Page 44 of Our Haunted Omegas
“Smash the camera, mate,” I said, tired of hearing his mouth run.
“I swear! It was just for ---” Reve started but Odell’s foot came down on the camera. “Did you have to do that? Doyou know how expensive that camera was?” The lizard smelled tormented but that was the price of being a bloody spy.
“I hope whoever hired you paid well.”
“No one hired me. I was at a diner when I spotted you guys in the truck. So I just followed you. When we got close-ish to the cabin I left my jeep and hoofed it out here. It wasn’t hard to follow Teal’s scent. It’s all around here. I figured someone had to come back for the basket.”
“Did you watch us….” Odell started but his words died in his throat.
“Want me to kill him?” I asked.
While my mate considered his answer to that question, I realized how serious my grandsire was every time he’d asked me or one of my siblings that question. If he said yes, Reve was a dead lizard. He trespassed on something holy and I wasn’t going to stand for it. I didn’t have any modesty left but Odell did, and I’d kill this bastard if it meant preserving his dignity.
Reve’s mouth dropped open in a disbelieving O. I opened my own to tell him off, but a tendril shot through his belly and sliced upwards slicing him from stem to stern as I held him upright. Then it was gone. It was gone just as quickly as the shadowy hand that gripped him minutes before.
Odell turned to run. For a second I didn’t move. What the hell was first aid for an injury like this?
“None,”my dragon said, standing up inside his inner sanctum already forcing his wings from my shoulder blades even as they knocked into trees. At my feet Reve’s bisected heart lay unbeating in a crimson pool.
“Cobalt! DON’T YOU MAKE ME COME BACK THERE!” Odell yelled.
“Sorry, Reve,” I dropped his shirt collar and what was left of the iguana shifter hit the ground where his heart and other organs lay waiting for their reunion.
My dragon took over moving me through the woods and scooping up Odell before taking to the sky. My mate clung to me, half-clad in the blanket and shivering. Teal was en route. Indigo was awake and shoving Ambry inside the house. Though, was that safe? If the tendril could cut through Reve was anywhere safe? My hand had passed through it when I tried to grab it though.
“That wasn’t a wraith,” Odell repeated what Reve had said before his death. “I don’t know what it was but that wasn’t a wraith.”
“We’ll call someone. Don’t worry. We’ll figure it all out,” I whispered over and over to my mate until my feet touched down on the cabin’s welcome mat. Indigo opened the door and pulled us both inside before slamming and locking the door behind us. They were as naked as we were and if the land around the cabin was about to become a crime scene, we all needed to put some Frost-damned pants on.
Chapter Seventeen
Ambry
“Can I shower, or will the guards not want me to?” Odell asked, holding out his arms as if he was afraid to touch his own naked and bloody body. All the blood belonged to someone else. By the smell of it his blood was still on the inside of his body where it belonged.
“Shower,” Indigo and Cobalt said at the same time.
“I don’t care what they say. You’re not going to stay covered in blood for their convenience. They work for us, not the other way around,” Cobalt added.
“Are you sure?” Ambry asked. “He was spying on you two. What if they think you did it and…?”
“And what?” Cobalt asked.
“The flight link,” Indigo shook his head. “Everyone across it felt Odell’s what the hell moment. Anyone paying attention would’ve felt what happened to Reve too. It’s okay. We’re okay. I’ve already called grandpa. He’s en route.”
“I’m calling Crilus,” Cobalt announced, and my mouth dropped open. Why was he calling his old booty call guy? Was Dad right about him?
“He’s the son of high magic users,” Indigo said before I could dwell on it for too long. “He has magic in his veins that we don’t completely understand. It’s probably not a bad idea to get him here. He’d probably make it here before grandpa. Crows move quicker.”
“Everyone pants! Showers if you want!” Cobalt said.
“We stay together, brother,” Indigo said, handing his phone over. “Yours is still in the forest, huh?”
Cobalt phoned Crilus as we all headed to the downstairs bathroom. It had one of those big showers with four heads as if it was meant to be used after an orgy. I climbed right inside under the water with Odell while Indigo tried to convince his brother to get cleaned up too. Odell was blood spotted here and there but it covered Cobalt as if someone had exploded in front of him. If the drying coppery stuff bothered him, he didn’t show it. He kept batting away Indigo’s hands as he answered questions I couldn’t hear. Everything except the water was mute. I scrubbed Odie as if I could keep him safe by cleaning him up.
“It came out of nowhere,” he muttered. “Just straight through him. It’s not a wraith. It’s—”
“Could be anything,” Teal’s voice sounded off over the water.
