Page 52 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

Damia came up to my side. “Remember when we built a fort out of pillows and blankets between the trees, but then it started pouring and Rama yelled at us for getting her bedsheets all muddy?”

Flanking me on my left, Conall clapped my shoulder. “And Adan calmed her down, only to infuriate her more by later joining us to fight the monster army together. It took us like an hour to defeat them. I can still feel how my sweater was plastered to me from the rain. My moms threatened to never let me out again from how bad I was shivering half the night.”

It had been years since I last heard my parents’ names. Our trio had spent our childhoods playing kings of our land—the yard at the back of my parents’ house—and ruling over our imaginary subjects.

It was different back then. Simpler times. Climbing the trees and jumping off the low-hanging branches had been all we’d cared about.

Yet our childhoods had predicted our lives. Set us up to become the leaders of our compounds—kingdoms of sorts.

“You think your moms were bad? My own hid mine and their pillows and bedsheets every morningfor a weekto avoid a repeat incident,” I shared, as Damia and I trailed Conall leading us along a street in his compound.

Damia rubbed her left elbow. “I remember that week.”

Having nothing to do, we had launched a race to see who could climb to the top of the maple tree first and a thinner branch had broken, sending her into a free fall to the ground and fracturing her bone.

“My elbow popped for a year after. It still does sometimes. But it was worth it.” Her laughter boomed at my disapproval. “Oh, come on, my plaster cast was cool. While I was asleep, you yourself drew a picture a ten-year-old shouldn’t have known about.” She shook her head, the familiar movement recalling another memory. You could have the most sensitive ears, and still, she would manage to creep up and jump you unexpectedly. She had enjoyed scaring the shit out of us when we were kids way too much. And then had laughed, shaking her head just like she did now.

Catching Conall’s look, I revealed, “It was actually him.”

“It wasn’t,” Damia said in disbelief, and punched his shoulder. “Was it actuallyyou?”

“Hey!” He rubbed the spot she had hit. “You said we could draw whatever we wanted.”

“Not a couple having sex! We were godsdamn kids, Conall. I spent twenty minutes in a bathroom, scrubbing my cast with a toothbrush to smudge the drawing enough to become unrecognizable before I dared to return home. How did you even come up with the image?”

Conall grinned. “I found the drawing in the drawer where our history teacher kept confiscated things and copied it.”

Damia shook her head full of cornrows ending at her nape. “You went snooping in our teacher’s things at school?”

“Wasn’t my first time,” he proudly stated, then muttered to me, “Twenty-two years, man. I thought you’d take our secret to the grave.”

The rubber soles of my boots absorbed the pokes of tiny rocks scarcely dotting the sidewalk as we neared the bustling corner of the street, Conall’s people rushing in and out of the exit to the five-story concrete building, identical to the street full of them. Most likely, they were taking care of the last preparations to welcome both me and Ezra, Damia, and her second-in-command, Greyn, and our teams for the annual leadership meeting. Why give the three cities more opportunities to take out all the leadership at once than needed?

“You still owe me a favor for taking the blame, by the way,” I pointed out, wiggling my toes in my boots. Summer neared its end, but the blistering heat seemed to not have reached the bottom of its well. I grinned at Conall cursing me out under his breath, and asked Damia, “How’s your daughter?”

“All grown up. She’s taken an interest in what we do and shadows me constantly.” She sighed. “I hate having Nara live in this world. It’s better than life at Ardaton but, you know, it’s not the best.”

Nara had to be what, eighteen, nineteen, now? Damia had taken in a nine-year-old under her wing after her family had perished. I had admired Damia since long before the day, but the care she had shown for a stranger, a short kid with a bird’s nest on her head and a foul mouth, had made me see Damia as the strongest one of us. I was too selfish for that. Too cold. I would have given the child away to our schools and forgotten about her the next day.

“A new leader in the making,” Conall declared. Noticing Damia’s grimace, he patted her shoulder. “Nothing you can do. With you as her teacher, she’s bound to be great.”

Damia elbowed him. “Compliments, compliments. You never change.”

“I heard he did. A man who had sworn to never have a family found three others to settle down with.” I leaped aside, pushing Damia in Conall’s way and chuckling at his attempt to smack me. Ryder had brought back interesting news from his most recent visit to Conall’s compound, and I was not missing a chance to taunt the man. He could count this as his childhood favor repaid.

“Stop snitching on me, man,” he grumbled. Throwing his light brown and intricate braid to fall along his spine, he released a heavy sigh. “I was hoping for it to be a surprise. We decided it ourselves only a month ago. Who told you?”

“I protect my sources, Conall.” I evaded answering him, taking a long step over a pothole on the edge of the cracked concrete sidewalk. Knowing him, it would irk him to no end, not having the answer to who spilled his secret.

“So?” Damia halted in front of the double-door entrance, her dark arms crossed over her chest. “Is someone going to tell me what the hell Gedeon knows and I don’t?”

Trying to withstand the compulsion Damia exuded, Conall scratched his jaw under a thick but short beard, avoiding her gaze. But once her eyes had turned to slits, you either did as you were told or had to be ready to pay hell. The one she had mentioned. Defeated, he admitted, “We’re getting married next summer.”

Weddings were a rare celebration. Building a family in our world meant non-ceasing danger. It could easily ruin you. And if you stood at the top of the command chain, your family could be held over your head. Tortured for information. Used and abused. Killed.

I was a tad too familiar with it.

“Finally!” Damia pulled him into a hug, squeezing him so hard he protested. “I have collected so much leverage over you over the years that Nissa, Dain, and Aanya are going to have a field day. It’ll be your wedding gift.” She snickered at Conall’s sulking as we entered their central building.