“Coming here alone?”Andy said angrily.“Getting jumped by four dark mages?”
“Four shit mages—”
“Yeah, and what if they hadn’t been?What if they were Black Circle—”
“As if.”
“What does that mean?”
“Man, you know what it means.”
“Yeah, they won’t be back for a while,” Lee said.“Not after the ass-kicking Lia gave them.”
He sounded bitter for some reason.
“It was still dumb,” Andy said stubbornly.
“You just don’t like being wrong,” Chayton pointed out.
“I’m not wrong!And if the shoe fits—”
“We don’t have any shoes, either,” Jace said sadly, picking up the remnants of one of his sneakers.“Oh, wait, maybe I—oh, no.My wallet’s in my other pants...”
“Well, that’s just great,” Lee said.“What are we supposed to do?Walk home naked?I’m beginning to understand why Lia doesn’t trust us!”
“Who said she doesn’t?”Jace asked, looking surprised.
“I do.And she did when she sent us back to the hotel when we were here before.We coulda been with her when she faced off against half the damned Black Circle, but what were we doing instead?”
“That wasn’t our fault,” Andy said, as they started padding down the tunnel again, their paws silent on the mix of dirt and stone.“Arnou are dicks.”
“Yeah, but she sentus,”Lee said.He seemed fixated on that.
“So?Somebody had to go—”
“Yeah, and it wasus.Not the damned freaks—”
“Hey.They’re not freaks—”
“They’re completely freaks.They’ll even tell you so.”
“Doesn’t mean they wanna be called that, man,” Jace put in.
“And we were with her at HQ, and that was a bigger battle.Well, a meaner one,” Chayton pointed out.
“Yeah, but only ‘cause she didn’t expect a bunch of Relics,” Lee snarled.“You think we’d have been there if she did?”
“Yes?”Andy said, sounding confused.“You, Jason, and Noah are our only Relics, except for the Alphas.Who else was she gonna take?”
“Nobody.She’d have gone alone and gotten killed!This is the woman who faced off against the goddamned Black Circle on her own.She’s crazy—”
“Don’t call her that,” Andy said, his voice suddenly flat.
“She saved Noah’s life,” Jace agreed.“And mine, too.That mage had me, last time I was here, and I couldn’t move—”
“And she went charging after you,” Lee said.“When she should have had her pack.She should have hadus.No Lupa should ever have to fight alone, but she doesn’t trust us—”
“Where the hell are you getting this?”Andy demanded.
