Page 51 of Twisted

“You’re just going to let her go into town?”Ezekiel asks, holding a tiny china teacup with his fingertips.

“Yes,” Xavier tells him.“We have something in common now as well as a mutual understanding.”

The Order.It wasn’t just him wanting to give me clarity.He wants me to hate the Order as much as he does so I’ll want to take them down.But there just has to be an explanation for all this.

There has to be.

“Are you ready?”Xavier asks and I nod.He gives the driver instructions and then I’m off.There’s no traffic slowing us down, so I get into the middle of downtown fairly fast.

“Thanks,” I tell the driver as I get out.I’m a few blocks away from where I told Antonio to meet, and given the fact that I didn’t really specify a time, I have no idea if he’s there or not.I walk a block, stretch, and then start my run.No one is there.I stop, sit, and wait.Going stir crazy, I run around the block again before coming back.

I’m just about to run another block when someone calls my name.

“Tony!”I call and run to my brother.

“Thank God you’re okay.”Antonio throws an arm around me.“I heard about the incident last night at the VC rally.”

“Those hunters got lucky,” I start, hugging my brother back.

“Maybe.Maybe not.”

“What do you mean?”I ask, pulling out of his embrace.

Antonio’s brows go up.“They’re missing.Haven’t checked in since they set out.”

“Oh…wow.Wait, did the Order give them that post?”

“No.They defied orders by doing what they did, which makes me think they tucked their tails and ran, hence the missing status.”

“Yeah, probably.”I force a smile and nod.There’s no way in hell those hunters are missing.Myhusbanddoesn’t make empty threats.The hunters tried to hurt me.All three of them are dead.

CHAPTER21

“Wren!”I turn, smile on my face, knowing that voice belongs to Leo.Larissa is behind him, eyes narrowed, looking pissed off before she even crosses the street.Leo hurries over and throws his arms around me.

“It’s good to see you,” he tells me.

“You, too.”

“We…we had no idea what was happening,” he starts, in typical Leo fashion.“If we’d known…”

“Well, you didn’t,” I say and take a breath, looking around.No vampires are going to be spying on me, but I wouldn’t put it past Xavier to have humans stationed all over town just to keep an eye on things—including me.

But the general understanding we’ve come to seems genuine.I can’t explain it, and it’s along the same lines as the gut feelings I have that I was trying to explain to Xavier just last night.It’s more than a feeling…it’s almost like a memory of something that hasn’t happened yet.Going against it feels wrong, like I’m changing what’s supposed to happen.It doesn’t make sense, but sometimes I really don’t think you should question what feels right.

“What the hell is going on?”Antonio asks.

“She’s clearly wasted no time getting hitched,” Larissa says as she comes to a stop just a foot from me.Reaching out, she grabs my left hand and shakes her head as she looks at the huge rock on my finger.

“It’s not like I had a choice,” I snap.

“You’re actually married to that vampire?”Antonio asks.

“Duh, we saw the announcement in the paper,” Larissa hisses.“And it’s not lost on us that you had us meet here, in the same place your gross photos were taken.”

“Wait, the photos were published already?”I ask, quickly shaking my head.I’m not surprised Xavier was able to have something run in the papers that quickly, but then again, I am.Because it usually takes a while to get photos edited.Or so I’ve heard from the TikTok videos I’ve seen about photographers showing all the work they put into their pictures.

“You didn’t know?”Leo asks and looks back and forth between Larissa and Antonio.“Are you okay there, Wren?Like…we should take you with us and run.”