Toshi runs to my side as Sebastian comes over and rips my hand away from Vlad’s. Theo stands in the doorway, blocking the cold coming in without closing the door. He’s protecting us. Ready to strike if these people aren’t as nice as they seem.
“Who are you?” Sebastian asks.
“Seriously? You’re asking us that?” the man asks.
“I’m Josie, and this is my twin brother Joel,” the woman says.
“It’s nice to meet you two,” Vlad says. “Thank you for taking Clarissa in.”
“We thought she was with the Council at first,” Joel says.
“And why would you think that?” Sebastian growls.
“We don’t live all the way out here for no reason,” Josie says with a giggle. “We’re part of a group.”
“So there’s more cottages like this one?” Theo asks.
“Definitely. Within a four-mile radius,” Joel says.
“Why?” Vlad asks. “Why are you all out here?”
“Because we’re fighting the Council,” Joel says. “They need to be taken out, and they know we’re out to hunt them down.”
Chapter 2
Theo
“Y ou’re hunting them down,” I say. “As humans.”
“We are, yes,” Joel says.
“You’ll never defeat the Council as humans,” Vlad says with a chuckle. “You must be mad.”
“Better than letting them rule the way they do,” Josie says. “They take humans as slaves, you know.”
I look over at Toshi and Sebastian and watch them shrug their shoulders. I’m still pissed off as Sebastian for sleeping with Clarissa. I could smell it all over the cabin when Toshi and I came back with clothes and food for her. Their scent was sprayed all over the walls, and their bodies were huddled together in the firelight.
It had been so hard to look at Clarissa for days, and I?
?m still having a hard time stomaching being around Sebastian.
“The Council does many things, but enslaving humans isn’t one of them,” I say.
“Tell that to our mother. She died in their chains,” Joel says.
“We’ve been in the building,” Toshi says. “There weren’t any humans. All of the guards were Primal.”
“Not guards, you idiot. The slaves. The ones that clean the building and prepare the meals and craft the cages they keep unruly Primals in. All done by humans,” Josie says.
I watch Sebastian smile as Toshi hisses at the two of them. I know he’s getting a kick out of someone calling Toshi an idiot, but I’m siding with Toshi. These humans are suspect, at best. We have no way of validating their claims or figuring out if they are telling the truth about their little gild of humans without putting Clarissa in harm’s way. And I have lived long enough to know that if I can’t immediately prove something, I need to be wary until I do.
So I wasn’t going to start trusting these humans until I had a good reason to trust them.
“You don’t seem convinced,” Joel says.
I find his eyes looking my way so I shake my head.
“I’m wary of things I can’t readily prove,” I say. “There have been a lot of bold claims made lately.”