“Whoa, sorry about that Lilly,” he said, grabbing her shoulders and righting her before she fell over. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“It’s fine, Fane. Your mind is on other things right now.” Lilly patted his cheek and blew Jacque one more kiss before disappearing through the door.
“Everything okay?” Jacque asked her mate as he shut the door behind him. He had a troubled look in his eyes as his brow furrowed and his mouth tightened.
“I called Costin while you were with your mom, just to see how he was. He didn’t answer, I’m afraid.”
Jacque was so glad to hear her mate say he wanted to check on Costin. Not too long ago, Fane wanted to kill Costin for something he never even did.
“Maybe he’s in the shower,” she suggested. “It’s still early enough.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Just try to call him back in a little while. Give him some time to get himself and Titus up and around,” Jacque told him.
“Alright,” Fane nodded. “I’ll call him later. If he doesn’t answer, I’m going to head over to the Serbian pack mansion and see for myself.”
“Or you could just call Decebel,” Jacque pointed out.
“I’d rather see for myself.”
“You don’t think he’s going to be able to fight it—the darkness—do you?” she asked.
Fane shrugged. “You’ve gone missing on me twice the only difference is that I knew where you were. I mean, I knew the circumstances. Sally is missing and Costin doesn’t even have the tiniest clue as to where she is or what’s happened. If it was me in his shoes, I’d be losing my mind, darkness or not.”
Peri watched the sleeping wolf, thinking of how much enjoyment she would receive if she clanged a cymbal right next to his ear.Does that make me a bad person? Probably,she thought. Then again, it’s not like the action would be a surprising move on her part. She did seem to have bitchy tendencies dancing around in her DNA. It was probably worse that she was just standing there staring at the Romania pack historian as he slept. Staring at a sleeping person who wasn’t your mate, or child, shot you straight up there to mayor of Creeperville.
She walked up toward the head of the bed and reached down, swiftly smacking the back of Wadim’s head. “Wake up, Historian. How can you be recording history if you’re lying in bed staring at the back of your eyelids?”
Wadim growled as he rubbed the back of his head. His glowing eyes met hers and held them for several seconds before he finally averted his gaze.
“Would it hurt you to knock?” he huffed out as he yawned and stretched before finally standing up.
“Depends on how hard I hit the door. I suppose if I knocked hard enough, then yes, it would hurt,” Peri deadpanned.
He glared at her. “I really don’t like you sometimes.”
She shrugged. “One day, you’ll love me and want to name your kids after me.”
He laughed. “You tend to be a bit delusional, but even for you, that’s a bit much.”
Peri sighed as though watching paint dry would be more interesting, which it might be depending on what Wadim had to tell her.
“I need to know what you know, wolf.” Her words were practically a growl. When he just stared at her, Peri rolled her eyes and added, “Please.”
“Amazing,” Wadim muttered as he headed toward the main room. “She was polite and somehow didn’t turn to stone.”
“I heard that,” she said as she followed him.
“Good.”
Once they were both positioned in front of Wadim’s many monitors— he sitting, she standing just behind his right shoulder— Wadim’s fingers began flying across his keyboard.
Peri listened to the clicking of the keys and wondered how anyone could spend their whole day click, click, clicking away on one of these things. The sound alone would drive her crazy. It was enough to make her want to cut off his fingers. But she refrained, seeing as how those fingers were the key to the hopefully valuable information he could give her. Granted, there were other fingers capable, but Wadim knew the system. He knew what to look for and where. Having to get a new historian because she got irritated and cut off the current historian’s fingers would be more trouble than it was worth.
“I found some interesting info,” he said as his typing finally came to a halt.
“Interesting how?” Peri purred.
