He wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t like the feeling of him bossing me. Not so soon after my taking the alpha position. “Don’t push me, Shem. I’d as soon boot you out as put up with your chauvinistic shit. Got it?”
He held up both hands in surrender, though I wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t mocking me. “Oh. Pardon me, mighty leader. Seeing as I am your seer, I thought you would be needing some direction from me. You go ahead. I’ll just make you breakfast.”
Yeah, definitely mocking. I stood tall and smiled at him. “I like my eggs scrambled. Don’t dry them out.”
His jaw dropped.
That’s right, old man. There was a new sheriff in town, and she was done taking shit from the men in her life.
I turned and headed toward the horses hobbled on the far side of camp.
As soon as I was close enough, Balder shoved his nose into my belly. “Yeah, yeah, breakfast is coming.”
I moved on autopilot as I fed the three horses and made sure they had enough water. From the corner of my eye, I watched as Maks and Shem pushed together the coals of the fire from the night before. Maks added fuel to it, and Shem got a pan and the few wild bird eggs we’d gathered. They worked with an ease that came from fighting side by side. That had produced an unexpected bond between the two men. They’d handle breakfast, and Shem would not dry my eggs out or I’d kick his ass just because. He glanced at me and I pointed at my eyes with two fingers, then back to him.
He barked a laugh. “Go, find your pride.”
Damn it, I had been planning on trying that anyway, and with the added strain of Bryce showing up, I needed a few minutes to think. But now me heading off to try to find my connection to the pride would look like it was his idea. Bryce’s appearance had made me think of it, and if I was going to save those left to my pack, I needed to make what few abilities I had work for me.
Even if Shem thought he was the one who’d suggested it.
“I’d already decided to do that.” I took a step back. “Don’t think this was your idea, old man.”
He gave me another mocking bow, his hands in a prayer position. I rolled my eyes and caught Maks looking at me.
Unspoken words rolled between us. Not mind reading in any way, just knowing each other. We’d been on the road together off and on for nearly three months and there had been times where words just didn’t work.
You okay?
I nodded. Good. I’m good. Well, that was a bit of a stretch. Between Bryce’s appearance and the Emperor’s, I was being pushed in a direction I wasn’t sure I wanted.
I’d already been going into the Jinn’s Dominion. So, what was the point of the Emperor’s midnight visit to me? Between that and the not-so-subtle guilt trip from Bryce, I struggled to make heads or tails of what the fuck was going on.
I rubbed my hands over my face. No matter how I looked at things, there were others that were still in trouble, others that needed me at my best.
And that meant I couldn’t be distracted by the Emperor, or even Bryce. My heart twanged uncomfortably inside my chest. Bryce was not in immediate danger. Dead was dead. The Emperor . . . well, he’d done nothing but offer me things I wasn’t willing to pay the price for.
As I started away from the campsite, Shem’s voice tugged at my ears. “She might be okay, but what about you, boy?”
Maks muttered something too low even for my ears, though I strained to hear. More than the words I couldn’t hear, his tone was off. Like he was brushing Shem’s worries aside even while there was legitimacy to them. I made a mental note to talk to him when I got back, to see if he was okay. He’d had to kill two of his own kind, Jinn that had been coming for us while we’d been dealing with the dragons. I’d not thought until now how that might have affected him. What if he’d known them? What if they’d been his friends?
“Well, shit, I’m a bad friend,” I said.
Lila dropped out of the sky and flew along beside me, bringing with her a rush of wind off her scaled wings.
“Why would you say that?” she asked.
“I’m not the only one who’s been hurting, who went through shit the last few days. I haven’t even asked Maks about the fight with the Jinn. What if he knew them? What if they were his companions at one point?”
She lowered herself to my right shoulder and settled onto what I now thought of as her spot. She wrapped a blue-and-silver-scaled tail around my neck to help herself balance and put one claw-tipped hand into my hair, kind of scratching against my scalp. “Well, I kind of doubt he had any friends within the Jinn. I mean, they tried to kill him at least once. For all we know, he could have been sent out of the Jinn’s Dominion for the simple fact that he was expendable.”
Lila had a point. But still . . . as soon as I’d seen Shem lean toward Maks while they worked to build a fire and breakfast, I knew in my gut something was wrong, and I didn’t know what to make of it. I’d been so wrapped up in my own pain, I’d barely taken in anyone else’s issues they might be dealing with.
For just a moment, I thought I heard my father’s voice whisper to me.
You’re the alpha now. You don’t get to wallow.
My dad, whether I was hearing him or not, was right.
“I think Maks is holding back something,” I said, acknowledging to myself that there was irony in what I’d just said considering all I was holding back. “Maybe he’s worried about going back into the desert?” I tried to think of the last few days, of Maks’s face as he spoke, of his actions, and through the fog of my own distractions, a slow pattern began to emerge. The way his eyes never stayed on mine, the way he looked to the south and then away, the way his body tensed when there was a sudden sound that didn’t come from someone in our camp.
He was . . . nervous.
“I should have noticed.” I shook my head.
Lila swayed side to side, throwing my balance off and making me stumble. “He’s off, yes, but you’re right. He could be worried about going south. I wasn’t happy about going into the Dragon’s Ground, you know. I knew that I could make you a target.”
She was right. There was that possibility, but I didn’t think it was all that bothered him. We were headed south into the Jinn’s Dominion. The place where he’d been born and raised and tried to escape, and was now going back. That was different than Lila who’d been cast out.
That fear had to weigh on him. Fuck, it weighed on me going back to the desert. We’d have to go past the Oasis where my father was killed, my pride slaughtered, and the remaining members scattered to the wind. Yet as bad as that was, I suspected that whatever Maks was experiencing might be worse in its own way.
“I feel like we’re on the edge of a sandstorm,” I said. “One we can’t see but that waits for us over the next dune.” I grimaced, hating how those words sounded. Melodramatic much? Normally that wasn’t me. But I couldn’t help the way my gut twisted up and around itself. Seeing Bryce had only tightened that sensation. He might be dead, but he still needed me.
Lila grunted. “Well, you are nothing but trouble. For all we know, we could take a few more steps and fall into a deep hole. Or maybe something will explode.”
“Ha!” I barked the word. “Please, I’m not that bad.”
She drew a breath and raised one wing tip up as she spoke. “This above all: to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Polonius in Hamlet. But what has that got to do with me falling in a hole or blowing shit up, exactly?”
She grinned, flashing her sparkling white dagger teeth that could cut through me if she ever wanted to. “Trouble is attracted to you, whether you like it or not. Might as well own it. Use it for your benefit if you can.”
I laughed again. “I am not trouble. I’m a house cat.” I grinned and she snorted.
“Well, trouble likes you, which makes me think that perhaps cats are trouble in general. Maybe that should be your middle name instead of Reckless.” She bobbed her head. “Yes. Zamira ‘Trouble’ Wilson. That’s much better.”
I dropped to my knees and spun out from underneath her, laughing as she screeched, reaching for my hair. I bolted forward, forcing her to fly hard if she would catch me. I pumped my arms and legs and let myself stretch out. Not because I had a great deal of excess energy, but I had to remember what it was to live for the moment.