Skel sighed. “Vampires. Always so subtle.”
“Hey,” Slater cut in with a whine. “Pickup lines aremything.”
I chuckled.
“I love your pickup lines,” Rune assured him.
The desert wind carried the scent of hot sand and blood. The Demon Capital simmered around us.
Humans were getting bolder. Their civil war was spilling into our territories, intoourcitizens, and affectingmymate.
I knew not all of them were like the ones we fought. I knew there were humans on the other side, standing in rooms like ours, trying to stop the same monsters attacking us. But eversince starting at the academy, all I ever saw was the worst of them.
And if they kept killing and taking our people, one day, the Human Council’s careful neutrality wouldn’t be enough to hold back what was coming.
rune
. . .
I was gettingaccustomed to the late-night mission calls over the past three months, but I still didn’t like them.
Stretching my arms overhead, my jaw let out a sharp crack as I yawned. My muscles were tight from the lack of sleep lately. Year four was a constant stream of missions since we had to go on every mission Jesper’s squad was called on. When we shadowed our mentors, the academy cherry-picked missions. Now, we were being exposed to all of them.
It made sense now why we were only scheduled for two House Cooperation mission simulations for the academy. There was barely time for academics.
The night air was icy enough to sting my lungs as I stepped out of the portal and onto the shore of Shadowmere Abyss in the Bizarre.
The lake was a sprawling expanse of dark, glass-like water. Moonlight traced a pale path across the surface, turning thin wisps of fog into phantom-like fingers that curled over the water. Pine trees enclosed the shore, their silhouettes sharp and jagged against the star-adorned sky. The only sounds were the soft lapping of water against stone and the distant sounds of wildlife.
And, of course, the quiet shuffle of agents moving around the crime scene of a dead body.
Another one.
Today’s corpse lay stretched on a pale sheet near the waterline. She was a banshee in her late twenties. Her skin was waterlogged, pale blonde hair plastered to her face, with her lips blue. The way her joints had locked made it clear she hadn’t died peacefully.
Drowning was a death some thought of as peaceful. It was anything but.
I gripped the handle of my sheathed dagger on my thigh and walked toward the cluster of agents.
Jesper already stood in the shallows, feet underwater but not really wet because the enchanted uniforms didn’t let the water in. He was talking low with a figure half-submerged a few yards out.
I knew immediately that he was the kelpie, Baron, whom the locals had been pointing fingers at.
Baron lounged in the dark waters lazily. He was a lean, pale man, with ink-dark hair dripping down his shoulders and green eyes shimmering in the dark. “I’m telling you, I’m not the killer,” he said, tossing wet hair back from his face. “But someone clearly wants everyone to think I am, since this lake ismydomain. Bodies keep surfacing inmyhome, and they are banshees or phantoms. All drowned. I don’t feel their presence in my lake until they float up and the killer is gone.”
He glared at the corpse on the sheet.
“Only banshees and phantoms,” Jesper repeated calmly.
My dragon mate was so hot when he went into agent-mode. He stood with his hands on his hips, shoulder-length white hair tied back, and deep brown eyes steady on Baron’s face. Moonlight caught the planes of his cheekbones and the hard line of his jaw.
Fates, I loved him.
He shifted on the rocky shore as if he felt my admiration through the bond.
I couldn’t hide the way the corners of my lips quirked up.
“Yes,” Baron said. “Only banshees and phantoms. You think I don’t notice a supernatural drowning in my territory normally? I’m not even getting my reserves filled from their deaths.”
