Page 76 of Act of Brotherhood
Clara’s face paled.
The man holding her winked again and his green eyes flashed to amber. When he smiled, he had a row of teeth that looked like they belonged in a large dog. Not a man.
Inwardly, Nicolette was screaming. Outwardly, she was paralyzed with fear.
Clara swallowed hard. “They aren’t vampires. They’re shifters. If I’m right, they’re wolf-shifters.”
The man holding her, who looked just like Garth, jerked on Clara. “Good girl. Did they teach you that when they recruited you for the Para-Regs?”
Para-Regs?
What in the hell was the Para-Regs?
Clara was calm despite being held by a man who wasn’t a man at all. He was something that had walked right off the screen of a scary movie.
Shifter? Had Nicolette not been looking at it with her own eyes, she’d have never believed it.
As she thought about it more, she gasped. “Ohmygod, Garth is a shifter too?”
Clara looked tired by her remark.
“Holy shit, he really can turn into a wolf!”
The man laughed, and his mouth returned to normal. “Yes. My little brother is as I am. I had planned to amuse myself at your expense and pretend to be him while I fucked you, but the Outcasts managed to interrupt.”
Nicolette’s nostrils flared. “He doesn’t radiate evil, so I’d say he’s nothing like you, and I’d have figured out quickly you aren’t him. Now that I’m looking right at you,allI see are differences.”
That pissed the guy off. He snarled and tightened his hold on Clara.
Nicolette put her hands up and realized she was still holding her phone. She also realized that her uncle was hearing everything that was happening. “Nice puppy-shifter guy. No going to extremes. You’re in charge here. We get that. What’s your name? I’m guessing you don’t want us calling you ‘Garth’s brother’ all night. And for the record, when he said you were close in age, he left off the bit about you sharing a womb.”
He locked gazes with her. “Grid.”
She nodded and did her best to remain levelheaded despite the fact she wanted to throw her hands in the air and flail around the courtyard as she shouted that shifters were apparently real. She no longer wanted to put in an order for two dozen.
Clara looked at the phone. “Landros, there are two of them!”
Grid reached out quickly and snatched the phone from her hand. “Landros, long time no talk. Tell me what you’ve been up to lately? Drain anyone dry recently? Lie to any men you call friends as of late? Do they know the truth yet? That you stole her away from under their noses? That you kept her from them all these years? Oh, wait, I know the answer to all of those questions already. And shame on you for not doing a better job hiding her from us. We’re taking her home—and I have a nice welcome surprise in store for her.”
Something deep within Nicolette snapped. One second, she was standing there, totally dumbfounded and paralyzed by fear, and the next, she was jabbing out fast with the spoon, going for the eye of the man next to Grid.
Much to her shock, her aim was true. She nailed the man directly in the eye.
The man reared back and, in the process, knocked into Grid. That left Grid releasing Clara.
Nicolette grabbed for Clara just as she spun around and kneed Grid as hard as she could in the groin. “Asshole!”
Grid doubled over.
Clara seized Nicolette’s hand, jerked her in the direction of the brick wall, and ran full force at it. “Jump!”
“What?” Nicolette asked, positive that shock had caused her to hear that wrong.
“Jump!” yelled Clara.
Nicolette did.
In one giant leap, she and Clara cleared the wall and landed, hand in hand, crouched in the neighbor’s yard. It was something she’d seen in superhero movies. Not something she thought she or her best friend could ever do. Yet they had. There was no time to soak in how that had worked or what had made them able to jump so high.
