Glancing over at Katy, I smirked. She looked like she wanted to throw something at me. “They’re your friends, Dee. They’re like you. You don’t need to be friends with someone…someone like her.”

“What do you mean, someone like me?” Katy demanded.

“He didn’t mean anything by it,” Dee rushed to add.

“Bullshit,” I said. I’d totally meant it. The girl just didn’t get what it really meant.

Katy looked like she was about to throw down, and if I hadn’t been so damn annoyed, it might’ve been cute. “What the hell is your problem?”

Shock flickered through me as I fully faced her. This girl… Wow. She was kind of prettier than average when her eyes lit with sparks of anger, but I was determined not to care. “You.”

“I’m your problem?” She took a step forward, and oh yeah, she wanted to throw down like a mofo. “I don’t even know you. And you don’t know me.”

“You are all the same.” And damn, that was the truth. “I don’t need to get to know you. Or want to.”

Confusion flickered across her face as she threw up her hands. “That works perfectly for me, buddy, because I don’t want to get to know you, either.”

“Daemon.” Dee grabbed my arm. “Knock it off.”

I didn’t take my eyes off Katy. “I don’t like that you’re friends with my sister.”

“And I don’t give two shits what you like,” she spat back.

Holy shit. I was not one bit mistaken when I realized she wasn’t at all intimidated, and my first, the very immediate response, was that I liked that.

And I could not have that.

I moved, faster than I probably should’ve, but I was there, right in front of her, my gaze locked in on hers.

“How…how did you move…?” She took a step back, her eyes widening as she shuddered.

There it was. Fear. And maybe it made me a complete jackass, but I wanted her afraid, because in my world, fear equaled common sense. “Listen closely,” I said, backing her up until she was against a tree, caging her in. She didn’t look away from me. “I’m only going to tell you this once. If anything happens to my sister, so help me—” My gaze dropped, and I saw her lips part. Damn, I hadn’t noticed how full her lips were until this moment. When I raised my eyes, she had that look again, one that said her mind recognized the danger she was in, but her body was totally not on the same page.

She was attracted to me, even right now, when I’d backed her clear across the yard, and yet she was still attracted to me. And that kicked off something in me that I didn’t want to look too closely at.

My lips curled up and I lowered my voice. “You’re kind of dirty, Kitten.”

She blinked slowly, as if in a daze. “What did you say?”

“Dirty.” I let that word hang between us and then added, “You’re covered in dirt. What did you think I meant?”

“Nothing.” The flush in her cheeks said otherwise. “I’m gardening. You get dirty when you do that.”

I resisted a laugh at her poor attempt to explain herself, but she still wasn’t cowering in fear, and that was really kind of hot. “There are a lot more fun ways to get…dirty.” I caught myself. Where in the hell did that come from? Yeah, I needed to correct that. “Not that I’d ever show you.”

That…interesting flush spread down her throat. “I’d rather roll around in manure than anything you might sleep in.”

So fucking doubtful.

Part of me wanted to call her on that right here. Lower my head to hers and taste that smart little mouth. I was willing to bet an arm she wouldn’t push me away, but the momentary satisfaction wasn’t worth it. With one last look, I pivoted around, and as I passed Dee, I yelled out, “You need to call Matthew. Like, now, and not five minutes from now.”

That was a lie, but like most lies, it would get the job done.

Chapter 4

My house became a war zone over the next couple of days.

Dee and I argued nonstop about the girl next door, and the words were just wasted time on my end, because she ultimately did what she wanted, no matter how brutally honest I got about the kind of risks befriending her posed.

The only reason I didn’t lose my last nerve was the fact that Dee would be leaving Monday, spending a week with the colony, something the damn Elders required at least once a year so that we did not forget what we were or where we came from or some kind of bullshit like that. Maybe the week away would wake her up.

Doubtful.

Then on Friday, some of my favorite damn shirts—one of them a Ghost Investigators—had turned up missing. I had a strong suspicion the pile of ashes in the kitchen sink I’d discovered later that day had been what was left of my shirts.

Damn Dee.

Fed up with the situation, I’d gone over to the Thompsons’, and Ash had been more than willing to help work off some of the frustration. But it hadn’t worked, and when I’d come home in the early hours of Saturday morning, I found myself sitting out on the hood of my SUV, staring at nothing really, with only the stars and the rustling of nearby critters for company.

The idea of even hooking up with Ash had been empty and boring, and nothing happened. Not even a touch. Things like that with Ash had been a take-it-or-leave-it kind of deal for a while, but empty?

Dropping my head, I rubbed at the back of my neck. I could do another patrol, but Matthew was out there and so was Adam. No Arum had been sighted. Yet.

At least my head was quiet at the moment. Except when my head was quiet, I started thinking about what the hell all of us were going to do. When summer ended, we were entering our senior year and all of us—Dee, the Thompsons—would be graduating next spring. What in the hell were we going to do then?

Dee didn’t talk about it a lot, not to me at least, but I had a feeling she wanted to leave. Go to college far away from here, and I could sympathize with that. I wanted to get the hell out of here myself, but unlike the teenagers who shared classes with us, it wasn’t an easy decision. We’d have to get permission from the DOD. They’d have to approve the relocation, and even if they did, we’d need to find someplace safe, near beta quartz, and it wasn’t like there was a wide selection of that available.

And the colony—Ethan—didn’t want us to leave at all. He wasn’t even happy with us living outside the damn place. He’d be a problem. All the Elders were focused on was the younger generation hooking up and producing more Luxen babies, born and raised on Earth, and yeah, that wasn’t in my game plan.

“Hell,” I muttered, dropping my hand and lifting my head.

In the quiet moments, I also thought about Dawson, and those thoughts always cycled back to how he could have felt so strongly for a human, had fallen in love with one, knowing what it risked. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. So many countless, sleepless nights I’d tried to figure it out. In the end, Dawson had given two shits about the danger he posed to his family, but if he truly loved the girl—Bethany—wouldn’t he have stayed away from her? The Luxen Elders or the government did not tolerate mixing of our two kinds, and then there was the Arum aspect.

Had love made him that damn selfish? Didn’t he realize I’d be lost if anything happened to him?

The stars I stared at held no answers, and as I slowly lowered my gaze, I found myself staring at the bedroom window of the house next door, my new problem. There was a part of me that had accepted there was nothing I was going to be able to do to stop Dee and her from getting closer, but I couldn’t just let it go.