Page 2 of Tyson (Ariel Kimber 4.50)

I wanted to agree with him, but I wasn’t the Council’s biggest fan and I would never, not ever, turn some helpless girl over into their greedy, grasping hands.

“Nobody is saying shit to the Council about her,” Quint growled in a harsh voice. It was deeper than normal, agitated. Julian’s words had successfully pissed him off. “Why do you think we’re here when I didn’t bring us here and Tyson’s not capable of dragging us all along for the ride? So how the fuck did we get here if it wasn’t Ty and it wasn’t me? Can any of you explain that to me?”

When no one answered him, his voice went lower, guttural, and I winced at hearing it. “We’re here because of her. She pulled us here with her magic. She can enter and manipulate dreams but there’s something blocking her. I don’t understand it, but there’s some kind of block around her. She has no idea what she’s doing.”

He was right about the block, I could feel it.

“We don’t know dick about this girl,” Damien grunted. “So she might be a witch and she might have been what drew us here. Who gives a fuck? I don’t. I say we get the hell out of here, wake up in our own goddamned beds and forget this chick even exists.”

I tuned out their bickering (it could go on and on for hours) as I turned to finally face the girl in question.

At the sight of her, my breath left me in a rush.

She was pretty, seriously fucking pretty.

Straight, light blonde hair that looked soft, so soft I had to curl my hand into a fist and press it into my thigh in order to not move closer to her so I could reach out and touch it, run its softness through my fingers, landed just below her chin. It was short but still fucking pretty. Her eyes were closed, hiding their color from me. I desperately wanted to know the color of this girl’s eyes.

And I fucking hated her for it.

Most covens would kill to discover a girl and I wanted not one single thing to do with her. The only thing she would bring my family would be trouble and pain, that was all women who held magic inside of themselves were capable of. They were all selfish, self-centered bitches and the last one we had met had tried to destroy our entire family and she had used me as her tool to do so.

If I got myself a girlfriend she would not be a witch and she would have not one single thing to do with magic. She would be sweet, innocent in all things and she would never, not ever, be introduced to my family. She would have no part in my real world. This was the only acceptable way to ever allow another female into my life.

This girl, whoever she was, had no part in my life and I absolutely did not want to be standing in some run down, piss poor excuse for a bedroom that could be anywhere in the known universe.

“We should go,” I muttered and wasn’t surprised to hear the heat in my voice.

“In a minute,” my Uncle Quint said as he cracked open the door and slipped out of the room.

No one commented on his departure and I wasn’t really surprised. We had long since given up asking after his actions. There was no point, Quinton did what he wanted when he wanted to and he never stopped to explain himself to anyone and no way would he start now. And, if you were to ask him he would snap at you and bite your head off. Not worth the effort.

“She looks sad,” one of the twins remarked and I kind of had to agree with whoever had spoken.

Then again, it could have simply been the room that was sad, and she only seemed that way because she was sleeping in it.

“How in the hell can you say that?” I asked. “She’s sleeping. For all we know she could be the happiest girl to ever exist.”

Julian looked around the room pointedly. Yeah, I got his meaning loud and clear.

I glanced at the bed once more to see the girl had pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. And she was still sleeping.

For the first time since the darkness left us, I noticed what she was wearing. A thin, pull over hoodie covered the upper half of her body. It was dark grey, but I think the color had originally started out as black but had faded to dark grey with age and having been washed so many times. There was a gaping hole at one elbow, leaving her skin bare and exposed. The jeans covering her from hips to feet were faded, looked to be far too large on her slender hips and had seen better days. They were so faded they were almost white and both knees had long since blown out. Her pants were a size and a half too large for her body and the hoodie looked to be two sizes bigger than what she needed to cover her too thin frame.

Her hair had shifted when she pulled her knees up to her chest and I was surprised to see her lobe and the entire curve of her ear were covered in silver hoops and studs.

My eyes roamed over her sleeping figure to the neat stack of clothing on the dirty carpet, then they moved to the gross walls. If this girl was happy I would swallow my own goddamned tongue and choke on it.

Julian must have felt the same because he said, “This place is a shit hole. No one living in a shit hole is ever really happy. Besides, if she has magic then she belongs amongst her own kind. We know she’s not amongst her own kind because we don’t know who in the hell she is and we’ve met every known female witch in this country and she is not one of them. Do we agree that none of us have ever seen her before?”

I watched as Abel and Addison both nodded their heads together in unison, no big surprise there. Damien’s mouth was pinched in an unhappy scowl as he nodded begrudgingly. Dash’s eyes were riveted onto the girl and he looked extremely unhappy as well, but he still managed to jerk his head up in a rough nod. I nodded in agreement along with my brothers.

I wanted to reach out and touch her, see if she gave off the strange heat that came with being blessed with having magic, just to be sure.

I did no such thing.

I couldn’t touch her, wouldn’t.

Instead, I thought of Annabell and didn’t even try to fight my lip curling up in disgust. I had thought Annabell was going to be my one and only. I’d lost my virginity to her and I hadn’t minded in the least when she’d started sleeping with two of the others. Honestly, I had hoped with everything I was worth that she would infatuate the others as much as she had me. It hadn’t worked out how I had hoped. In fact, I’d say it went the exact opposite as to what I had hoped for. Not only had she turned out to be a screaming bitch but she had tried to dismember my entire family. Uncle Quint had retaliated and dished out some harsh punishment as payback that, had he bothered to ask me before hand, I would have pleaded with him to simply let it go and leave her alone. Now every time I was forced to be in her presence her face was a permanent reminder of how she’d played me, played my brothers. Being anywhere near her and taking in her face was an all-new blow to the ego and crushed just a little bit of my soul.

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