“But do we really want him out?” Mekhi asks. “I mean, it didn’t go so well for everyone the last time he was free.”
“And it’s not going so well for my mate now that he isn’t,” Jaxon snaps and Mekhi—along with everyone else—kind of sits back a little at his tone. Now that Jaxon’s more approachable, I think people tend to forget he’s still Jaxon, still the dark prince, and I think he must have reminded them.
“He took her body over more than once,” Jaxon continues. “He knows her every thought, has access to our mating bond. So yeah, he has to go. As soon as possible.”
“Yeah, he does,” Xavier agrees, looking a little horrified at Jaxon’s listing. Plus, he’s not pounding on my temple anymore.
“Well, then, I’m in,” Eden says.
“In what?” I ask, a little baffled.
“In for the Boneyard and whatever else you need to do.”
“Yeah, me too,” says Xavier. “Hijacking a girl’s body like that just isn’t cool. What a douche canoe.”
I glance over at Hudson, who’s now got his head tilted back against the wall, eyes closed. I can feel his exhaustion from here. “Everyone’s a critic,” he mutters.
“Count me in, too,” Mekhi says. “You know I’ve always got your back, Jaxon. And yours, too, now, Grace.”
“My dad is going to flip if he finds out we got three more of his students involved,” Macy says. “I talked to him, and he’s agreed to keep the Circle busy and out of our hair tomorrow morning while we sneak down to the Boneyard, but he’s not happy about us going alone. He’s really not going to be happy about us taking all of you.”
“Plus, it’s dangerous,” I tell them. “Really dangerous.”
“Umm, pretty sure I’m the one who just said that,” Eden answers with a shrug. “But you know, sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. And apparently, what your girl needs to do is kick a homicidal maniac out of her head.”
“Cheers to that,” Flint says, raising his soda. “Besides, sometimes—”
“Careful just doesn’t get the job done,” Jaxon joins in with a huge grin.
“Damn straight.” Flint nods with satisfaction at what must be an inside joke between the two, before clapping his hands together. “So, just to be clear, we’re doing this thing tomorrow morning?”
“Damn straight,” Eden agrees, and everyone nods.
“Wait a minute—aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves?” I ask. “I mean, we don’t even know where the Boneyard is yet, do we?”
“We do,” Flint says, exchanging a glance with Eden. “I talked to my grandma about it, but I also asked Eden to talk to her grandma the other day when you asked me, and she got the deets.”
“The good news is, we won’t have to travel very far,” Eden says. “The bad news is, Grand-mère says only someone with a death wish would go there. Almost no one makes it out alive.”
78
Talk About a
Bone to Pick
“No one makes it out alive?” Macy says, eyes wide. “Wow, that sounds like fun.”
“Don’t worry, Mace,” Xavier answers. “We can handle a bunch of old bones.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Flint tells him.
“But we can do it,” Eden says. “I know it.”
“On the plus side, it can’t be worse than going after a beast that’s impossible to kill,” I interject. “Just saying.”
“Love that optimism,” Mekhi tells me. Then looks out at the group. “I say we go for it.”
“Tomorrow, five a.m.,” Jaxon orders before asking Flint and Eden, “Where do we need to meet?”
“The tunnels,” Flint answers, and my stomach drops. But it is what it is. Sometimes you just have to put your head down and get the bad stuff done, even if you don’t want to.
“Sounds good to me,” Xavier says as he picks up his box and soda can and throws them in the recycling container at the top of the stairs. The rest of us follow suit, and the party breaks up soon after.
The tournament took a lot out of all of us, and no one wants to stick around for a late night. Except me… Hudson is sound asleep now, so spending a little time with my mate without his brother butting in every ten seconds sounds like heaven.
I wait until Flint leaves—no reason to rub things in—before I settle on the sofa next to Jaxon and lift his hand to my mouth. He watches me with blazing-hot eyes for several seconds, then wraps his arms around me and pulls me against his body.