Page 6 of Marked By Moonlight

“He’s…um…” Roux scratched his ear.

“He’s all right,” Bene filled in quickly.

Good old Bene. The only socially intelligent being in this bunch of growly supernaturals.

My panic subsided slightly. “Totally all right?”

Bene shot me a crooked smile. “As all right as a dragon shifter will ever be.”

Roux pinned him with a hard look, and Bene’s humor vanished.

“Uh…I’d better unpack,” Bene mumbled, trotting toward the west wing.

I stared. What was there to unpack in that tiny sports duffel of his?

It was all I could do not to shake Roux. A damn good thing I didn’t, because he looked edgy. Well, even edgier than usual. And you didn’t go shaking a testy tiger.

“Marius is all right, but he’s not here?” I asked.

Roux stuck his hands in his pockets. The top pockets, because he loved cargo pants, an echo of the military life he’d once led. Henrik looked around awkwardly, then thrust something at me, not at all his usual, bored, aristocratic self.

“A gift,” he murmured then hurried up the stairs.

I stared at the small flat can. Caviar?

Henrik, of all people (er, vampires?), had brought me a present?

Something was definitely wrong. That, or I was reading too deeply into old-world manners that required him to bring a gift to the lady of the house, as he insisted on calling me.

Old-fashioned manners didn’t prevent Henrik from avoiding me, though. Only Roux stuck around, compelled, no doubt, by his tightly wound sense of honor.

“What’s going on?” I demanded.

He rubbed his chin, then finally came up with, “Marius had to…take care of a few things.”

His tone suggested innocuous trifles like a dental checkup or mowing his grandmother’s lawn.

Much about Marius remained a mystery to me, but if there was one thing I’d learned about the dragon shifter, it was that he didn’t doinnocuousortrifles. This was the guy who’d torched half an acre of forest in pursuit of an intruder. A man whose idea of a diversion was a fire big enough to burn a Mallorcan villa to the ground. Everything Marius did, he did big.

“Take care of a few things,” I echoed, showing my disbelief. “Like what?”

“I didn’t ask,” Roux mumbled. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

He grabbed his bag and headed into the house.

I stared at the door he disappeared through. The guys and I had had a rough start, but we’d gradually moved on to more cordial relations and even bonded, especially after that mission in Mallorca. Now, we were suddenly back at square one. Why? What had happened?

I trailed Roux into the house, a little forlorn. His footsteps echoed through the massive entry hall and up the stairs. Then everything went quiet, untilBam!The breeze slammed the front door shut.

I stood alone in that vast space, feeling small and hurt. Had I been kidding myself about forming genuine friendships with the guys? Was I stupid to think of a group of dangerous supernaturals as anything more than clients?

I squeezed my hands into fists. No, dammit. We’d laughed and cried together. (Well, I’d cried.) Roux had carried me out of a burning building. Bene had given me a touching birthday present. Henrik had…um…refrained from sucking my blood. If that wasn’t friendship, what was?

So where the hell was Marius?

Turning on my inner detective, I studied the caviar. It looked like the real deal, with Cyrillic script and everything. I stared at the hallway leading to the men’s quarters. Whoa. Had their mission taken them to Russia?

But, no. The sticker on the base of the can was printed in French, English, and German, and markedNoir ImpérialImportateursSRL,Bruxelles.