Page 282 of Shadowblood Souls
When I force myself to ease back to scan his face, he looks the same too: dark coiled hair, gorgeous brown face, sparkling dark gray eyes. I don’t see any injuries on him.
Then he’s cupping my jaw and pulling my mouth to his, and there’s no part of me that can resist the kiss.
I loop my arm around his neck and kiss him back hard with a giddy quiver through my veins as if the shadows in me are rejoicing at our reunion.
This is something different too. I never would have dared to show this much physical affection in any of the other facilities.
But I don’t give a fuck what Clancy thinks. These are my guys, my loves, and I’m not going to pretend they’re anything less.
Well, they’re my guys to varying extents. As Andreas releases me, keeping one arm slung around my back, I turn toward Zian with a smile that’s both joyful and a little cautious.
Zee hasn’t generally reacted all that well to even brief touches, let alone a full hug. But he did offer me a very careful embrace right before we set off on our last personal mission.
He’s staring at me with so much emotion blazing in his dark brown eyes that it lights up my skin. His brawn flexes all across his broad shoulders.
He reaches out and brushes his fingers tentatively over my shoulder. “They didn’t hurt you, Shrimp?”
The question comes out gruff, the silly nickname offset by the concern wound through his voice.
“No. I’m okay. Just… not really sure what to make of all this.” My gaze darts between the two of them. “Are you both totally all right? Have you seen Dominic or Jacob?”
Andreas flicks his gaze toward the facility with a trace of the same wariness I feel about our new situation. “We’re… as good as we can be. I got to talk to Dominic at breakfast this morning—he wasn’t happy that we’re being kept apart, but otherwise fine.”
Zian knits his brow. “Neither of us has seen Jacob. You haven’t either?”
“No. You two are the first.” My stomach sinks. “Clancy hasn’t been letting us out until we commit to running his missions. Maybe Jacob isn’t giving in.”
It’s way too easy to imagine the rigidly stubborn guy refusing to even pretend to play along if he’s angry that we were captured at all. And there’s also?—
I pause for a second with a constricting of my throat. “You know—Griffin…”
I don’t have to say anything more than that. Andreas’s face somehow manages to brighten and fall at the same time, and the furrow in Zian’s forehead deepens.
“All this time,” the bigger guy says in a disbelieving tone, and swipes his hand back over his short black hair.
Drey nods. “That’s got to have thrown Jake for a loop. Especially when Griffin is definitely… different, too.”
“Yeah.” My gut knots at the memory of Griffin’s oddly vacant demeanor.
I haven’t seen him since the talk with him and Clancy yesterday. I have no idea how he’s been spending his days.
How closely do the two of them work together?
“At least this place seems better than many of the alternatives,” Andreas says with a hesitantly hopeful note in his voice. He glances across the valley. “I saw a place like this once in some backpacker’s memories. He went around scaling mountains, soaking in lagoons, and gorging himself on tropical fruit until he gave himself a stomachache. Even then, he called it paradise. It never occurred to me I’d get to visit somewhere like that in person.”
He’s fallen into his storyteller’s lilt. Andreas has always been our memory-keeper—both of our own past and all kinds of lives that were beyond our reach except through his talent.
His attention comes back to me with a knowing expression. “And it’s also a little less restricted. Can’t complain about that.”
“Nope,” I agree. Not when that lack of restriction means more opportunity for escape if we don’t like the other opportunities Clancy offers us.
As if drawn by my thoughts, our grand leader himself steps out onto the ridge above us. He sets his hands on his hips and smiles down over his domain and all of us within it.
“All right, folks,” he calls out. “You’ve had some free training time. How about something a little more structured? Capture the Flag—the whole valley’s your arena. Three Firsts against the rest of you. That should be fair enough.”
An excited murmuring rises up from where the younger shadowbloods—including another two who’ve joined the bunch I talked to—are gathered below. I glance at my guys and swallow hard.
Clancy is working so hard to make our time here feel like recreation rather than torture. He’s given us a home some people would consider paradise.
