TRUE STORM

TRUE STORM - CHAPTER 4

"Get down," Jared mutters through stretched lips. He takes a moment to peer out at the pink and orange tendrils licking the sky.

Another explosion rocks the building. The glass in the window rattles and shakes. Jared pulls the bedspread off the bed and throws it around his body like a sail. Then he envelops me, pulling me down beneath him, until we're suffocating.

"Is this strictly necessary?" I ask through ragged breaths.

Jared isn't listening to me. The way he tilts his head, I can tell intel is being wired into his implant. "Uh-huh," he now says softly, "she's fine." A scant breath from me, his gaze rakes my face and, though he's heavy, I can't help but tingle from head to toe.

"Sorry," he says to me.

He doesn't sound sorry. Wicked hands capped with the three-inch nails of a panther sweep gently through my hair, looking for anything amiss. "You all right?"

I nod, gulping past the twin knots of fear and longing that have mushroomed in my throat. We stay that way for a long time, so close I can study the tiny scar near Jared's lips, the high hollows of his cheekbones. His nose quivers in that familiar way. The hunter in him is scenting the air, reading the situation in ways I can't even fathom. One of my hands catches at his neck. I pluck at the collar of his T-shirt. The other is trapped against the hard planes of his stomach. When I try to break it free, his body jolts.

"Lu." He whispers my name, so low if I'd been breathing I would have missed it.

"I've got to get to Margot," I whisper, and begin the futile attempt to push him off me.

"She's fine. Sorry." The apology is so unexpected I stop squirming. "I-I should have thought to mention right off. Storm is with her."

I'd known this, of course. I've fallen out of the habit of checking the bond between us, of feeling my sister like a phantom limb. But I still receive it unconsciously: her pain, her joy. Her...dread?

"What's going on, Jared?"

The moment stretches out before he answers. "What do you mean?"

"Come on. Tell me. I deserve to know." My hand, I suddenly realize, has curled around his shirt collar. I release the thin fabric, only to watch in horror as my hands spread themselves across Jared's sharp collarbone.

If he's noticed my brazen hands, he doesn't show it. He licks his lips, elongated with half-change. His words come out slow and thick, his tongue catching on the teeth that have sharpened into killing tools. "Watchers are on the move. Some sort of armed revolt."

"Why didn't you say so?" I slide out from under him, but he clamps me down with an arm that might as well be steel.

"Where are you going, Princess?"

I roll my eyes. "Where do you think? Come on, it's been a whole five minutes without a bomb being lobbed at us. I think it's safe."

Once I'm freed of his heavy limbs, accompanied by a hollow sense of loss that I can't quite let go of, I stall at the bedroom door to wait for him. Jared crawls out from the bedspread like a languid jungle cat, sinewy and deceptively slow.

"Well then, let's go," he prompts, his eyes glittering with a promise I don't understand.

I look down and realize why. My hand has found his arm again. "I-I just wanted to say thank you. For taking care of me after..." I trail off.