Page 63 of Hide or Die

I grunted my displeasure at the idea of moving.

“There’s food,” Jax said, sounding mildly amused.

My stomach rumbled in reaction to the thought of a decent meal.

“You need to eat,” Kam told me firmly, and herded me out of the bath. Jax met me with a huge, fuzzy towel. I dried off and wrapped it around me, while Kam rubbed himself down and redressed in his dark jeans and white button-down shirt, minus the wet boxers.

“We’ll do something about the clothing situation within the next couple of days,” Jax said. “But for now, Leona—Flynn says you don’t object to oversized T-shirts as tunics. Hopefully he’s telling the truth about that.”

He indicated a large gray T-shirt laid out on the vanity. I lifted it to my nose and breathed in a smell like the woods outside.

“Thank you,” I told him, and pulled it over my head, letting the towel fall away beneath it. The shirt hung to my thighs.

“Hold still a minute.” Kam stepped behind me and eased my damp ringlets of hair free of the collar before braiding them into a loose plait down my back. His movements paused. I watched in the mirror as his gaze landed on the back of my neck and stuck. I thought he must be staring at the bruise blooming there. After a moment, he resumed braiding, and my eyes slipped closed as his fingers brushed my skin.

“Food,” Jax said. “Then sleep. When you’re recovered, we’ll worry about the rest of it.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Leona

JAX OPENED a connectingdoor and led us through to a larger room. I stopped dead in my tracks as our surroundings registered. The room was spacious and windowless, softly lit by lamps shaded with Tiffany-style red and orange glass. Hardwood flooring formed a walkway around the perimeter of the room, but the center was sunken, surrounded on two sides by an overstuffed sectional sofa strewn with mountains of soft pillows.

The floor was piled with thick fur rugs. Other odds and ends of furniture occupied the third side of the pit—a comfortable looking recliner, an oversized beanbag, and a low divan in some unusual modern style of design, with exaggerated, ergonomic curves in the seat. Bookshelves lined the far wall, stuffed with mismatched paperbacks of all colors and sizes.

“What on earth?” I asked blankly.

Another door in the room opened and Flynn entered, balancing a tray in one hand. “Much better than that dump in Romania, right?”

“Omega-friendly safehouses are a bit easier to come by when we’re closer to our home territory,” Jax put in. “But like I said, the serious talk can wait until you’re recovered.”

Flynn made his way down into the sunken den and set the tray on a corner table by the sectional. “Speaking of which, Beckett and Alex just headed out to meet with someone about... all of this.” He gestured around to encompass the entire situation.

Kam straightened at his words, a thread of tension creeping into his bearing. “And once they’ve had this meeting, Beckett will explain exactly what’s going on?”

“Yeah, he will,” Flynn said.

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