Page 221 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

Seven

Riva

T he breeze cools with the falling darkness. I pull my hoodie tighter around me and finally turn back toward the mansion.

I’d hoped the fresh air and solitude would settle my nerves. I slipped away after our hasty dinner, shaking my head at Griffin when he shot me a questioning glance and counting on him to stop the other guys from following.

He must have been able to tell I needed the time to myself, because I remained undisturbed while I wandered among the trees that surround Rollick’s mansion.

The crisp smells of the greenery and the murmur of the breeze through the leaves do set a peaceful atmosphere. That atmosphere hasn’t quite penetrated the tension twisted up inside me, though.

I’m not sure anything would.

When I enter the house, a hush fills the halls. I think most of the shadowkind have retreated into the darkness for the night rather than keep their physical forms. But on my way to the guest bedrooms, I catch female voices filtering from a doorway.

It’s the kitchen. I pause a couple of steps from the threshold, keeping my silence as I take in the puzzling scene.

Toni stands by the stove, her back to me, stirring something in a pot that wafts a creamy, sweet scent. Pearl has hopped up on the island kitty-corner to her, watching with an avid expression.

“You learned how to make this stuff in India?” she says.

Toni nods. “It’s better with saffron and cardamom, but it doesn’t look like your boss keeps that wide a variety of spices.”

Pearl laughs. “I don’t think he does much cooking. A benefit of not needing to eat food: you can wait until there’s something really worth tasting. Did you usually learn stuff from the local people wherever your boss took you?”

Toni hesitates before she answers. “Not exactly. I didn’t really have time. But Willa—his wife—always made a point of mingling with the locals and picking up customs from them. She had a knack for knowing which ones I’d be interested in hearing about too.”

Her voice has softened with that last sentence. Pearl’s expression softens too. She leans closer as if drawn by the audible emotion. “She meant a lot to you. Tell me about her?”

Toni’s head jerks toward the succubus in apparent surprise, giving me a view of her face in profile. Of the surprise fading into something both sad and grateful.

Has she been able to talk about the woman she loved with anyone since Willa’s death? It isn’t as if she could have commiserated with Balthazar in his grief and admitted she’d carried a torch for his wife.

She gives Pearl a small smile and turns back to the pot. “Her favorite of Mr. Balthazar’s regular haunts was his place in Croatia. She always said…”

I walk on as she continues, my skin itching with the sense that I’m intruding on a private moment. I hadn’t realized Pearl had taken any particular interest in the full human in our midst, but maybe it only just happened because of whatever Toni’s cooking.

Even Toni, adrift from her career and everyone she knew before she met us shadowbloods, has someone to spill her feelings to. A starker uneasiness rolls over me, an impression of being far more alone than I’ve ever wanted.

I’m not really on my own, of course. I’m aware of all five of my guys through our connection, as they must be of me.

Zian and Andreas have gone to their respective bedrooms. Jacob, Griffin, and Dominic are farther away, gathered in one of the common rooms.

I waver in momentary indecision, and my gut tugs me toward the room that’s currently Zian’s.

He’ll know it’s me before I even knock on the door. His “Come in” carries through before the rap of my knuckles against the wood has faded.

I ease inside and find him sitting in the armchair next to the bed, just turning off the small TV mounted over the dresser. My gaze sticks to the screen for a second as I wonder what new horrific scenes might have been playing out there, but I don’t think witnessing them will do me any good.

Zian gets up and comes over to me with the strange mix of eagerness and hesitation that’s become the norm since we finally hooked up. He stops a couple of feet away but reaches out to touch my arm. “Is everything all right?”

I grimace. “In theory. I’m just—I’m worried about tomorrow.”

Zian’s eyebrows lift slightly. “And you came to me to talk about it? I mean—not that I’m complaining…” He trails off awkwardly.

I guess it might seem like it’d make more sense for me to seek out Andreas’s easy-going reassurance or Dominic’s thoughtful consideration, or even Griffin’s calming powers. But it was Zian who helped me the most when I was grappling with the kind of situation I’m stressing about now.

I ease closer, taking his other hand and gazing up into his dark eyes. “You know more than anyone else what it’s like to have something monstrous in you that takes over if you lose control of your emotions. To be afraid of how you’ll react if you’re pushed too far.”

Zee frowns, stroking his thumb over my elbow. “Is someone pushing you?”

“I don’t know. It’s just—after Rollick had me practice my shriek on Jake and Drey this afternoon—” I exhale in a ragged rush. “I keep remembering how angry I got when Balthazar had us trapped. I don’t know how I’m going to feel when we find him, thinking of all the awful things he’s done since.”

“We’ve been in a lot of intense fights before,” Zian points out. “You’ve never hurt any of us accidentally.”

“It’s not just you guys, though. We know that at least Nadia and Devon are being held in the Romanian base, and there’ll be other shadowbloods there.

Even if they were criminals, we don’t know what crimes they committed or why.

We’ve done illegal things trying to survive.

Balthazar could be forcing them—they don’t necessarily deserve to die like he does. ”

Zee is silent for a moment as if thinking over what I’ve said. “You’re afraid that you’ll be so angry when we’re confronting him that you might take too much of it out on them?”

I sigh and tip my head against his chest—tentatively, giving him time to back away if it’s too much physical closeness. “Something like that. I just have no idea how it’s going to be.”

Zian tenses for only an instant before he slides his brawny arm right around me, holding me against his huge frame.

“You don’t seem angry like you did before, when it was really bad.

Back then, we didn’t have anything to hope for.

We’re free now, and we’ve got strong allies and a good plan.

I don’t think you’d feel that ‘pushed’ again. ”

I relax a little into his embrace as I absorb his words. “That’s true. It’s not the same situation.”

“And anyway, the whole plan is about getting to Balthazar before he knows he needs to defend himself. If his new shadowbloods attack us after he’s dead, then that’s their choice, nothing he’s making them do.

We’ve all agreed that if we have to fight any of them beforehand, we’ll knock them out rather than killing them unless we absolutely have to. ”

“It’s hard to believe it’ll be that easy.”

“Yeah.” Zian lets out a rough chuckle and pulls back just enough to look down at me.

“But the most important thing is stopping Balthazar, right? Stopping him and the new shadowbloods from hurting more people. That’s got to be the right thing to do.

And the shadowbloods he made—they’re not really the same as us.

They haven’t been through all the stuff we and the kids have. ”

I know what he means, but something inside me resists accepting it. We might not have the same history as the criminals Balthazar has forced into his army, but we’re the only people who can understand what they are, that unnerving mix of human and monster.

Talking to him has smoothed out the sharpest edges of my worries, though.

I give him a slight smile and realize I don’t really want to leave. I want to stay right here with the comfort of his solid warmth.

Zee and I haven’t had much time to enjoy his deepening recovery from his traumatic past. Even the one time we had sex, we weren’t alone. He wanted Dominic there to intervene if one of his violent panics came over him.

I roll the question around on my tongue before allowing myself to speak. “Could I sleep here tonight?”

Zian stiffens, but the flash of emotion that crosses his face is more elation than anything else. The pheromones of desire lace the air. “You—you’d really want to? I might still react badly, especially when I’m not really conscious…”

I squeeze his hand in mine. “I’m not worried. I can get out of the way if you lash out, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. You don’t have any bad associations with beds , right?”

A hopeful smile curls the corner of his lips. “No, I don’t.” As he holds my gaze, a deeper smolder comes into his eyes, the scent of his eagerness thickening. “Did you only want to sleep ?”

When he says it like that, with a soft growl of hunger in his voice, my whole body wakes up with my own desire. A quiver of anticipation shoots through my nerves.

I smile back at him. “I can think of lots of other things we can do in bed that I’m sure I’d enjoy.”

With a rough noise in his throat, Zian cups my jaw and lifts my face to meet his kiss.

The press of his mouth against mine isn’t as tentative as our first explorations with intimacy. He’s still gentle, but his lips coax mine apart with a sear of his breath. As he deepens the kiss, he tugs me even closer.

It’s a greater thrill than I can express to be able to loop my arms around his neck and give myself over to the moment, knowing he’s shaken off the pain of the past enough that he welcomes my touch.

Without warning, Zian slips his arm down my side and hefts me into the air like I weigh nothing at all. His mouth still melded with mine, he walks me over to the bed and lays me out on the covers.

As he looms over me, he eases back from the kiss. His lips brand my cheek, my neck.