My chest rumbled. No way would my dragon last that long without stretching his wings. We might be fairly new company to each other, but he had the same restless streak in his soul as me.
“You need to get outside,” Justice noted, concern tingeing her tone.
I pushed aside my internal thought processing to focus on her. “What?”
“Nature,” she shot back. “You’re always like this when you spend extended time without connecting to the earth. You need to go out…”
I raised my eyebrows in an attempt to hide the fact that this actually shocked me. How had she noticed an innate part of my personality like that? My quirks, the essence of my soul that made me different to others, was not a part of me that I shared with many. Justice didn’t grow up in my life, like Braxton, Maximus, Tyson, and Jessa. She didn’t experience it from when I was younger and had been more open.
And yet she still saw.
Maybe that was why she pissed me off. She saw too much.
“You overstep,” I warned her, part of me wondering where the fuck my easygoing nature had gone. For weeks now I’d been a growly, grouchy bastard, and for once I lacked the control to correct it.
Like I’d challenged her, she over-fucking-stepped right up into my face. Justice was tall for a chick, but her eyes still only leveled out on my chin. “I’m going to give you one chance to fix your fucking attitude,” she said, and I could feel her power swirling across my skin. “Or I’m going to fix it for you.”
Bryce snorted, and when she whipped her head around to glare at him, he spent a lot of time examining a very white, very ordinary section of wall.
“We’re due a trip home,” Justice bit out as she turned back to me. “I think we should take it, because you need … something.”
“Yes, we are,” I agreed, almost amused now by her show of attitude. This chick fucked with my emotions like nothing I’d ever experienced. “At this stage though, I figure we just ride out the next two months and get it over with. Stratford is running fine with my brothers in charge.”
Her jaw ticced, face still and expressionless. I didn’t move as she leaned in even closer to me, her voice so low that not even Bryce would hear her. “He’s not going to easily let us leave. I think we should try to take a trip home to test the waters.”
Our eyes locked. I was close enough to see every pigment in her piercing ruby eyes. When I’d first met her, she’d had eyes of emerald green, so bright it almost hurt to look at them. Since her ascension to her jeweled princess status, though, they’d changed. Now pink blended to violet—the oddest of colors and yet it suited the dark tones of her skin so well.
One undeniable truth about Justice: she was without a doubt the most uniquely stunning woman I had ever seen. About knocked me on my ass the first time we locked eyes.
Then she opened her mouth and … well, that was another story.
“What evidence do you have that the president won’t let us leave? He’s basically ignored us up to this point.” I pressed closer, inhaling her lavender scent. My body reacted because it always did around this fey, but I never let it go further.
We were pack, and for the first time had almost learned to tolerate each other. It would be very awkward once whatever this attraction was between us ran its course. I would not give in to those instincts.
No matter how tempting.
She shook her head. “How about the fact I’m not an overconfident fuck-boy that’s used to being the most powerful person in a room and never fears anything.” Insults didn’t generally bother me, but for some reason I wanted to correct her on the fuck-boy thing. I had never made it a sport to jump between multiple partners as most supes did.
Her finger jabbed close to my chest. “Or, maybe, it’s that in my short life I’ve been sold and bartered between powerful men and know exactly how they think. They never let go once they get what they want. Never. We’re just squirming deeper into his trap, and you’re too arrogant to even see it.”
For a split-second, flames blazed across my skin, larger than before, lighting up the hall in an impressive display of elemental power. The humans turned to figure out what had caused the burst of heat; a few highly trained ones had guns in their hands, anticipating an attack. With their slower human reflexes, though, I’d already contained myself by the time they faced me, and there was no evidence remaining of my loss of control.
Glares were leveled on us though, and with a rumble rocking my chest, I stepped in front of Justice.
“Turn the fuck around. Now,” I said to the humans, my voice low. This was their only warning, and thankfully they all listened.
I couldn’t scent emotions like my brothers, especially Braxton, but I felt their fear. We’d lived and walked amongst them for a month, and still we were feared.
Something I was more than okay with. Fear was not respect, but in this situation, it was close enough.
2
Justice Winter
Irarely recalled seeing Jacob Compass lose his shit. He was always so contained. To the point where I felt inadequate around him, and to make myself feel better about that, I played a game where I forced deeper emotion into every one of his minute expression changes. If it was a drinking game, I’d be stone cold sober—dude was an iceman, portraying nothing but a calm capability to the world.
Around his pack he was the jokester, and while I liked seeing that side of him, it always rang as a bit of a front. What he was hiding, though, I hadn’t had a chance to discover. All he gave me were these brief moments; moments of fire; moments of shadow; moments of passion. Not enough for a full picture, just enough to intrigue me.
