Page 129 of Illusory

“Okay, so we didn’t think, but in our defense, everything was fine until you guys showed up and pissed them all off,” I pointed out and then immediately regretted my entire existence.

“Dammit, Jemma!” he boomed, his voice bouncing off theclose quarters of his SUV. “You shouldn’t have been there to begin with! What if the Order or the Roderick sisters had shown up and you were drunk and unprotected? What if you were being followed? We had no idea where you were! Anything could have happened, and we wouldn’t have had a clue where to even begin looking for you! Don’t you get that?”

I dropped my head, unable to argue back, especially since I was flying solo on our defense team.

Thanks for the solidarity, Tess.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. It was stupid. We shouldn’t have snuck out.” As much as a part of me wanted to defend our right to have a single night of fun and normalcy, we shouldn’t have done it behind their backs. Anything could have happened to us, and the guys would haveforeverblamed themselves had they not been able to find us in time.

Which really begged the question, “How did you guys know where we were anyway?”

Gabriel finally met my eyes in the rearview mirror, his own still fiery and thin. “How do you think?” he answered as though I should have already known that answer.

“If I knew, I wouldn’t have—” I stopped short and narrowed my gaze as I turned to look at Dominic who was watching me with amusement in his eyes. “You traced my phone again, didn’t you?” I accused.

His smirk gave me my answer even before he confirmed it aloud. “You always were a quick one, love,” he said, though I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

Apparently, not quick enough, I thought to myself dryly, knowing I’d walked right into that one.

“Once we realized the two of you had disappeared, it was just a matter of tracking down your location,” he went on, his dark gaze running leisurely down the length of myveryshort dress and then pausing on my thighs, as though his mind hadsuddenly gone offline.

I quirked my brow at him. “That easy, huh?”

His gaze snapped back up to mine as an easy smile curved his mouth. “Nothing about you is easy, angel, but I suppose that’s what keeps me coming back for more,” he said, his voice dropping low enough to make my belly warm.

I turned to glance at Trace, suddenly feeling uncomfortable, as though the warmth I’d felt had scrolled up to my face and written itself into the lines of my cheeks for everyone to see.

Trace’s eyes darkened minutely, as though he were picking up on the change—as though he were feeding off it.

It was bad enough that I was in love with both of them, and that my body, despite my best efforts and intentions, constantly reacted to everything they did, but did theyhaveto know about it every single time, too?

“Of course, we had to make a small pitstop first,” continued Dominic as he stretched his arm along the backrest behind me, drawing my attention back to him. “Seeing as you and your sister decided to go to the one place Revenants are very muchnotwelcome.”

“You should have taken the hint,” grumbled Tessa from the front seat without bothering to turn around or even lift her head up from the passenger window.

At least she was still alive.

“Now, Tessa, where would the fun have been in that?” retorted Dominic, his tone light and teasing. “Besides, you know I favor wit and strategy over hard labor.”

My curious eyes stayed pinned on Dominic. “What pitstop?”

“I called in a favor with the Silverclaw pack,” he answered as though it was just another run of the mill part of his day. “They proved to be precisely the distraction we needed.”

“Wait. Are you saying there were other wolves therehelpingyou?” I asked, wholly confused because everyone knew werewolves did not play nice with vampires. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was coiling a strand of my hair around his index finger, or because I was just too inebriated to follow his logic, but none of what he was saying was making sense to me.

“Helpingme?Certainly not,” he said and then chuckled. “The Avalon-Silverclaw rivalry goes back centuries. They hardly needed an excuse to turn up tonight. All it took was the faintest hint of bait and they were on it like sharks.”

Well, that explained why there had seemed to be so many fights going on at the same time, and how the five of us managed to make it out of there without losing a single finger or toe.

I couldn’t help but wonder if the Avalon wolves had fared as well as we had. As bad as I felt for leaving them to fight it out themselves, I knew I wasn’t willing to risk my family in the process of helping. Nobody mattered more to me than the people riding in the car with me at that moment, especially the two I was slotted between.

Besides, like Dominic had said, the Avalon-Silverclaw rivalry went back centuries, and they hardly needed an excuse to show up tonight. Their beef had nothing to do with us.

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

At least that was what I kept telling myself in the hopes that it would quell the sinking feeling of guilt that didn’t leave me until long after we arrived back in Hollow Hills.

42. ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE AND SEDUCTION

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