Page 74 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

Seconds, or perhaps a full minute, ticked by as we stood before each other in our training rings, unmoving, frozen in the moment, just staring at one another.

“As I was saying.” I cleared my throat. “You can play with her, but I will not allow another, and I have no care who, our friends or not, so much as try anything with her.”

“Well, obviously. I didn’t think it was up for discussion. I’d drain their blood before they laid a hand on her.” He widened his stance. “If we’re done with therules”—his face scrunched up as if the term itself was disgusting—“let’s do what we’re here for.” With his grin popping back up, he curled his fingers at me in a come-hither motion. “Come on,kitten.”

Grinding my jaw to mask my lips twitching upward, I pretended to barrel into him so he crouched down and I couldhit his back with my knee, but the gravel crunching under my boot gave away my move and he leaped right as my leg brushed his side.

I ducked his retaliatory uppercut. “Where did you go? All that blood did not come from nowhere.”

He kicked the back of my knees, and I stumbled forward, but the hit was not brutal enough to bring me down. He was holding off.

I squinted from the sunlight shining directly into my eyes. A third of the sun’s globe had risen over the horizon and the temperature had already started to climb, but we were not the only ones in our training rings. Soon after we had left Kali to sleep in my bed and come here, Eislyn and Eli appeared and began their own training session at the break of dawn.

Zion sprung at me, his feet swiftly carrying him the two yards between us, and I blocked his fist. Twisting on my heels to avoid his knuckles, I caught his bare chest and back and lifted him up, using my weight as leverage. I threw us both on the ground and we landed with him on his back and me halfway on top of him.

“Fu-ck,” he coughed out, and a storm formed in his ocean-blue eyes as they dipped to my lips. His torso burned under my own.

Shaking myself off, I got up and extended a hand for him to get up. We were not finished. “You left last night. Where?”

He had disappeared during the night and returned with bloody clothes. As usual. But he would not cease looming at the foot of my bed, so I had hauled him out of my bedroom and to the training rings to ensure he did not wake her up. She had been sleeping so soundly that there was no way I was allowing him to disturb her.

“I paid someone an overdue visit.” He lunged, and I barely had time to block his kick to my side. Catching my arm, hetwisted it behind my back. Cold tickled my throat as he pressed the blade of his favorite knife to my neck.

“We agreed on no weapons,” I grunted.

“Yousaid no weapons. I didn’t concede to anything as such.” He carefully scratched my throat, not cutting, but one wrong move from either of us, and I would not walk off our training field. “I went to get a present for her.”

Using his relaxed grasp on me to my advantage, I elbowed him and ducked away. “A present?”

“Have you ever followed her back to her apartment in Ilasall?” Zion tossed his knife aside, onto his discarded t-shirt.

“No.” I had always made sure she got back safely to the city, but I also had not crossed the gates. It raised the risk of bringing attention to her sneaking out if the guards would have noticed me.

He rolled his shoulders, and his eyebrows drew together as the muscle he had sprained a couple of days ago must have stretched. “You should have. Each time she passed the gates, the same guard waited for her. And each time she agreed to whatever he asked for.”

The dawn’s breeze tickling the back of my neck could not relax my fists.

He was a dead man walking.

I charged at Zion and rammed my shoulder into his waist, bringing us both tumbling down to the ground. “How long? How long did you let it go on? How long did you let her pay for it?” Tiny rocks dug into my knees as I straddled him and compressed his throat. Not actually strangling him, but training was training, and for some reason, his throat in my hold closed up my own.

Throwing his arms wide, not defending himself, he hoarsely laughed. “What would you have done? Taken her earlier? He got his payment and let her go every time. She chose to accepthis price. We all pay for what we want.” He lifted his scarred forearm above his head.

Stumbling onto my feet, I staggered back. The gravel scraped at my chest from the inside.

Zion rose and threw me a towel from the wooden bench on the side of our training ring, quickly cleaning himself with another one.

“You know it’s not the same,” I said.

“Exactly.”

25

ZION

“Have we heard anything from our contacts in Ilasall?” Gedeon asked, standing at the side of the desk in his study. A sweat bead sparkled above his left eyebrow.

Leaning against the wall, Ezra fixed his messy bun low on his nape. “Not yet. We don’t want to risk radio contact. And, obviously, going into the city right now is not feasible.”