Page 27 of Crave Me

I wasn’t sure, and so far none of the witnesses could tell me anything about what had actually happened. Even Nyx had seemed unclear on the details, saying something about searching for her magic when everything exploded.

She’d woken up before everyone else—as evidenced by her painting the streets with survivors afterward—but she hadn’t given me anything useful.

Yet, I thought.

It just served as another reason to give her temporary asylum. I could keep an eye on her while also questioning her for more details. Perhaps she’d remember something useful later.

Or maybe I’m just coming up with excuses because she’s my fated mate.

I glanced at where she stood swaying her hips to the beat of the music. She was in her own little world on the other side of the restaurant, enjoying the soft tones playing from the sound system.

“The last thing I remember is walking toward the bar,” Slater said, his voice low. “I can picture my hand on the door, and then everything goes black. My next memory is of Trixie waking me up.” The way his tone darkened at the end told us all how he felt about that.

“I remember walking inside,” Nolan added, his multicolored eyes reminding me of his shiny, diamond-like wings. They were hidden right now—a trait that seemed to come from his familial line of archangel warriors.

Or perhaps it was something others of his kind could do. Not many of them resided in this realm, despite the portal in the Amazon. Probably because they were too busy fighting a war with demons in their home world—Celestia.

Nolan joining my House had been a complete happenstance of fate.

One inspired by Kaspian saving his life many decades ago.

“Then everything went white for me, not black,” Nolan continued. “And I later woke up with that witch in my face.”

I was sensing a theme here.

“She helped you both heal,” I pointed out.

Both men grunted in response, clearly not pleased with having Trixie’s healing magic touch them.

Typical. My men all preferred to wear their battle wounds with pride. And the witch had taken that away from them.

“I needed you alive and well,” I added. “I’d thought we would be going on a hunt.” My eyes traced back to Nyx. “But the prey came to me.”

“And you gave her clemency,” Kieran mused.

“Temporarily,” I corrected him. “Until we can get to the bottom of this.”

He arched a brow. “So you think there’s at least some possibility that she’s lying?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“No, it’s not,” he agreed, his arrogance reminding me of my own.

My jaw ticked as I considered how to shift the conversation. I fully expected him to report this conversation to Elias, which meant I needed to give him a little more to go on. Something to help pacify the Blood and Beryl King, while keeping my new Death and Diamond neighbors content.

“She poses a threat to our realm,” I admitted slowly. “Granting hertemporaryrefuge within my House allows me to keep an eye on her while I figure out what happened in the bar.”

“I’m sure that’s theonlyreason,” Kieran remarked, obviously aware there was more to this situation than I was saying.

Since I’d damn near taken his head off for suggesting that I allow him to torture Nyx earlier, it seemed pretty evident that I wasn’t in my right frame of mind as far as the female was concerned.

“It’s the only reason that counts,” I told him, fully aware that he could see through me.

But I wasn’t ready to announce my connection to her yet.

At least not formally.

I’d let the others infer what they wanted about the situation.