Page 91 of Cruel Destinies

“Let’s get him!” Piper said, eager to finally start moving.

I grabbed her arm firmly as she stepped forward.

“You haven’t ever tailed somebody before, have you?” I whispered. “You don’t dive right in the first chance you get.”

“But we may never get another chance,” she argued.

To be honest, I would be entirely fine with that. But I had to at least pretend I was trying to ensnare the Dracul boy.

“Look how many other people are down there,” I pointed out. “It’s far too open, and too many witnesses. If we swoop in and take him now, we’ll have more than a dragon shifter to worry about.”

“So what do we do?” she asked.

“Like I said, we tail him, but from a distance,” I replied. “If we get too close, we risk getting discovered. And you don’t want to be around the Dracul boy if he shifts into his dragon form to protect himself.”

Tobias moved northward through crowds with long strides, pausing for a moment as he looked at a nearby alley—the same alley where Hadrian had ensnared Arya and her friends. The same place we’d learned that Arya was a siren.

“What’s he doing?” Piper asked.

I ran a hand through my hair. “He’s recalling the attack we made on him and his friends just weeks ago. Come on. We can close in a bit now that he’s distracted.”

Side-by-side, we headed in the dragon shifter’s direction. I was surprised to feel Piper’s gloved fingers slide between mine.

“Hey,” I said, starting to pull my hand away.

“Hold on,” she said quickly, resisting my withdrawal. “We’ll look less conspicuous walking together like a couple.”

I hesitated but let her keep her hold. Not just because I was considering her assessment, but because, for the first time Icould remember, Alice’s face was not the face I saw at another woman’s touch. It was Shea’s.

I pushed away the pang of guilt and ambivalence.

“Good point,” I conceded. “But if you start looking at me with lover’s eyes...”

She laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

Together, we followed the Dracul boy, who had seemed to gather his wits and move on from the alleyway.

“What’s the plan?” she asked.

I couldn’t answer directly, as we were surrounded by a large group of pedestrians. Talking about a kidnapping wouldn’t go over too well in front of a crowd.

“You know, dear,” she said nonchalantly, catching onto the reason behind my unease. “I’m not entirely sure where we’ll put my sisters up once they arrive. The apartment is considerably small, and poor Megan is allergic to cats.”

“We’ll just have to find other lodgings for them,” I said, understanding the meaning beneath her lines. “The cats are staying.”

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and found her struggling to conceal her irritation.

“But the cats are weird,” she muttered. “Not normal.”

I couldn’t argue with that. “I can’t just throw them out on the streets. Can you imagine what would happen?”

The crowd splintered, and soon, we found ourselves alone again, still following Tobias Dracul.

“Those vampire cats will be the death of me, Julian,” she whispered. “Every time I go back to your apartment, they clawat the closet door. One of these days, they’ll claw their way through and eat me in my sleep.”

“I’ll figure it out,” I whispered back, looking around to make sure nobody was within earshot. “Let’s stay focused on our mission. We need to follow him to a more-secluded area before we can risk grabbing him.”

“And once we find that secluded area, how do we go about the actual kidnapping?”

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