so quietly that I almost don’t hear her. “Nice night to swap, don’t you think?”
What the hell does that mean?
If she’s trying to threaten me, it needs work. Frowning, I watch as Zen’s dark eyes sweep over the scene, her body relaxed as she walks forward toward Joe.
“Who’re you?” the same sigbin asks, this time looking at Zen.
She ignores him and walks right up to the troll. I watch her lotus tattoo beside her eye begin to glimmer. It’s subtle, but it casts a greenish glow over her smooth dark skin, and Joe’s charcoal eyes latch onto it.
“Ut oh,” he grunts, and then his mouth goes slack, and his eyes become glassy.
“Hey, Joe,” she says.
His face grooves into a deep frown, he blinks. Once, twice, and then his eyes grow heavy, and the big troll walks over to the edge of the roof and slumps down, crossing his huge arms in front of him as he immediately closes his eyes and falls asleep.
My brow deepens into its furrow as I watch him start to snore.
The sigbins fidget on their feet. “What’s he doing?” the one with the beard asks.
“I think he’s...thinking?” Sigbin number three guesses.
“Wait...Nah, he ain’t thinking. He’s fuckin’ sleepin’,” Greasy Hair says, like this was super difficult logic to work through. “Oy, wake up, you lazy ass!”
Joe just starts snoring even louder.
“Maybe we’ll get paid more since he’s sleepin’ on the job,” Three muses.
Mind whirring, my eyes lock onto Zen. When she tosses me a wink, I understand what she just did, knocking Joe out using her ultra-calming zen power, but it takes me another breath to sort through why. Swap, she said. She wants to swap.
My mouth opens in an O as I realize that she’s here to take my place and help me. I have no idea how she found out what Joe was up to, but I shouldn’t be surprised. Zen seems to know everything that goes on in this prison.
Seeing that I’ve caught up, she gives me a nod, and I give one back to her.
Clearing my throat, I walk forward, putting up a confident, know-it-all front. “Don’t worry, he always does that,” I lie, motioning toward the sleeping troll. “Big guy needs a lot of naps because of his height to weight ratio and all that. It’s fine though, because she’s here.” I nod toward Zen, and the corner of her lips tilt up.
The sigbins, looking dumb with their heads cocked, begin to clap their ears together so that it sounds like some really awkward applause. “The cock alpha wants you?” the one with the shoulder-length hair asks, looking Zen up and down.
“Of course,” she says simply. “Now, are you going to get me the fuck out of this hell hole and into my alpha’s arms or what?”
The sigbins do their weird ear clapping thing again, but Greasy Hair shakes his head. “Wait. Nah. The one we was supposed to deliver was a shifter. Like the alpha.” All three pairs of eerie eyes skim over to me. “Like you,” he says, pointing.
Oh, shit.
I laugh, despite my spiking worry. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not me he wants. If you don’t deliver her, he’s going to be very angry at you for fucking this up. You definitely won’t get paid.”
The other two exchange nervous glances. “Oh, we better take her. I don’t wanna get that mean fucker mad, and we need the money,” Beard says, his eyes darting around like he’s afraid Alpha Bowen is gonna pop out of the shadows.
“Nah. I think she’s fuckin’ lyin’. Tryin’ to trick us.”
Beard and Three slowly digest this information. It takes...a while. But finally, after several seconds, they work out what that means and scowl. “You tryin’ to trick us, bitch?” Beard asks, stalking forward and grabbing me by the collar of my shirt.
Shit.
“No, fucker. Let me go!”
Sigbins might not be the smartest, but they’re strong, and those massive fangs are wicked sharp. Beard leans in, letting the end of his canine scrape threateningly against my throat. My heart pounds nervously. “We don’t like it when people try to trick us.”
“Yeah, makes us real...thirsty,” Three says as he and Greasy Hair circle around me.
Dammit, this is going downhill fast.
If I shift, this whole clandestine meeting will definitely not continue to go unnoticed. We’re lucky with the positions of the guard towers that we aren’t visible. But if I change into my fifteen-foot beast? Yeah, that’s gonna be visible. I got tased and put into solitary for shifting and