Page 22 of Shadow Spirit

Adriana nodded and thought to herself that she needed to visit the village where Erin’s coven had once lived. She needed to learn far more about them than Erin would be able to tell. If she was to help Erin become all she could be, Adriana needed to know what that might be.

Given her age, it was remarkable that Erin was as strong as she was.

CHAPTER 11

DECKER

Adriana was storming around her chambers. She was in a foul mood. Several days had passed since both he and Greg had fucked her. Apparently, she had been under the impression that once she’d been intimate with both of them, they would simply start taking turns or something. Nothing could be further from the truth. While both men were enjoying having their time with her, there was so much more to figure out—the least of which was the question of where they would live.

For Decker, the need to mark her and knot her was becoming increasingly difficult and more and more insistent. He didn’t know how Greg was feeling about the whole thing. After all, Greg wasn’t an alpha and, therefore, could not form a knot, and somehow the intimacy involved wasn’t something to be shared. Decker might have had an inkling of how Greg was feeling if he’d bothered to discuss it with him. But the one time Greg had brought it up, Decker had found something that needed his urgent attention.

They seemed to have all settled on the fact that both he and Greg were Adriana’s fated mates, but that was about all they had agreed on.

“You can’t go there without me,” Adriana said, reaching for and throwing a ceramic pot at Decker’s head.

He dodged the pot, caught it, and set it down on the table. “Enough, Adriana. You are not going into some unknown situation to just poke around.”

“I wasn’t planning on going alone.” Decker looked at her, arching his eyebrow. “Okay. Maybe I was, but I can take care of myself, and I wasn’t going to call attention to myself.”

“What vehicle were you planning to take?”

“Originally, I was going to get Caye to help me walk between the worlds…”

Decker took a tight rein on his temper and looked at Greg. “You aren’t helping.”

“You told me you could handle this. So, I’m letting you handle it.”

“I don’t need handling,” snarled Adriana.

“The hell you don’t,” growled Decker. “You’re still not one hundred percent and we have no idea what could be waiting in that village or the surrounding area. All we do know is that Erin’s family and her coven were slaughtered, and you are not to go sliding between worlds with Caye or any other hellhound.”

“I could always ask Caye to teach me how they do it so I could learn to do it by magic.”

“No!” Greg and Decker shouted in unison.

“The floor is yours, doctor. Maybe you can talk some sense into her,” said Decker angrily.

“Decker is right about several things. First, you aren’t going. In fact, you’re not going anywhere until I decide you don’t have any lingering symptoms. There’s no empirical evidence as to what the strain of traveling between worlds can do to someone.”

“Caye is the healthiest person I know,” retorted Adriana.

“Caye is a hellhound, and therefore neither shifter nor human.”

“They shift,” she argued.

“Not really. At least, not as we understand it, and hellhounds are pretty tight-lipped about it.”

“You might want to remind our mate that she is also not going to some place we know nothing about where we believe Eoghan has been and a whole coven of witches were slaughtered.”

“Adriana, consider yourself duly reminded,” said Greg, enjoying this far more than he should be.

Decker rounded on him. “Are you finding this humorous or not worth taking seriously? She already went wandering off to the village and ended up in a high-speed chase.”

“It wasn’t high-speed. I had a child in the footwell. I was just a better driver in a vehicle built for handling at speed.”

“She has a point,” said Greg holding up his hands to hold off Decker. “Besides, we both know we aren’t going to let her leave the abbey without an armed escort and until you know what’s going on in the village Erin came from.”

“You two can’t tell me what to do,” said Adriana in an angry voice. She started to pace. Stopped and started again. She crossed her arms and rubbed them, trying to soothe her anger.

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