Case in point, a minute had passed, and she should have inhaled by now.

She hadn’t.

My nails dug harder into my palms.

What type of idiot kept forgetting to breathe during a thirty-mile run? Who did that?

She was going to be the death of me.

Instead of the usual peace I felt during these exercises, I bristled with rage.

I loved running at the academy, because our route was always the same circle. I could feel the minute changes in elevation beneath my feet and knew without a doubt where we were on the island. I barely needed Corvus to guide me.

It was one of the few times I could be completely relaxed in my environment.

There were no noisy students talking loudly and bumping into one another.

But this run was pissing me off worse than when students filled the halls in between classes.

Yet another thing Arabella had ruined.

I bit down on my tongue, and copper flooded my mouth, as I physically stopped myself from turning around and screaming at her to breathe. I wanted to call her horrible names, say cruel things to her until she pulled her head out of her ass and focused.

Teeth sliced through my tongue, and I welcomed the sharp sensation.

I would never scream at her, because I’d never let her know how much her existence got under my skin.

I’d never give her that power.

Instead, I leaned closer to Orion and tried to act casual as I whispered, “What is she doing?”

My Revered didn’t ask what I was referring to.

He was the same way.

Whenever Arabella whispered to John, Orion asked me what she said because I had far superior hearing.

We had a little arrangement.

I told him everything I heard, and he told me everything he saw. It was part of the reason we were fated mates.

We understood each other perfectly.

And for some reason, what we both needed was to know every single thing Arabella did.

Maybe it was because she was our slave? Maybe it was because we’d both been diagnosed as having psychotic, obsessive tendencies as children?

Malum was the angry one; we were the neurotic ones.

It was part of the reason all three of us worked so well together and why we’d been named kings. Compared to “normal” people, we were dangerous. Very dangerous.

I couldn’t wait to meet our missing mate, our other Protector. Orion was already so on the same wavelength as me that I couldn’t imagine how close I’d be with another devil who was built for safeguarding our mates. It was almost unimaginable to me.

Orion and I had bets going on whether our mate would be angry like Malum or obsessive like us.

Sun god help us if he was like Malum.

A grin curled the corner of my lips, and I couldn’t stop the smile that split my face wide. I hoped our mate was fucking crazy.