Muttering to himself, Silas said, “Gonna kick his ass the second he has one.” Then, speaking to her, he begrudgingly added, “Wraiths are sensitive to light. It’s basically the one thing that can hurt them. Neither of us thought of that when we made the plan to restrain you. I figured since I’d held you with shadows, it wouldn’t be an issue. I should have known better. Still fuckin’ pissed at him, though.”
Petra covered her eyes with one hand.I cannot believe this.
Hadn’t she felt like she was going crazy while Silas was away? She thought it was the stress, but now she wondered if there really had been shadows moving out of the corner of her eye. Watching her. Reporting back to Silas.
Locking me in a fucking closet.
Shooting back a bracing sip of ice cold cola, Petra hissed as the bubbles seared a path down her esophagus. “I want to meet him,” she announced, coughing a little. “I need to know that this is all?—”
“I haven’t lied to you,” Silas protested, holding out his hand for the soda.
She passed him the can. “I didn’t say you did. But I need to meet him anyway. My brain can’t just accept all this in theory. And if he’s your brother,then I really,reallyneed to meet him. I can’t meet your parents and not your only brother, Silas. It’s just not done.”
Swallowing, he muttered, “Well, he’s not allowed near the house, so we’ll have to go outside. And you won’t be able to hear anything he says. You might not even be able to see him. So really, it’s pointless and you should just stay in the den.”
“Why isn’t he allowed near the house?”
He set the can on the floor with a little more force than was really necessary. “Because I just found my mate, rut’s breathing down my neck, and I don’t want another man within ten feet of you until you’re fucked so good, you can’t remember what it’s like to walk straight.”
I can’t say Silas minces words with me.
“Right, well.” She cleared her throat. “Outside it is.”
Chapter Forty-Three
“You’re not goingto be able to hear anything he says,” Silas warned her. He could feel a tic developing in the muscles of his jaw as he fought to stop grinding his teeth.
He’d always intended to properly introduce Tal and Petra, but that didn’t mean he was happy about it.
“But I’ll know he’s there,” Petra stubbornly insisted. “Right?”
“Right.”
“How do you know he’ll be there? Can you reach him somehow?”
Silas loved that his witch had regained a bit of her energy, that spark of something that had so drawn him to her in the first place, but he selfishly wanted all of her attention on him, notTal.
He would do unspeakable things for his brother, but sharing his mate’s attention? It was untenable.
But he fought the urge to drag her back into the house. He bit back the growl that rumbled in his chest at the thought of her being so close to an unmated man — mostly incorporeal as he might have been. He didn’t do it out of his affection for Tal or even the understanding that Petra getting on board with the plan to give Tal his body back would make everything much smoother.
No, he did it because Petra asked him to.
Soft shit,he silently griped as he expertly picked his way down a nearly invisible deer track behind his house.
He didn’t hate doing things for her. In fact, he was surprised to find a deep, foreign sense of satisfaction whenever he did the right thing to make her happy. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t a little galling.
Silas tightened his grip on Petra’s hand, pulling her along after him through the underbrush. The air was muggy and only the faintest traces of a hot pink sunset lingered in the navy blue sky they could barely make out through the gaps in the forest canopy.
“Tal will be there,” he finally answered as he swept a branch aside and held it until Petra was safely out of swiping range. “He hangs out in this area a lot when we aren’t together. He’ll definitely hear us coming.”
Tal did like to drift in the ether and pop out in odd places, mostly to watch people, but they hadn’t been apart for more than a few weeks at a time since Silas was a toddler. He highly doubted his brother would leave the area now, of all times. Not when everything was such a mess.
“Okay, but where exactly are we— Oh.”
They came to a stop at the edge of a small clearing. The underbrush wasn’t quite so thick, mostly because a ring of large old growth trees blocked out too much light for the weaker plants to grow. Off to one side, a trickle of a creek wound in a serpentine scrawl. On the opposite end, in the deepest shadows of the biggest tree, was an old, rundown fort.
Clearing his throat, Silas explained, “If you keep following this track, you’ll eventually hit my parents’ house. As a kid I’d come down here to mess around without getting in trouble.”
