Page 284 of Shadowblood Souls
I’m not sure Clancy’s staff are totally on board with that attitude.
A man and a woman have stepped into the room to eye the results of Jacob’s arrival. Like Clancy himself, the guardians working under him don’t wear the protections we’re used to—but then, we know those are useless against our powers anyway.But they’re the only people around who are older than me and my guys, so they’re easy to identify.
I tense, expecting them to march over and yank Jacob away from me—Lord only knows how big a catastrophethatwould turn into—but the woman simply shakes her head in apparent consternation. She and the man heave the tables onto their feet, study the new but small dents along the edges, and nudge the chairs back into place.
Huh. I guess they’re choosing their battles.
I have no idea what the younger shadowbloods are making of Jacob’s dramatic entrance. I only manage to watch the guardians for a matter of seconds before my attention swings back to him as if drawn by a magnet.
I move as little as I can manage to set my plate and my juice down and then rest my hands against the front of Jake’s shirt. “Areyouokay? You must have— Did Griffin?—?”
He nods with a tightening of his mouth, cutting off the question I’d only started. “If you can even call him Griffin anymore,” he mutters.
A tremor passes through his body, and he brushes his fingers farther across my face to stroke them over my hair. He hasn’t moved one inch closer since I set aside the meal I was holding.
He’s waiting for my welcome—or lack thereof. I can feel his tense anticipation like a vibration in the air.
I ease forward and tip my head against his chest.
A breath rushes out of Jacob with a shudder, and his arms encircle me. He hugs me to him tightly but still with a sense of restraint, as if he’s afraid he’ll hurt me even now.
But if our new prison has proven anything to me so far, it’s that Jake has never really been my enemy.
He fucked up, and he shouldn’t have treated me the way he did. But the guardians fucked him up first.
They did it on purpose.
And having seen the new Griffin, drained of any noticeable emotion, devoid of warmth, I know just how thoroughly they can break a person.
I may never fully understand exactly how much they wrecked the man I’m holding.
Jacob’s voice comes out in a rasp muffled by my hair. “I’m sorry.”
I frown and raise my head. “What for?”
I hate how familiar I am with the anguish etched on his chiseled features. “I was supposed to be looking out for you in the other facility—I swore I’d keep you safe—and they still managed to— I got distracted. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Hey.” I touch his cheek the way he cupped mine. “You know that Griffin wasthere, right? He messed with our emotions to get us where the guardians—at least the ones on Clancy’s side, I guess—wanted us to be.”
Jacob blinks at me, and a muscle ticks in his jaw. Maybe hehadn’trealized that part.
“Shit. I should have recognized—I should have known?—”
“No.” I tap the side of his face firmly to emphasize my protest. “We all got caught. It’s all of our faults or none of ours. I haven’t for one second blamed you. So you’re not allowed to blame yourself for this.”
Jacob’s mouth twists, but he can’t seem to find a way to argue with me.
I pull away from him a little reluctantly and pick up my breakfast to bring it to the nearest undented table. Jake snatches the first plate in reach and follows me.
As he sits down across from me, I hover my fork over my omelet. “So, you decided to give Clancy’s missions a try? We’ve been a little worried about you since we hadn’t seen you yet.”
Dominic joined in my outdoor training session yesterday morning, and I saw Zian and Andreas again at separate meals. Jacob’s absence has been weighing on all of us.
Jake shrugs a little stiffly and jabs his fork into the fried egg. “It wasn’t really much of a choice, was it? It was the only way they’d let me see you, or the guys. They still made me wait a whole day for that after I said I was in.”
Clancy must have been watching him, evaluating whether he could trust Jacob’s intentions enough. “They just left you in your room all that time?”
He shakes his head. “I think they take us outside in shifts just like the meals. Clancy and a couple of his underlings brought me out to a training area that’s a ways into the forest, along with some of the kids. We didn’t see anyone else going to or from.”
