16
Ness
You know what hurts?
Getting struck by lightning.
There was still a latticework of bruises crisscrossing my skin despite the fact that I’d shifted and eaten a hearty breakfast. The discoloration mesmerized me. Thin lines of blue, purple, and yellow ran up and down my arms like vines. They crawled over my shoulders and down my back.
When I moved, my body protested. Muscles threatened to lock up. A dull throb eclipsed my entire being like an aura I couldn’t shake off.
Still, a single question bounced around my mind.
Had I died?
I couldn’t remember losing consciousness, so I didn’t think I’d died again.
How? I did not know. That hurt more than anything I’d ever experienced before. Every blow Alvin had landed, every time Harvey had cornered me, none of that compared to being hit by lightning.
I would curse Alvin all over again if he were near. The vicious fuel that fed my command arcana swirled deep within my gut. Had my arcana not been locked behind the wall of ice, I would have felt it on my tongue.
My arcana might have to come out from behind the ice wall, today. The sight of Alvin’s house made my stomach churn. My lip curled. More venom stirred in the pit of my gut. I remembered being dragged through that door. I remembered running in there to save Cerri.
This house had nothing but bad memories attached to it. If I never had to see it again, I would be happy. Since we couldn’t pinpoint where Alvin was, we decided it might behoove us if we paid Alvin’s wife a visit.
Candi had never been an approachable woman, in my opinion. She’d always given off the air of someone who’d rather not be bothered. Well, today we were about to bother the fuck out of her.
I glanced sidelong at Ryder. He gave me a reassuring smile and squeezed my hand. Damn, we seemed more and more like a couple every day.
It drove me mad.
Ryder was right there. I wanted him so desperately that he was the last person on my mind at the end of the day and the first person on my mind in the morning. My hound rolled over for him every time he touched me. She would never react to another the same way.
I was so screwed and not in a good way.
Rolling my shoulders back, I tore my mind off Ryder and prepared myself for what we had to do next. I stormed up to the front door and slammed on it with the side of my fist. Not even that was enough to expend some of this restless energy coursing through me.
Or was that the lightning still humming inside me?
I banged on the door again. It flew open, startling me. I blinked at Candi’s unimpressed glare. A slow grin slipped over my lips. I shook my iced coffee like it was a rattlesnake tail. Candi rolled her eyes, but didn’t step aside to invite us in.
“What do you want? To cause more trouble?” Candi asked, her voice flat.
I opened my mouth to tell her where she could shove it, but Ryder cut me off.
“We need to know where your husband is. That’s all.”
Candi wasn’t going to rat Alvin out. I suspected Candi was either too devoted or too afraid of Alvin to give us any information. Though I’d spent my whole life in this pack, I couldn’t tell how the Alpha pair felt about one another. Candi had always kept quiet unless her son was involved.
She narrowed her eyes at me. If looks could have killed, I would have been dead five times over. Her gaze sawed me in half. I had a feeling she would have spit on my corpse, too.
Oh. Oh shit.
Without Harvey breathing down my neck, I’d momentarily forgotten about him and the fact that I’d killed him. Candi wouldn’t forgive me for murdering her son, even if it had been in self-defense.
Wary of my predicament, I stealthily stepped back and put Ryder between Candi and myself. Still, Candi’s glare didn’t lose any of its intensity.
“I’m not going to talk to the likes of you,” Candi said. “So, unless you plan on beating the answers out of me, you can get out of my hair.”