Page 139 of Storm of Shadows

I find him pacing in his study wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. To be fair, I’m wearing even less.

I lean against the doorway, spinning a toothpick between my lips and consider him. As I do, my nose twitches. It smellsstrongly of our little thrall in this room. Fucking strongly of her. My intuition was correct.

“You want to tell me what happened with our little brat of a thrall?” I ask, crossing my right foot over my left and chewing on the toothpick.

“Nothing happened,” he says, halting at his desk, picking up a note that lies on its surface and turning it over in his hands, refusing to look my way.

“Do you know how many more olfactory receptor neurons a wolf has compared to a human?” I say.

Beaufort sighs, lowers the note, and, collapsing into the chair, looks up at me. “No,” he says with irritation. “I don’t.”

“Fifty-six times. Which means,” I say, pushing off the doorframe and striding into the room, “I can smell a hell of a lot better than you can, my friend. I know you fucked her in here.” I sniff at the air and a grin stretches across my face. “Fuck, was it on your desk?”

He frowns at me and I take that for all the confirmation I need.

“So you fucked her.” I nod to myself, twisting the toothpick in my fingers. “Why does that mean she is now storming away looking like she might kill someone?”

“She’s always angry. She doesn’t want to be our thrall. She’s made that clear. Nothing’s changed.”

“Dude,” I snort, “are you really that bad a fuck?”

He pushes back his chair, hands tight on the armrests and glowers at me. “Trust me, she had a good time.”

“So why isn’t she wearing our collar and perched on your lap, purring like a good little kitten?”

“If you’d ever met a fucking kitten, you’d know the last thing they do is sit nicely in your lap. They’re more likely to scratch at your face and claw your eyes out.”

Yeah, that does sound more like our little thrall. Kitten – seems the perfect way to describe her.

“And yet they’d still be back for more of that affection.” I chuckle. “So tell me, Beaufort, what the fuck happened?”

He sighs again, and leans back in his chair, resigned to tell me the truth.

“We argued.”

“So what. You argue. She argues. It’s what you both love to do.”

“It was more than that this time.” He scrubs his hand over his face. “The girl hates us, Dray,” he says, with an emotion I haven’t seen since we were kids. Beaufort, unlike Thorne, does have them, he just keeps them very well hidden. “She really fucking hates us.”

“She’s always put on this act–”

“It isn’t an act. She … has her reasons.”

I consider him some more, snapping the toothpick between my fingers. “But you said–”

“I know what I saw,” he snaps.

“Maybe you were wrong. Maybe you misinterpreted–”

“I didn’t,” he says coolly. “There was no mistaking it. I saw it in the vision. She is meant to be ours. Whether she hates us or not.”

Whether she hates us or not.

No one hates me. Not really. And any that have hated me – any enemies, for example – are now dead. I don’t think our little kitten would hate me if she got to know me better. I’m not Beaufort and I sure as hell ain’t Thorne. Look how much she liked me in my wolf-form.

Which gives me an idea.

I wait until just before breakfast time, slip outside and jog out to the trees. Transforming’s easiest out where nature rules, where all my wolfish instincts take over. Sure, if I need to I cantransform whenever and wherever I please – it’s what makes me one of the most powerful shifters in the realm. But I’ve always preferred to do it in private, underneath the trees, where the ground is soft and organic beneath my feet.