Blind Salvage: A Rylee Adamson Novel(25)

I drummed my fingers along the wooden bar, not really contemplating. I already knew my answer. “Would you do it for her, if you could?”
His eyes were as serious as I’d ever seen them. “Not even for the redemption of my soul would I do this for her. It will solidify her as the Empress if you do what she wants, and that is something the world cannot have.” He paused and gave me a wink. “In my humble opinion.”
“Humble. Yeah.” I took the glass of orange juice Dox slid across to me and took a sip before saying anything else. “What is it that she wants me to Track, do you know?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t know. I was to give you the message that she wishes peace and wants to hire you. That’s it.”
Dox snorted. “Like always, not much help, are you?”
Doran turned to him. “Tell me, how is it that you came to be here, in this ogre-less place, anyway? Did you leave to see the world? No, wait, that’s right, you were kicked out, banished by your own kind because of how weak you are—”
Dox smacked the flat of his hand on the bar, startling the hell out of me and stopping Doran mid-sentence. His eyes narrowed and a faint purple flush ran up his neck and over face. “Shut your mouth before I remind you why even Daywalkers don’t piss off ogres.”
Well, well. This was a side of Dox I’d never seen. Not in all the years I’d known him had he been anything but pleasant. I’d never seem him pull any of the ‘ogre-ish’ tantrums I’d heard about his kind.
His eyes flicked to mine and he let out a big breath, the additional color fading from his blue skin. “Sorry.”
Fatigue washed through me, and as much as I wanted to wait up for the assholes that had a missing kid and thought blackmailing me was a good idea, I also knew I needed to sleep if my body was going to be even close to healed for this salvage.
“Doran, tell the messenger no. I won’t do it. I won’t help her.”
He nodded and let out a sigh of relief. “She won’t give up. She will try to force your hand.”
“I know.”
Berget was a spoiled child and she wanted what she wanted. No doubt her next message would be less polite. Seriously, even knowing that all families are messed up to some degree, this—having a psycho, power hungry vampire for a sister—was going a bit far. Even for me.
“Dox, you’ll let us know if anyone shows up?” I knew his schedule was wonky, awake all night, and then sleeping through the better part of the day, so I could trust that he would be awake to receive this parent when they showed up.
He rapped his big knuckles on the bar twice. “You bet, Rylee.”
I slid off the stool, but Doran stopped me, his hand shooting out to grab my elbow. “Do you have your obsidian blade, the one I sent for you?”
Frowning, it took me a second to remember that he had indeed sent me an obsidian blade via Eve on her last trip home from New Mexico. “No. Why? Is it something special?”
His eyebrows quirked up to his hairline. “You just need to keep it with you.”
Warmth circled around me as Liam moved to stand behind me. “Why does she need it?”
Doran let out an exasperated sigh. “Listen, getting a read on Rylee is impossible, you know that, right?”
Neither of us moved, and Doran seemed to take that for encouragement.
“So when I have a niggling suspicion that you need something, Tracker, I follow through. I don’t know why you need the damn blade with all the other ones you have. Just that you need it. Maybe not now, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point, you will need it.”
I shook my head; there was nothing I could do about it. The blade was at home in North Dakota. “I’ll get it when we’re home next. For right now, I’m going to bed.”
As we walked across the parking lot, Liam took my hand. “We still need to talk about Alex.”
I stopped walking. “Seriously, now?”
He glared at me, his jaw working for a moment before he answered. “No, that discussion can wait until after the salvage. But this can’t be ignored.”
“Fine, after the salvage, once we’re home, we can talk about Alex.” Yeah, not like I was going to for one second let Liam pull the alpha card. Just because he was an alpha, it didn’t mean he had to act like one all the time. Okay, shit, I knew that was naïve on my part. Maybe I’d just dealt with too many asshole alphas and there was a large part of me that was worried Liam would take that route.
Our room was cool and the sheets downright frosty, but with Liam wrapped around me, I warmed up fast. And that was the beautiful part of him and me. Only moments before we’d been glaring at each other, and he wasn’t happy with me. But there was no way we’d let that get between us. Not after everything we’d fought through.