Page 53 of Taste of Thorns

“Hey boys, what’s up?” Dray asks with his usual air of friendliness. “Having trouble lifting those weights? Need a hand?”

Kratos practically snarls at him and Dray rushes for him. I lift my arm, catching my temperamental bond brother and stopping him in his tracks. Like I said, there will be time later for beating the crap out of these losers. What I want now is answers.

“We want to talk,” I say.

Kratos’ gaze shifts from Dray to me.

“Yeah, about what?” he asks with suspicion.

“The attack on our thrall.”

“From what I understand, she isn’t your thrall,” he says. “In fact, if she wasn’t so damn ugly, we might have considered her as a replacement. But in the end we went with someone more …” He trails off, winking at his new thrall. The girl actually flutters her stupid eyelashes and giggles.

“Jeez, Kratos, you either have a very big death wish or you are as fucking stupid as you look,” Dray says.

I have to laugh at that which obviously has Kratos turning purple. Not that he does anything. He’s always been all talk – there’s very little behind it. That’s why he’d have his thrall attack ours when we weren’t around. It’s sneaky and pathetic,. He doesn’t have the guts to come at us head on.

“How about we cut the crap and you answer some questions I have for you?”

“And if we don’t feel like wasting our time talking with you?” Kratos sneers.

I step closer to him. We’re almost the same height, but I have about an inch on him I reckon. His build is slightly bigger. However, his magic is like butterflies flitting around in the breeze compared to mine. I get right up and personal in his face, so close I can smell what he ate for breakfast as well as his thrall’s perfume.

“I understand Dray already made it clear how fucking upset we were about the attack on our thrall. I also understand he went easy on you.”

“Easy on us,” one of the other Hardies mutters.

“Yeah,” I say, “I understand he stayed in his human form. Is that correct, Dray?”

“Absolutely. My wolf is a little more,” he grins, “bloodthirsty.”

Kratos’ gaze flicks back to Dray and I can tell he’s trying to determine whether Dray is serious. The thing is you never can tell – especially as Dray is prone to changing his mind. He’s as reliable as a broken watch.

“Like I told the dog, we weren’t responsible for what happened to your thrall,” he says.

“But your little bitch of a thrall was.”

“She was a little,” his lips twitch, “unstable. Fuck, I miss her.” He glares at me, his new thrall glaring at him.

“The thing is, Kratos. I don’t believe you.”

“We weren’t behind the attack,” Kratos’ bond brother, Nathan, says.

“Now,thatI do believe. I don’t think it was your idea. You’re too fucking dumb. I think someone put you up to it.”

“I told you. We had nothing to do with it. Dessy was just a bit crazy like that.”

“Just a bit of fun, huh?” Dray says, jerking his head.

“Yeah, I’m sure she never meant for your thrall to get hurt.”

“And that’s why she beat her half to death, then?” Dray says, big grin hovering on his face, wildness in his eyes.

The new thrall gasps and hurries away to her group of friends. I’m guessing not all news sweeps across this academy.

“Look, Kratos,” I say, straightening the collar of his T-shirt, aware of all the pairs of eyes focused on me around the gymnasium. “We can do this bullshit, waste all our time, endingwith us torturing you to within an inch of your life until you tell us the truth, or we can skip all that bother, and you can tell me now.”

Kratos makes a big show of pressing his lips together, but his friend, Nathan, seems less sure on the torture and pain part.