“That’s good. I’m bringing some people in with me, but I’ll vouch for all of them… well, mostly,” Trent said, as he entered the room fully.
“Oh, that’s gratitude for you,” groused one of the men who immediately after followed him into the room, looking around. On his heels were two other men, and Zina felt her eyebrows rising.
Okay… those are… some pretty big guys…
It was true – two of the men were tall and obviously extremely muscular, with the same lightly curled, light brown hair and extremely dark eyes. They must have been brothers, if not twins, Zina thought – not only did they look extremely alike, they moved in the same way, and they had the same relaxed but obviously observant manner, their eyes scanning around the room and taking in everything, including her – and the baby dragons asleep on the couch.
“Whoa,” one of them said, as his eyes fell on them. “Are those…?”
“Yeah,” Trent said. “Here be dragons.”
“I get what you mean about this being hard to explain,” the third man said in a deep, gruff voice, after a moment of silence. He was noticeably broader than the other two, and a lot more muscular as well – he was built for power. He looked dark and stormy, Zina thought – she wouldn’t have called his expressiongrim, exactly, but if she’d seen him on the street she might have decided he was someone she didn’t exactly want to mess with, shifter or not.
But all three of them weredefinitelyshifters – with her antelope starting to come back, she could sense it immediately. She couldn’t tell what, exactly, they shifted into, but she assumed they were something strange and Australian, just like Trent was.
Pulling in a deep breath, she decided she’d better introduce herself.
“Hi,” she said, holding out her hand to the closest man. “I’m –”
“Zina Alden, rogue agent with a burn notice on her head,” the man said, nodding. “We know.”
“Rhys, don’t be so fucking rude,” the man who was obviously his brother snapped at him. He turned back to Zina. “Sorry about him, he’s a dickhead. My name’s Hector Richardson, and we’re here to help.”
He took Zina’s hand, shaking it. Zina, still feeling a bit too frazzled to really mind the man’s – Rhys, apparently – rudeness, just nodded her head. “Nice to meet you.”
“Euan Hawkins,” the dark and stormy man said, taking her hand next. He left it at that.
“Rhys Richardson,” the man who’d spoken up first said, directing a quick glare at his brother. “I’m not actually a dickhead.”
“You’re the ones Tahnee sent to pick up the eggs… two of which aren’t eggs anymore,” Zina said, looking around at each of them in turn, and deciding she was pretty sure she could trust them to get them to safety – they definitely looked like the kind of guys who could handle themselves. She felt the egg and the dragons would be safe with them, as much as it tore at her heart to let them go.
It’s for the best,she thought, looking down at where Goldie and Dusty lay snugly on the couch, side by side. When she looked back, she saw the three men exchanging glances, however.
“Zina, I feel like I’ve got some explaining to do,” Trent said. “Both to you and to them.”
A cold feeling clutched at her stomach. “What do you mean?”
“These guys aren’t exactly from Tahnee’s sanctuary,” Trent went on, motioning for everyone to sit down. “They’re from my agency – they’re the other agents in my team, or some of them anyway, and they’re here to help us.”
Zina blinked, swallowing. “What?”
Other agents?
Immediately, she felt her instincts going into overdrive.
How can I trust them? What if they’re here to turn me in and take the egg? And Goldie and Dusty?!
“Hey, hey, don’t worry,” Trent said, as if he could read her mind. “It’s not like that – I promise. They’re my friends. They really are here only to help.”
Zina nodded stiffly, chewing her lip as she looked around at each of them in turn again. She didn’t know them and therefore she didn’t know that she could trust them.
But shedidtrust Trent.
Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and made up her mind.
“Okay,” she said, looking around the table. “Let me tell you everything, then.”
Explaining it all – from the first moment she’d found out about what Hargreaves were doing in searching for the eggs in the first place, to carefully combing their systems to find out how many they already had, to her decision that she simply couldn’t allow the defenseless creatures growing inside them to be left in Hargreaves’s hands – took some time. But none of the men interrupted her as she spoke, listening to her intently with serious expressions on their faces.
