Page 625 of Shadowblood Souls
It feels like this should be enough. I know my guys inside and out, and they know me. I can join in their work more often,entwine our lives even more fully, and what more could we need than that?
But back at the apartment, Rollick’s words won’t leave me. They seem to seep even more deeply into my head as I try to sleep.
Hold on to what you have while you have it.
I drag myself out of bed later than usual in a partly zombified state. As I dig into a bowl of cereal, I flop down on the sofa and find myself flipping through the various daytime programming on offer. Snowball tucks herself next to me, but even her emphatic purring doesn’t raise my spirits.
Nothing currently airing catches my interest, but the guys got me a streaming package last Christmas that includes every episode of my favorite soap opera. I click through to that and pick an episode at random.
The familiar theme song sends a bittersweet pang through my chest, but in a matter of minutes, I’m absorbed in the melodramatics. I scoot to the edge of the sofa cushions, watching the characters’ expressions as they launch into their arguments and confessions.
I don’t notice that Andreas has come up by the side of the sofa until he speaks. “What’s everyone all upset about in this episode?”
My lips twitch. “Well, Carmen slept with her sister’s husband, except she didn’t realize it because he was wearing a mask at this exclusive club, but if I remember right it’s going to turn out that it wasn’t him anyway but his best friend, who’s had a thing for her for years but is getting blackmailed by her mother…”
I trail off at Drey’s chuckle. He holds up his hands. “I didn’t mean to interrupt! They really do know how to weave a complicated storyline. I wouldn’t attempt anything that complex in any of my books.”
My gaze slides back to the TV with a prickle of embarrassment. “I know it’s kind of silly. But when something goes right, however long that’s going to last, it feels pretty amazing.”
“I get that.” He leans over to caress my cheek before going off to his desk for a writing session.
The episode ends with Carmen sneaking into her sister’s house with a knife, which I’m pretty sure is not one of the scenarios that’s going to go right. My finger hovers over the button to go to the next episode, but instead I get up and walk to the mantle over our fireplace.
It’s still hard to believe we have a fireplace. That we have this sanctuary at all, all to ourselves, in the middle of the city where we can each find pursuits we find fulfilling. Like the cabin in the woods I used to dream of, but somehow even better.
And we have so many people we’re sharing that life with. My attention skims over the framed photographs set along the mantle: the six of us with Nadia at her high school graduation and another when she finished her college degree, with Ajax and Devon at their graduations, with a bunch of the younger shadowbloods as well as Pearl and Billy on a trip to Greece, all of us cheering on Pearl and Toni at their wedding, and later giving victory Vs in front of the newly redesigned Quinn Moody Academy for the Shadowkind.
The last of those brings me back to Rollick’s house and the pale-faced woman Dominic tried to heal a few days ago. I swallow hard.
My gaze returns to the photo from the wedding. I pick it up, studying Pearl’s wide grin and Toni’s more reserved but no less genuine smile as they gaze into each other’s eyes.
Dotheyever worry if they’re holding on tightly enough? In that moment, they look like they’ve never had a doubt about how they’re living their lives.
I feel Griffin’s presence before he reaches me. His gentle warmth washes across my back as he sets one hand on my waist. “What are you thinking about?”
“I don’t know,” I say automatically.
We both realize that’s a cop-out.
He tucks his head next to mine from behind. “You’ve been spending more time with the rest of us than usual in the past couple of days. Catching up on everything we’ve been doing. But there’s an impression I keep getting that you’re looking for something and you haven’t found it yet.”
A lump rises in my throat. I set the photo back on the mantle and lean into his embrace, wishing it was enough to melt all my anxieties away.
“Seeing Quinn—seeing how upset Rollick was about the possibility of her health deteriorating—it got to me,” I admit. “If I had to lose any of you…”
Griffin pulls me even closer. “We’re out of danger now. Nothing’s going to happen to us.”
“We don’t know for sure there won’t be something else. New people wanting to control us. Our weird genetics acting up as we get older. Anything. I just…” I exhale sharply. “It all feels precarious, and I don’t know how to fix that.”
Griffin hums, the sound reverberating from him into me alongside a caress of soothing emotion. “Let me think about it. Maybe we can come up with something. You can always count on us to be right here with you.”
For more than a week, none of the guys mentions the anxieties I’m grappling with. I act as normal as I can, going back to myregular routine, pretending the uncertainties aren’t still nibbling at my gut.
Possibly they each hug me a little tighter than usual, kiss me a little more soundly, make a point of complimenting me more often—but that might just be my imagination. It’s not as if I measured their affection before or there was ever any shortage of it.
On a Saturday morning, Dominic comes into my bedroom with an unusually buoyant air. As I stretch off the dredges of sleep, he steals a quick kiss and then grins at me. “We’re going on a trip.”
I blink into sharper alertness. “What? When? Where are we going?”
