Page 23 of Dark Princess: Shadows

Her desire to shake things up, to prove herself, had backfired spectacularly, and instead of gaining respect and power, she'd ended up isolated and punished.

Drova shook her head, trying to clear the troubling thoughts. She couldn't afford to show weakness, not now. Predators smelled fear, and despite the veneer of civility that those immortals wore like a badge of honor, they were predators like her.

Lisa and Cheryl were human, but they possessed immortal genes, so their humanity was a temporary state until they were old enough to hook up with immortal males who would induce their transition.

The thought of hookups led to Pavel's handsome face appearing in her head and warmth spreading over her cheeks.

Would he ever see her as more than a kid?

She was seventeen, which even the immortals considered as the age of consent, but he was a decade or more older, and he never looked at her as he looked at females he desired.

Still, in their tradition, it was her right to invite him to her bed, and it would be very rude of him to refuse. The problem was that she didn't want him to do this out of obligation.

Drova wanted Pavel to want her.

17

ROB

Rob added a few lines of code to the program he was working on and, satisfied with his progress, looked up over the screen of his laptop, hoping to see Margo enter the café, but she was running late and the cappuccino he'd ordered for her was getting cold.

Not her fault.

It wasn't as if she could just get in the car and drive to the village. She had to wait until one of the Guardians on rotation in the keep could give her a ride on his return journey.

Someone waved at him, and he smiled and waved back, but he couldn't remember who the guy was. Perhaps he knew him from the gym.

Rob had been going every day and meeting so many people that it was impossible to remember them all. It didn't help that they were all so freakishly perfect that it was difficult to find things to remember them by, like a bald head, a crooked nose, glasses, or a big-ass mole on the cheek.

When Margo finally appeared, her face lit up with a smile as she spotted him, and she waved while rushing over as if she hadn't seen him in months.

Rob rose to his feet, ready to embrace his sister.

She looked radiant and more beautiful than he remembered her from before her transition, but he wasn't sure that immortality was the only reason she looked so good. She was happy with her guy, who, despite being a freaking god, worshiped the ground she walked on.

"Rob!" Margo weaved her way through the tables. "Sorry I'm late. My ride needed to make a stop on the way."

"No worries." He embraced her tightly. "I've been keeping myself busy with work."

"You know it's the weekend, right?" She sat down on the chair he pulled out for her. "You're not supposed to be working."

He smiled. "I enjoy my work, and it's not like there is much else to do around here other than train in the gym, which I have been doing daily." He flexed his bicep. "Does it show?"

She scrunched her nose. "Give it some more time."

Laughing, he leaned closer to her. "You look good. Happy."

Margo's smile widened. "I am, but I will be even happier when I can move into this incredible place. Don't get me wrong, living in Kian's penthouse is no hardship, but it's difficult to relax when I don't know what the future holds. I don't know if, in a week or two, I will have to pack my bags and trek with Negal and the others through some godforsaken countryside, searching for the missing Kra-ell pods, or if I get to move into the village. I'm crossing my fingers for the experiment to work and fortheir commander not to notice that the tracker was moved from Dagor to a human host."

"Why does it need a host?"

"Those trackers only work in live bodies. Otherwise, they could've put it in a box and shipped it from place to place."

"Who is the host?" Rob asked.

Margo winced. "A trafficker they captured during one of their raids. They are keeping him locked up in the dungeon below the keep."

He arched a brow. "They have a dungeon?"

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