“He's okay,” I let the guys know. “He's going to trace to your house, Austin.”
“What about the killer?” Austin asked.
I grimaced.
“What the fuck? You're supposed to be gods!”
“We are gods,” I huffed. “The problem is, he's one too.”
“That's no excuse,” Austin growled as he pulled up his driveway, his headlights flashing over a crowd of gods and demigods standing before his house. “He'sonegod and you guys are—to get biblical—legion.” He waved a hand toward the others. “I expected better.”
“Well, I'm so sorry to disappoint you, Dad.” I rolled my eyes as Kirill slid out of the truck. “This is how it goes when you hunt gods; it takes awhile. Get over it.”
Austin sighed and ran a hand over his face. “Sorry. I didn't get much sleep before your friends showed up this mornin'. I'm one wheel down with my axle dragging.”
“It's okay. They shouldn't have come back so soon. We forget that people need to sleep.”
“You don't need to sleep?”
“We do, just not as much as you do. We need it more for the mental part of it, you know? Your body needs sleep to repair itself but our bodies don't; we repair ourselves constantly. However, our brains still need rest to process and store memories as does yours. If we go without it for long enough, we'll start going crazy and no one wants a crazy god.”
“Well, shit,” he snorted then chuckled.
“At least, that's my theory.”
“Honestly, I'm so tired that anythin' sounds reasonable right now.”
“We should go,” I said gently. “We can come back and meet with you in the morning.”
“No. I want to hear it all now. Then I can sleep and do my processing just like you.” He grinned. “Maybe when you return, I'll have a solution.”
“Sure, we'll go with that.” I slid out of the truck.
“Hey, what's that supposed to mean?” Austin climbed out, shut his door, and faced me across the hood.
“That this case is going to take more than a good night's sleep to solve.”
Chapter Eight
“Wherethe actual fuckis Viper?” I snarled, regressing into using a foul word because I was that angry... and that scared.
“He's fine, Minn Elska,” Trevor grabbed me by my upper arms as if to keep me from running off after my missing lover. “He's ferrying people to the house where he found the snakes. He'll be back in—” Trevor broke off and looked up. “Here he is.”
I spun around and found Viper standing there, smiling at me. In clothes. I dropped the clothes I was holding.
“I popped back to Pride Palace to grab something to wear,” Viper said in response to the garment dropping. “I didn't want to be tracing people in my birthday suit.”
“You took the time to trace home but you couldn't trace to me?” I growled.
“You said to meet you here.”
Now, let me just say before I go any further that I am not a violent lover, and I absolutely do not condone violence in a relationship—from either partner. If you don't want to be hit, you shouldn't hit. That being said, if that's your thing and both of you like it, go for it; I won't judge. But I will say that there are times when you get so damn angry that all of the sense flies out of your head. And when the sense in a shapeshifter's head goes bye-bye, all that remains is primal animal instinct.
My animal instinct told me to smack the crap out of my man and make him understand what he'd just put me through.
I didn't slap or punch him. I had enough reasoning left to channel my anger into that sort of paddling pummeling women do when they're more scared than angry. I beat on Viper's chest until that fear was gone, then I collapsed into his arms.
He folded himself over me and whispered, “I'm sorry, sweetheart. I'm so sorry. I didn't think you'd be upset.”
