Page 163 of Oathbreaker

I stomp closer to Luna, and her flinty gaze lands on me before she says a sharp, “Yes,” and turns back to her husband.

“Ready the helicopt—” Misha starts.

“Someone better start answering my fucking questions, starting with what is happening at my home and where the fuck my family is!”

My enraged bellow echoes off the expensive ceramic artwork.

Luna sighs shortly, turning and looking at me in a way that’s a complete one-eighty from our previous interaction at dinner.

“There’s an attack on Amelia Manor,” she enunciates as if I were a misbehaving child.

I should have never come here. I should have never left Winter and August alone. I should have?—

“Hunter, wait.”

I’m moving, headed to the door, when Misha’s words and hand on my arm stop me. I whirl around, sliding out the gun I’d previously re-holstered and pressing it under his chin. “I don’t know who the fuck you are or why you’ve decided to fuck with me and my family, but I will blow your head off if you don’t get out of my way.”

August. Ella. Winter. Fuck—I need to get to them.

“Let me help you. You don’t know what you’re walking into.”

Leo puts a hand on my shoulder.

My muscles are seconds away from a full, uncontrollable spasm.

“He’s right. If there’s this whole secret society gunning for us, we need backup.” I let Leo’s rational statement spin in my brain.

Misha’s cold eyes stare down from his head’s tilted position. He doesn’t move.

I lower the weapon. “We’re out of here in no more than five minutes.”

I walk over to Luna, who wears all black with matching tactical pants. “You better bring all the firepower you’ve got because anyone who is fucking with my family gets mowed down where they stand.”

THIRTY-TWO

WINTER

“You know, for imprisonment, the digs ain’t half bad,” Veronica says as she curls up on the corner of the massive couch, throwing popcorn in her mouth. She misses only half the time.

Rather than a traditional sofa, our seating is a raised platform with pillows. It could sleep a bunch of people comfortably and it’s the thing teenage sleepover dreams are made of.

Summer coos in her sleep, and I look over at her reflexively. She’s such a precious baby, and she looks so much like Veronica it’s uncanny. In the flicker of the video playing on the screen-slash-wall in front of us, I almost start to cry when she pokes her little tongue out like she’s sucking a bottle in her dreams.

“Yeah,” Ella says, her voice flat. She curls up under the blankets, staring at the screen. She’s in the exact spot I was on Valentine’s Day.

Since Hunter returned and told her about her father’s death, Ella has become withdrawn. She didn’t cry like I’d expected her to. Instead, she went silent. She asked Hunter if he wanted to have a funeral for Benjamin, to which Hunter said no and then left it all at that.

This is the first time I’ve seen her in a full day.

“This movie is funny. I have never seen this actor. What is his name?” August says.

“Adam Sandler,” Veronica calls from her corner. She takes a large chug of her White Claw.

“If you like this one, you’ll love his backlist. The Waterboy a hundred percent could not have been made in today’s world, but it’s hilarious,” I tell August.

“Can we watch it next?” August says.

“Of course, Augs.” I tap his shoulder, giving it a slight squeeze.

---