Page 65 of Angel's Smoke

“How’s Titan? Did he and the others come up with any solutions yet?”

Rose blew out a breath and clicked on the SUV’s blinker as she maneuvered into a left-only lane. “Stuck and frustrated like usual. He and Brass are back to combing the archives in the den’s library in case there’s something they missed, but Titan can only stay down there for so long before he gets twitchy. He swears the mountain knows Iron’s gone, that the whole place feels different, like the minerals miss him or something. It seems everyone’s developed a much shorter fuse with exponentially longer lighters to wave at each other. I’ve never seen them all fight so much.”

“All of them?”

“Not all. Chrome decided to take it out on his computers. He destroyed half a bay of them one night in frustration before Rhode grabbed him by the neck and forced him to go out on patrol with him. Bronze is working with the lycans to do everything to make sure Iron isn’t still local. They’re organizing lots of hunting parties, but it’s tough with their limitations around metal. Neela’s been trying to tap into her demon charmer side to see whether there are any concentrated pockets of them in the area, but that’s been a head-scratcher, too. It’s like they all up and vanished, which is eerie and unusual. And Tung won’t come out of his room unless he’s dragged out. He’s taking it the hardest, I’d say. Titan says he blames himself for not seeing Iron’s plans ahead of time.”

The SUV rumbled up Anna’s gravel drive, throwing her thoughts into further turmoil. “This wasn’t what he wanted.”

“No,” Rose agreed. “But it’s what we’ve got to deal with right now.”

Anna grabbed her ultrasound photo and headed into the house. After she waved goodbye to Rose and shut the door, she threw the lock and squeezed her eyes shut in frustration at how far apart Iron’s family had been hurled.

They were too far away for even dreams to reach.

Anna had just finished placingher online grocery order when another alert popped up on her phone’s screen. It was a text message from a name she hadn’t seen in months.

Travis:Hey, Anna. Got some news. You free to talk for a few?

Travis, or The Asshole, as she’d renamed him in her contacts, lit up her phone’s background, blocking out the wallpaper she’d just put up of her baby’s latest ultrasound photo.

An alarming concern prickled within her chest.

The last time she’d spoken to him had been when he was backing out of her driveway and she was hollering at him for running his piece of shit cyber truck over the only patch of proper grass her property had that far into the woods.

It had been blessed silence since then, and all of a sudden, he was throwing out aHey, Annaas if he were checking in with her on what to add to the grocery order?

Should she respond? Ignore it? Pretend that she’d changed her phone number?

But then she realized he could see that she’d read the message.

Shit.

She should ignore him. Take whatever peace she could still find in her quiet cabin and burrow into it where her past couldn’t find her.

Anna had started to turn her phone off when it began ringing, and to her abject horror, her thumb had accidentally accepted the call.

Motherfucker!

“Hey, Anna. Long time, no chat.” Travis’s oily voice slid back into her world like a snake through tall grass.

“What do you want?”

“Ouch. Look, I guess I deserve that.”

Irritation tightened her jaw. “You deserve a lot of things, none of which I’m willing to do hard time for. I’m too pregnant for prison.”At the moment, she amended in her mind.

“That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. Not the prison thing, though.”

Miracle of miracles, the man can listen when he wants to.

“You’ve got to be, what, six months along now? Seven?”

“Five,” she gritted out, “though I’m not surprised you’re not exactly up to speed with human gestational cycles. You kind of need to act like a human being before you’re considered part of the population.”

He groaned. “Don’t do this.”

“Do what, talk? Correct you on your blatantly offensive disregard for the life I’m carrying? A life that you helped make?”

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