Page 175 of Shadowblood Souls
“Doesn’t even have to be dirty,” Pearl says with a bell-like laugh, and considers the men standing around me. “Although for the bunch of you, I certainly wouldn’t mind taking a?—”
A snarl of warning vibrates up my throat before I’m aware of my reaction. My claws have sprung from my fingertips, and the mark that formed after Andreas and I had sex burns.
Pearl holds up her hands. “Hey, now! I don’t touch where there’s already a claim.”
She lowers her eyelashes and peeks at me through them. “I’d mention my offer extended toyoutoo, but I have a feeling it’d be the rest of them growling then.”
As it is, the guys around me have stiffened at her final remark. I will my claws back into my fingertips, my face flushing with embarrassment.
“It isn’t— We’re not?—”
But some part of me is clamoring to tear her limb from limb if she suggests so much as touching any of them again.
Rollick claps his hands together. “Well, that’s the introductions. How did your first training session go?”
Jacob’s attention flicks back to the demon, his eyes narrowing. “How do youthink?”
“Well, from the tone you’re taking, I’m going to guess something unexpected was involved. You’ll have to tell me what that was, since I have no idea.”
Rollick’s tone has stayed glib, but that could be an act.
“What Jake is getting at is that we were attacked,” Andreas says. “Well, mostly Riva was. A bunch of men—humans—who looked like they were part of some gang said they’d been hired to try to kill her.”
Zian bares his teeth. “We sent them running.”
Dominic shifts on his feet. He hasn’t said anything so far, just standing a little back from the rest of us with his head drooped lower than usual.
I glance at him with a twinge of concern, but his expression gives away nothing but a mild discomfort.
What happened during the attack—revealing himself, taking in the assholes’ reactions—is obviously still weighing on him.
Rollick cocks his head. “These guardians of yours caught up with you already? That’s awfully competent for mortals.”
“No,” I say. “That’s why it’s strange. The attack doesn’t seem to have had any connection to the guardians at all.”
Rollick pauses, and then a change comes over his body that I can’t totally explain. He doesn’t shift the way Zian does, his physical form altering, but somehow his presence feelsbigger, more potent, in a way that sets all my nerves jittering.
He swivels toward Slick. “You were talking about testing them, provoking them. Itoldyou to leave it be.”
Any hint of good humor has left his voice. His tone is dark and cold enough to make me shiver.
Slick’s eyes widen. “I wouldn’t have—you know me, Rollick?—”
“Yes, I do know you. And you knowme. If you lie to me again, you won’t be around to do it a third time.”
The other shadowkind man draws his posture stiffly straight. “We don’t know what they might be capable of beyond what they were willing to admit. We needed to see?—”
Rollick’s hand lashes out so quickly I barely see it. Thick black claws have protruded from his fingertips.
They slice through Slick’s neck deep enough that a torrent of black smoke gushes up from his flesh.
Slick staggers and vanishes. Rollick turns back to us, his ominous energy simmering down, his claws gone. He looks perfectly calm, and so do the women on either side of him.
My body has gone even more rigid. “Did youkillhim?”
Rollick shakes his head. “It’d take a lot more than that to kill a shadowkind. Which I could have done if I wasn’t feeling mildly merciful.”
He glances into the shadows behind him. “Slick knows he’ll need to give a full accounting when he’s done recovering from his just punishment.”
