldn’t know that.

Only Jared, Christian, and Melissa had been in the underground chamber when I’d shoved a blade into Arcuro’s back and then fired bullet after bullet into the vicinity of his heart.

Plus the idea that a human could kill an Aged vampire was pretty much unfathomable.

I barely believed it myself. Blake was just throwing out accusations to see if I’d reveal something I shouldn’t.

Drawing in a slow, deep breath, I focused my thoughts on Garion, on Deagan and Canyon.

I made myself remember Shelli’s death in the woods and Jasmine’s body outside my door, and I almost let myself unlock my hurt and anger at the loss of my parents, but once that door opened, it became too hard to shut.

As ready as I could make myself, I finally met Blake’s too-perceptive dark brown eyes. “Do you have a reason for being here?”

“It’s good to see you too.” His mouth quirked. The polite tone was a cover though. He was testing me, searching for weaknesses in the wall I’d built between us. When I didn’t react, he reached into his back pocket.

And took out an envelope.

My composure vanished. First Jared and now Blake? “You can’t be serious.”

His smile turned genuine. I’d given him the reaction he wanted, damn it.

“It’s too easy to get under your skin.” He winked at me. Then he moved his hand to the left to give the envelope to Nora.

“You…” I struggled to find words to stab him with. Something clever. Something memorable. Something that would erase his damn grin, but all I managed was a flat, uninspired, “I hate you.”

“I don’t have to be outside the Null to know that isn’t true,” he said, his voice deepening in that quiet, confident way that made me want him to move closer.

Nora muttered something under her breath, then snatched the envelope from Blake’s hand, as if she hoped it would slice him on the way out. I rooted for the paper cut, but Blake didn’t even flinch.

Nora pulled out a crisp black stationery card, and her gaze went from icy to a lethal subzero.

“What is it?” I asked.

Her eyes tracked left to right, left to right, as she read. Then she shoved the card back into the envelope. “An invitation to return to the pack. Now that Jared is ‘out of the picture.’”

Ouch. That had to hurt, especially considering the encounter she’d just had with her husband. Did he know he was making a jab at her insecurities?

“It’s a good offer,” Blake said. “You need the pack.”

She faced him with the same confident arrogance she’d wielded against me since high school. “That’s why he sent you. He thinks you can convince me to come back.”

“He misses you.”

“He barely saw me when I was pack.”

Blake didn’t argue. Just watched her a moment before he exhaled as if he’d known this would be her reaction.

“Your absence is noticeable, Nora.” Blake’s words were barely audible, but that didn’t make them less effective. When a strong, dominant man softened his voice for you, it made you feel seen, like you mattered enough for someone powerful to let you in.

“There’s a hole in the tapestry,” he continued. “It’s bigger than any we’ve had before. Losing you has weakened us.”

I’d never heard a pack’s connection referred to as a tapestry before. It was a good metaphor though. The wolves were linked by magical threads. The tighter the weave, the stronger the pack, and the higher a wolf was in the hierarchy of dominance, the more acutely their absence would be felt.

Very deliberately, Nora held Blake’s gaze. She lifted the envelope and ripped it in half.

Then she ripped it again. After one final angry tear down the middle, she tossed the pieces toward his face.

Blake’s mouth flattened as the rejected invite fluttered to the ground. A clench of his jaw, then he looked at me. “You’re a bad influence.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed out loud. “Stop bringing messages no one wants to read.”

His wry smile returned, and of course my body reacted again. Damn him. Why did he have to have a sense of humor? Why couldn’t he be an asshole all the time?

“Make sure your alpha gets the message,” Nora bit out. Then she pivoted to walk away.

“Hey,” I called. “What about Deagan?”

She didn’t glance over her shoulder or slow down. “I don’t help people who don’t trust me.”

The words were a direct hit—no drama, no shouting. Just a clean strike that let guilt hook its claws into me again. I was making the right choices—keeping Garion’s identity secret, not signing Jared’s list—so why did I feel like everything I did betrayed the people I considered friends?

“What’s that about?” Blake asked.

“It’s nothing.” I stared down at Deagan so Blake wouldn’t read my expression. Maybe after I talked to Garion, I could talk to Nora. I’d need help breaking or altering my bargain with Canyon.

One problem at a time. First up was the one right in front of me. How was I going to get Deagan to a room? I clearly couldn’t manage him on my own, but I didn’t want Blake to—

He hoisted Deagan over his shoulder.

—volunteer.

Damn it.

“You delivered your message,” I said. “You can go. Someone else will carry him.”

He made a big deal of scanning the lobby. “I don’t see anyone rushing to help.”

“That’s because you’re here. When you leave—”

“Where are we taking him?” The drawl left his voice. He was speaking as a dominant werewolf now, someone who was used to people doing his bidding without question.

My jaw clenched. I wasn’t one of his wolves. I could have argued, probably would have if I wasn’t worried about drawing attention to the real reason I wanted him gone.

I sighed. Alone with Blake. Just what I didn’t need right now.

“This way,” I muttered, leading the way to the lobby’s back door. I held it open. “This will get awkward if he wakes up.”

Blake gave me a casual shrug. “Then I’ll just have to put him back to sleep, won’t I?”

“Not helpful. He isn’t doing well.” I followed Blake outside.

“So of course you have to fix him,” he said.

Irritation scraped across my skin. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Where were you Thursday night?”

“Does it matter?” I countered.

“It might.” He held my gaze. If we were outside the Null, he would more than see through my defensiveness. He’d not only know for sure I’d been at the compound, he’d likely sense I was hiding an even bigger secret.

“I was here,” I said.

His jaw clenched. Look at that, he was the one irritated now. “You’re claiming you were here when the majority of Arcuro’s clan showed up to attack Satine, who wasn’t even in Tennessee at the time?”

“You don’t have to believe me.”

His irritation morphed into anger. Good.

Maybe he’d start acting like the werewolf I’d met a few months ago—the one who’d made my life hell with fake health and safety inspections, an anonymous plagiarism report, and a strategic redecorating of my apartment’s parking lot with a thousand pairs of unicorn underwear. Seriously, why did I even like him?

“Care to step out of the Null and make me believe you?” His voice was a low, rumbling challenge.

“You have a vampire over your shoulder.” I was all polite logic and pure provocation.

“I’d be happy to deposit him in the deep end of the pool.

” Blake’s steady gaze and don’t-test-an-alpha attitude warned me not to push him further.

We still stood at The Rain’s back door. The pool was a pitch-black abyss twenty yards away, unlit, unmonitored, and definitely not up to code.

He might toss Deagan in just to get the hotel cited again.

“I didn’t think you were someone who believed in rumors,” I said.

“When it comes to you disregarding your safety, they tend to be facts.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t worry. I’m very aware that I’m a fragile little human in a world of powerful paranorms.”

He snorted. “And that fact keeps you from putting yourself in harm’s way.”

“If you’re here to lecture me, I really don’t need it right now.” I turned to storm across the terrace.

Blake followed. “You aren’t getting one from Nora and Jared, so somebody has to talk some sense into you.”

“Oh, I’m getting it from both of them. Trust me.”

“You’re going to get hurt.”