Page 123 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

I jerked at the unexpected pain on my shoulder and launched to sit up. A pink flush in the shape of two half-moons shone above my collarbone, the tiny curvatures his teeth had left forming a bite mark.

He hauled me back to the sheets between them and chuckled into my neck. “You know my choice. But you need sleep. If you can calm down, I will wake you up with me between your legs,” he murmured and kissed his bite.

“And me in your ass.” Zion squeezed the mentioned body part, kneading my cheek.

“Not one of you is touching my butt. I have a better idea. It involves your gift.” I peered up at Zion. “Can you teach me how to whiphim?”

He drew me closer, tangling his legs with mine. “Anything you want. Say the word and I’ll teach you.”

Gedeon had it coming for putting me on stage tonight.

40

ZION

Ignoring the deafening clang of the old metal hitting the beat-up vehicle as I slammed the driver’s door shut, I jerked my chin at Greyn coming up to greet us.

The blond man nodded in acknowledgement and paused to talk with a group in front of an apartment building, the mottled specs of paint here and there giving up the fact the dwelling had been dyed in cream and blue color blocks probably a hundred years ago or so. Damia’s compound occupied a similar territory to ours, with everyone settled in the ruins of some city from the past no one knew anything about.

“I hate these trips. Every time he drives, my bones shatter into pieces,” Sadira groused, stretching her arms above her head and wincing from how the movement pulled the muscle in her upper back she’d sprained during yesterday’s training with me and Ava. “They better have something good.”

“They should. There has to be a reason they called and asked for a visit,” Ryder said as he unloaded the few plastic crates of tech we’d brought with us from the backseat. “And you drive worse than him. The last time you did, I couldn’t sit for a week straight from how hard I’d hit my tailbone because you ran over a bump at full speed.”

“For the last time, it was anaccident. Like you’re better behind the wheel than me. You literally drove into a ditch a year ago,” Sadira pointed out, watching him stack the white crates on top of each other, pointedly not helping him out.

As fun as it was hearing them bicker, I strode over to greet Nelle as she peeked out of the entrance to the two-story house that she and Samuel had commandeered for their tech team.

“Zion.” Greyn clapped my shoulder as we approached Nelle. “Glad you could come on short notice.

Face-to-face meetings were our preferred option to discuss highly sensitive information. Though radio communications were encrypted, and the cities couldn’t listen in to what we were up to, we couldn’t decipher their chatter either. So we remained careful. Your enemy could crack one of your channels at any point and you wouldn’t realize. Or discover it too late.

“Hey!” Nelle looked me up and down. Her examination drew a frown on her tanned face, her low ponytail as messy as the pattern of dirt smudges on the red-brick wall she was leaning against. “Something’s not right with you. It’s making me uncomfortable.”

Samuel popped up out the door. “That’s because he’s not trying to flirt with you or me anymore.” Towering over Nelle, he threw an arm over her narrow shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “His dick is owned now.”

“Jealous?” I lowered my gaze to Samuel’s groin. “Because she will cut yours off if I tell her what you did that week you spent over at ours.”

Nelle ducked out from under Samuel and punched his chest. “You said it was the most boring week of your life. What did you do?” Her fists barreled into him as he retreated with raised hands. “Samuel,what the fuck did you do?”

“Right, Kali got the tattoo,” Greyn said, framed by the busy street swarming with people dressed in colorful clothes behindhim. “You know, Damia is out for you for not inviting her. Once she heard the news, she swore she’d make you pay.”

I ran a hand through my hair. “I’ll talk to her.” That might have been my mistake. I’d told Gedeon I would call and invite both Conall with his partners and Damia with her daughter, the exception being the latter would stay away from the hall that night. She was of age, but it would have been weird as hell to fuck in front of her. We all saw her as our little niece.

Sadira and Ryder approached us with the overflowing crates of electronics propped on their hips, and I held the door to Nelle’s and Samuel’s workshop open for them to pass.

“So what’s the deal?” I asked Greyn as we entered the main workroom, a vast open space with numerous shelves cascading down the walls, full of cardboard and plastic boxes brimming with various pieces of tech.

A large white table occupied the center, with numerous lights shining above it. Smaller desks scattered randomly around gave the illusion that the room was one massive circuit, the furniture serving as its parts and workers rushing back and forth as the signals traveling through the wires.

“Somehow, I have trouble believing you, Samuel.” Nelle plopped down in a seat at the central table with a loud thump. “Zion wouldn’t have mentioned me cutting your junk off—because believe me, I wouldn’t stop at your dick—for no reason.” She glared at her chosen partner sitting down beside her and throwing dirty looks my way.

The man hadn’t done anything. At all. Not a sniff of it. But Nelle didn’t know that. And the faithful bastard deserved to taste the foulness that had spilled out of his mouth about my dick. Only two people could have an opinion about it. Not counting myself, of course.

“There.” Greyn motioned to the two unoccupied chairs around a tiny square table under a window. He rummagedthrough the drawers and selected a tiny electronic piece sparkling in green, black, and golden flashes from the late autumn sun. “We figured them out. The microchips. We can program them remotely to give us access to pass Ardaton’s gates. Nelle thinks it should be possible to modify the software and apply it to Ilasall’s and Coriattus’ security systems, as the chips use similar programming. That’s why we called.”

Finally, some good news I could bring home. Kali had been spending hours holed up with Gedeon and me in his study, learning about our operations. Inevitably, the conversation would steer to the auctions, and she’d implore us to get Alora out. And every time we had to tell her we couldn’t yet, she’d awaken in the night drenched in cold sweat, shivering and nauseous.

But I bet this update would bring her some peace. We only had to find a way to collect more information about her friend. Her appearance, in addition to her name, was not enough to go on. Ilasall was too huge to sweep through the hundreds of residential buildings manually.