Silence.
“Hello?” Kya says, pulling the phone back, then she throws the phone across the cabin, and it shatters.
I’m smiling again before I can help myself, and I don’t even care. Usually this would annoy the hell out of me, so I’m not particularly sure why I’m smiling.
“That psychotic bitch just hung up on me after accusing me of having sex with that deranged sociopath my sister insists on loving,” Kya says, whirling around, looking furious, and I choke back some foreign sound that barely evades my lips.
It almost confuses me when it happens again, and Kya stares at me like I’ve sprouted a second head when the sound finally escapes.
Her cheeks are both rosy, the tip of her nose is uncharacteristically red, and the usually very serious general of my army glares at me through obscenely long blue lashes. Her messy red pigtails jut out from her head and stay stiff, awkwardly pointing outward. The entire thing is positively ludicrous.
“Are you seriously laughing?” she asks incredulously as I stare at her in the fluffy poodle skirt and overly inflated chest.
My chest starts shaking with the force of the laughter, and my side starts hurting as something somewhat cathartic rolls over me. It’s almost like the same freedom I feel when I shift and run wild in the woods.
“I can’t remember the last time I actually found something funny,” I manage to say, unable to stop it now that it’s started.
Ella is shaking with laughter under me—though, I’m not sure if it’s my laughter shaking her or her own.
Kya just continues to gawk at me.
“So many years I’ve known you, and you don’t crack a grin that isn’t terrifying, but this makes you laugh?” Kya asks in an unusually shrill tone that only makes her seem all the more absurd.
I laugh harder, until my eyes are watering and I feel completely ridiculous. It almost pisses me off to laugh like this.
“Give me some reason as to why that crazy woman just accused me of having sex with Dice,” she snaps.
“You’re twins,” Ella offers.
“You also did that rather unusual bonding thing not too terribly long ago,” I add, unable to keep a straight face. “Maybe that has something to do with it. Some sort of bond you share.”
Not even talking about twin bonds sours my mood the way it should.
I work to clear my throat, but she shakes her head, grabbing something off my table.
“What are you doing?” I ask through my lingering laughter.
“I’m going to take a cue from our current arch nemesis, and I’m going to possess a damn witch until she fixes this shit.”
She storms out, and I hear silence for a brief second until rancorous laughter suddenly erupts all around the camp.
The door slams shut, sealing out the sound from my freshly applied soundproofing spell that works better than the old one.
Ella stirs under me, and my eyes fall back to her, finding her gaze once again on my face, just watching me the way I’ve often watched her. This is a fucking mess now.
She feels comforted by the taste of my blood in her veins, even though she shouldn’t have come down from that high so easily.
My blood helps her. Hell, kissing her did something to her. Maybe soothed the beast that was still so close to the surface.
I still can’t seem to pry myself away from her, so instead, I decide if we’re going to be naked in bed, we can at the very least remain focused.
Clearing my throat, I ask, “So you think Hannah wants to invade the Lokies with her small army and steal their power the way she’s done others?”
Chapter 17
ELLA
When you’re comfortably lounging intimately with a guy who usually puts immediate distance between the two of you, and for once he doesn’t? You do something stupid…like hope there’s been a change.