Gypsy Truths (All The Pretty Monsters #6)- Kristy Cunning Page 0,78

her face. Her hair’s a mess, actually.

“The forest doesn’t agree with you,” I note, since it looks like she’s been camping for a week, rather than stuck in here for less than ten minutes.

“Sorry. Something really important has come up,” she says very abruptly, before suddenly darting off.

She’s a terrible runner, and it distracts me from the fact we need to have a very serious conversation about what her monster really is.

A poor man’s Simpleton monster.

How can I break her heart that way? She genuinely thinks she’s fierce.

I’m left scratching my head at the bizarre, frustrating start to my morning.

Oddly, Talbot’s car drives down the small side-road, barely slowing down long enough for Violet to hop in, and then they race off.

“Something’s amiss,” I mutter to myself.

“What’s not right is having briars stuck to your cock,” Emit retorts from the woods, swearing vengeance on a prickly bush of some sort, given the rest of his muttered commentary that I barely pick up bits and pieces from.

“If anyone’s cock deserves to get stabbed by briars, it’s yours,” I assure him, distracted by the day’s random events.

Emit lumbers out behind me, cursing when he trips on a set of stubborn vines. “The bloody undergrowth in this place is unnatural. You should do better maintenance on your lands, Van Helsing. Where the hell was she off to in such a hurry?” he asks as though I’ve had a secret conversation with her he couldn’t overhear.

I don’t have to bother responding to a pointless question with a pointless answer. Everyone’s in a hurry, and now I don’t even know which direction to go.

Do we chase Violet, or do we chase Damien and Arion?

Emit is busy plucking the briars from his cock, cursing some of the more stubbornly embedded ones.

“This is why most civilized folk wear trousers,” I decide to inform him, smiling like a prat, when he glares over at me.

His phone chimes with a text that has his full attention, and I watch with some worry at how wide his eyes go.

“Son of a bitch,” he growls, eyes darting up to meet my gaze, his face slightly paling, as he lifts his phone.

The screen shows Idun TV, and my heart starts pounding, when I see Talbot’s car already parked in front of the Neopry House.

The camera pans to Violet, who is flanked by Talbot and Avery, as she addresses Idun on the steps.

“Why is this happening? Why is this happening at warp speed? She just left. Given her usual dallying and safety precautions, she should barely be halfway to town,” I very reasonably state for no reason at all, since it’s a pointless observation.

“Why the fucking hell is she with Idun? At Idun’s House? With two very valuable betas?” Emit demands.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit, January Violet Carmine?” Idun asks, giving her nails a bored glance.

“We’ll skip the theatrics and cut to the part where you tried to have one of my members harmed on their way to Sanctuary,” Violet bluntly blurts out.

Emit goes rigid next to me.

I stiffen so tightly that my body immediately aches.

Idun’s gaze flicks up, a hint of surprise in her eyes, but she replaces it with cool menace in the next instant.

There’s excitement in her gaze now. That’s terrifying, since Violet’s only chaperoned by mere betas.

“Please enlighten me on whatever it is you mean, January Violet Carmine,” Idun purrs.

“You have a ruse. Everyone knows it. You send a pack of betas to break all the rules, and pretend they were misguided rogues, who were just trying to impress their alpha,” Violet states with zero preamble, finesse, or…anything really.

She’s deliberately being abrasive.

We should have immediately told her how weak her monster is next to an alpha.

Eleven minutes.

Eleven fucking minutes.

Eleven minutes was too long to wait.

She moves too quickly into conflict, even for human standards.

When I see Idun’s grin stretch across her face, my feet start moving. Emit shoves his phone at me, and I juggle it until I have it in front of my face, watching the hint of excitement in Idun’s eyes double.

It’s been too long since she was challenged. She’s drawing it out—like the cat with a mouse…a mouse that, unfortunately, and wrongly, thinks it’s a cat as well.

Emit is right behind me, shaking the ground for a few minutes, before the telltale sound of his bones cracking and skin tearing rings through the air.

A shock of dark fur only barely registers when he darts by me on four furry legs.

“Please,