and Nicky took up posts on the other side of the two new men so that they were flanked by four of our guards, though honestly I wasn’t sure Jake would help us against them if the shit hit the fan. He could pretend not to care about them, but it was a lie.
I looked at the two men and they looked back at me. They were both tall and athletic looking. They had that sense of energy contained that some of the wereanimals had even at rest, as if the difference between sitting quietly and furious action was only a thought.
One had curly yellow hair that fell around his ears, longish, but not long by my standards. The same was true of the other one, though his longish hair was straight with only the slightest wave to it, as if it got longer the ends would flip under or up. They both had strong faces; one was a little more triangular through the jaw, and the other more square, but they looked alike, down to the arrogant expression on their handsome faces. They looked at me with pale eyes. Curly Hair with his soft triangular chin had the palest brown eyes I’d ever seen, until I wanted to give it another color, but had no word for it. Brown eyes shouldn’t look pale in a golden-tanned face, but these did. The other’s eyes were pale blue and gold, or brown, as if blue eyes could be hazel. His skin held a soft gold tan, too, until the longer I looked at it the more I wasn’t sure it was a tan at all, but just their skin color. But no one, not even clan tigers, had skin that was pale gold, almost yellow, as if their skin were warmed by the sun even inside.
“I’m Anita,” I said, finally.
Straight Hair with his blue-hazel eyes said, “Mephistopheles.”
I blinked at him. “What do you go by?” I asked.
“Mephistopheles,” he said.
I looked at him, waiting for him to crack a smile, but he just gave me serious arrogant handsome. There was no smile coming.
I turned to Curly Hair. “And you are?”
“Pride,” he said.
I frowned at them. “Come again.”
“My name is Pride,” he said. His voice was a touch apologetic as if he weren’t too happy with it, either. I wondered if Mephistopheles was so adamant about his name because only a bold front would make it work at all.
I wanted to ask if their mother hadn’t liked them, but resisted. I turned to Micah. I gave him a look that I hoped said clearly, These are the best of the five?
“One of the other gold tigers is named Envy,” Micah said, face as empty as he could make it.
I wanted to ask if he was joking, but knew he wasn’t. “Elementary school must have been interesting,” I said, finally.
“We were homeschooled,” Pride said.
“I’ll just bet you were,” I said.
Jean-Claude breathed through my mind, “Do you sense it?”
I sensed they were arrogant and way too full of themselves, but suspected that part of it was bravado. Bravado always hides fear, or at least uncertainty.
“Sense what?” I asked him.
“Something,” he said.
Out loud I said, “You were homeschooled.”
“I just said so,” Pride said.
“Okeydoke, have you ever been this far from home?”
They looked at each other, and Mephistopheles glanced back at Jake and then quickly back at me. “No,” Pride said.
“Why does that matter?” Mephistopheles said, and his arrogance went up a notch to almost angry. He was hiding it well, but he wasn’t comfortable.
“Just trying to get a feel for things,” I said.
“Your Nimir-Raj picked us for you,” Pride said.
“And I’m going to be talking to him about that later,” I said.
Micah leaned in and whispered a bare brush of air against my ear. “The others were more scared, or angrier.”
I put my hand on his thigh through the jeans. I wanted both to comfort him and be comforted, and touch did that. I didn’t like these men. I sure as hell didn’t want to keep them permanently.
Nathaniel leaned back against both our legs, letting his hand begin to play over my calf inside the knee-high boots he’d chosen for me. He didn’t like them, either.
Asher moved to stand behind Jean-Claude, putting his hand on the other man’s shoulder. I knew why Asher wasn’t happy with them, and why Richard wasn’t, either. None of us were happy with them. Jake and I would soooo be having words later.
“Do you guys want to stay with us?” I