Nothing will ever be the same…
You Only Think
You’re a Prince
If You Don’t Have a Tower
—Jaxon—
I can’t believe Foster did this. Just flat-out can’t believe he did this. I’m spending every fucking hour of every fucking day trying to keep this whole thing from turning into a massive shit show, and Foster goes and does this. Un-fucking-believable.
“Is that her?” Mekhi asks from his spot on the couch behind me.
I look down at the girl currently climbing off the snowmobile in front of the school. “Yes.”
“What do you think?” Luca chimes in. “Does she look like good bait?”
“She looks…” Exhausted. It’s in the way she bows her head after she takes off her helmet. In the way her shoulders slump. In the way she looks at the stairs like they’re the biggest obstacle she’s ever seen in her life. Exhausted and…defeated?
“What?” Byron comes up behind me and peers over my shoulder. “Oh. Defenseless,” he murmurs after a minute.
And yes, that’s exactly the word I’ve been looking for. She looks defenseless. Which, no doubt about it, makes for great bait. It also makes me feel like shit. How the fuck am I supposed to use a girl who already looks like life has kicked her in the teeth about a dozen times?
Then again, how can I afford not to? Something’s going on. Something big. Something fucked-up. I can feel it, and so can the other members of the Order. We’ve been trying to ferret it out for days, but no one’s talking…at least not to us. And since we don’t want to come right out and start pushing in case we send whoever is responsible for what promises to be a disaster of monumental proportions scurrying for cover, we’re screwed if we don’t find some bait to follow.
“Defenseless is good, right?” Liam asks in typical asshole fashion.
I shoot him a look as he grabs a thermos of blood from the mini refrigerator at the bottom of one of my bookcases. He holds a hand up in semi-apology, then explains, “I mean, it’ll lull whoever’s behind whatever this is into a false sense of security.”
“Or it will make her that much easier for them to kill,” Rafael answers. The words are careless, though his tone is anything but. No surprise there, considering he’s always had a soft spot for damsels in distress. He’s also the only one who’s been against this plan from the beginning.
But I don’t know what else to do. I can’t afford to ignore whatever is happening below the surface. Not if I want to prevent another war…or worse.
I turn back to see that she’s made it up the steps now, though it looks a little like she’s going to fall back down. I want to see her face, but she’s so bundled up, I can’t get a good look at anything but the wild corkscrew curls sticking out from beneath her hot-pink hat.
“So what are you going to do?” Mekhi asks. “What will you say to her?”
I don’t have a fucking clue. I mean, I know what I planned to say to her. What I should say to her. But sometimes should is a long way from what is. Hudson taught me that…and so did our mother.
Which is why, instead of answering my best friend, I ask, “What else do I need to know about?”
“Jaxon—” Rafael starts, but I shut him down with a look.
“What else?”
“The dragons are back in the tunnels,” Luca volunteers in his rolling Spanish accent that makes everything seem not quite as bad as it actually is. “I haven’t been able to figure out what they’re doing yet, but I will.”
“And the wolves?”
Liam gives a sarcastic laugh. “Same old assholes, different day.”
“Like that’s ever going to change?” Mekhi asks with a fist bump.
“It’ll never change,” I agree. “But beyond the usual, anything I should be aware of with them?”
“Nothing beyond howling at the moon like a bunch of criminals.” Byron’s still looking out the window, and I know he’s thinking about Vivian. “When are you going to do something about that?”
“They’re wolves, By. Howling at the moon is pretty much what they do,” I tell him.
“You know what I mean.”
I do. “They’re not going to hurt anyone else the way they hurt her. I’ve got Cole’s word on that.”
“Yeah.” He snorts. “Like there’s anything trustworthy about Cole. Or his mangy pack of mutts.”