Page 3 of A Token of Blood and Betrayal

“I do not kid.”

I shot back to my feet.“You think Deagan is going to be happy hekilledpeople?”

The skin around Jared’s eyes tightened.“It was a figure of speech, Ms.Rain.They live.”

The tension in my shoulders eased.My irritation, however, did not.“So you exaggerate and use euphemisms, but you don’t kid?”

He answered with a stare so impassive most people would claim he didn’t care about anything, let alone Deagan’s fate.Those people would be wrong.Jared had suppressed his emotions for so long, and he was so locked into the rules and traditions of the paranormal world, he no longer remembered how to be vulnerable.

“You need to clean him up,” I said, my voice softening.“Give him real food.Treat him like he’s human.”

“That is why I have brought him here.”

Well, damn.I’d walked into that one.It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help Deagan, but I wasn’t sure if I had the capacity to add him to my responsibilities.I was fighting for The Rain’s independence, and that was pissing off the powerful paranorms who wanted me to just sit down and shut up.I also had a murderer to identify.Someone had killed Jasmine, the first werewolf to sign her name to my guest list, and left her body in the hallway outside my third-floor residence.

And then I had my new catastrophe.What was I going to do about Canyon and the token?

I looked over my shoulder.Sometime in the past few minutes, Garion had slipped away.

“Deagan is a weakness,” Jared said.“There is nowhere else I can take him.”

Heavy.That’s how I felt lately.Jared’s words draped over my shoulders like a metal shawl.I hadn’t built enough muscle to carry around the weight of my responsibilities.

I turned back to Jared.“Don’t you have dark houses spread across the country?”

“They are outside the Null, and Deagan is the only vampire I would trust to take care of… Deagan.”

The corner of my mouth lifted.Then lowered as I took in Deagan’s pale face and cracked lips.“Is he dangerous?”

“He is weak.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I would not have brought him if I thought your life was at risk.”

Probably true.I was the last Rain.Most of the paranormal world believed my life was linked to the existence of the Null.“What about the staff?What about Christian and Astrid and—”

“Look who deigned to show up.”

Jared’s gaze shot behind me, and I turned to watch Nora stride toward us, her heeled boots clapping against the cement now that she’d left the lobby’s thin, carpeted floor.

“Nora.”Jared’s voice came alive when he said her name.The way his eyes took her in, the way he stepped toward her… His desire was almost tangible.I envied it, envied them.

I do want you, Blake had said in the cabin in the woods.It’s a problem.

A huge damn problem and one I’d attempted to solve by shutting him down when I’d last seen him.I’d pushed him away before then.Each time was more difficult than the last, but after the mountain?I was trying to convince myself those kisses hadn’t meant anything, that I’d only initiated them to keep him human and sane, and that anything he felt for me was just a fleeting infatuation.

And anything I felt for him?It had to be the same.I couldn’t notice the similarity between the way Blake looked at me on the mountainside and how Jared looked at Nora now.I was a Rain, a human, and Blake was an agent of one of the most powerful alphas on the planet.

An alpha who would kill him if we had anything more than a businesslike relationship.

I pushed Blake’s image from my mind and focused on Jared, who suddenly stopped his approach three steps away from Nora.

“Did you plan to ditch Deagan and run?”Nora’s voice was as icy as the look she speared him with.That was… unexpected.

“No,” Jared said.

Nora crossed her arms.The posture wasn’t defensive.It was confident and condemning, a warning that Jared obviously didn’t get, but I was beginning to.Days ago, he’d left The Rain to save my ass, and he’d been fighting for control of the compound ever since.As far as I knew, he hadn’t called Nora.She likely felt ignored, which was something werewolves, especially the more dominant ones, didn’t tolerate.