Page 435 of Shadowblood Souls
The sight of her anguished fury brings a helpless ache into my chest. I want to protect her from her frustration, but I have no idea how.
The other guys look just as worried.
“It could be a good thing,” Andreas says tentatively, his dark gray eyes as clouded as the sky overhead. “If the kids aren’t here, Balthazar can’t use them to punish us. Not the same way he did before.”
Riva grimaces. “For all we know, he already killed them. He didn’t think they’d be useful to him after all. Why keep them around?”
For a second, none of us speaks. We can’t prove what happened either way, and she has a point.
Then Jacob lets out a huff. “He wouldn’t do that. They could still be leverage down the line. That prick doesn’t seem like the type towasteanything he might be able to use later.”
I nod, glad to have an argument against the idea that all three of the remaining kids were murdered. “That’s true. He said he kept the rest of the kids too, just somewhere else, so why not them?”
“Maybe he was lying about all of it.” Riva resumes her pacing, her hands clenched at her sides. “He didn’t even give us a chance to talk to them before he did whatever he did with them. Dragging them off in the middle of the night…”
Griffin speaks up in a gentle tone. “I didn’t know the three of them well enough that I can pinpoint their presence at a distance. But I had gotten a little friendly with them. I think if Balthazar’s people did anything really horrible to them here at the villa, their emotions would have hit me hard enough to wake me up.”
Riva swipes her hands through the air, her manacles flashing beneath the cuffs of her sweatshirt. “So, they weren’t in total agony when they left. Who knows what happened after—what could still be happening?”
The ache expands down to my gut. She isn’t even trying to hide her anger with Balthazar, even though she knows he could be listening to this entire conversation.
The aggression in her tone and movements resonates all too closely with my own mood. The thought of that asshole on the screen shoving the kids around after he already slaughtered two of them for no reason at all…
My fangs itch in my jaws. A wolfish growl lodges in my throat with a surge of feral rage.
But I don’t like who I am when I let out my beastly side. As much as I long to tear apart every person I can reach in the villa, I know going on a rampage against our captors isn’t going to solve anything.
I’ve done things I hate when I let the wolf-man take over. The last four years of my life have been shadowed by horror and guilt because of it.
If Riva is heading down the same path… That’s the last thing I want for the woman I love.
“We’ll find them again,” Andreas assures her. “I once looked in the head of a guy who finally reunited with his high school best friends after thirty years of losing touch and moving halfway across the world. If he could manage it, we will too.”
Riva snorts. “Somehow I don’t think his friends were also being imprisoned by a maniac.”
Jacob bares his teeth. “We’ve gotten free from maniacs before. There are always answers. We just have to find them.”
“You’re very upset,” Griffin adds in the same soothing tone as before. “It makes sense. But you’ll think more clearly if you give yourself a chance to cool down.”
Riva whirls toward him with a flash of her bright brown eyes. “Fuck cooling down. There’s nothing about this situation any of us should be cool about!”
Her anger reverberates through her words, sharp enough that I flinch inwardly.
This isn’t who Riva should be either. I know her—I know who she is when she’s not trapped like a wounded creature in a snare.
She had all the compassion in the world for me and the horrible things I’ve done. For Jake and his awful mistakes.
She considers every angle and tries to find the fixes that hurt the fewest people.
But not like this. Not when she’s practically vibrating with rage.
She’s been on edge since Sully died. How much longer can she go on like this before shereallysnaps?
The other guys shift uneasily on their feet, glances passing between us. And I realize that no one wants to say the thing that’s at the core of all our suggestions and assurances.
A sense of resolve stiffens my posture. What the hell. It might as well be me.
If she doesn’t like hearing it, I’m the one best equipped to receive her wrath, however she deals it out.
