Unstoppable (Their Shifter Academy #6) - May Dawson Page 0,50
it looked more suspicious than when Silas was his boyish, blond-haired self.
“Now what?” Jensen asked.
“The shield’s in the castle at Eastbrick. Establishment headquarters.” Silas closed the front door and leaned against it. “So we’ll go in and get it.”
“How are we going to do that?” Jensen asked.
Silas suddenly straightened from the door. “I could really do with some tea. Preferably with whiskey in it. Anyone else want tea?”
He sounded worrisomely animated as he began to search through the cupboards, looking for the tea. Jensen and I exchanged a glance.
“Let me fill you in on my adventures with Maddie,” Jensen said, clapping Rafe on the shoulder. He jerked his head toward the door.
“Leave out the dirty bits,” I told Jensen.
“That’s no fun,” he said. He winked at me just before he stepped out of the room; Rafe raised his eyebrows at me in a way I couldn’t quite interpret even after a year of Rafe’s eyebrows dominating my life, but he followed Jensen out.
“Tea makes everything better,” Silas said. The tap screamed as he turned it on, before water finally rushed out with a groan of the pipes. I winced—it was painfully loud—then realized it only hurt because my senses were returning. He stuck the tea kettle under the tap. “Sometimes when life is dour, I remember I haven’t always had the opportunity to make a cup of tea whenever I wanted. I should appreciate the little things.”
“Like oh, last month, at the academy?” I asked. We definitely weren’t allowed hot plates in our rooms—not that my roommates hadn’t kept their share of contraband.
“Yeah, that was miserable. You didn’t even have tea in the cafeteria; it was bizarre. Your American werewolves seem to think there’s something feminine about tea.” He shook his head as he slapped the kettle down on the stove and snapped on the burner. “They seem to think there’s something wrong with being feminine, for that matter.”
He was rattling along as if he were trying to distract me from something—or as if he were trying to distract himself.
“Silas,” I said softly. “What’s wrong?”
His broad shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. The vest he was wearing fit him very well, hugging the taper of his lean chest and narrow waist.
He turned and leaned against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. He hesitated, then said, “I don’t experience a lot of uncertainty in my life.”
“You don’t know what to do,” I guessed.
“No, that’s not quite right,” he disagreed, running his hand through his hair absently. “I know what I should do—what I would normally do. It just doesn’t feel…right…anymore.”
“What would you normally do?”
He gave me a long look, as if he were debating what to tell me. Then he admitted, “My friends in Elegiah are being moved soon. To a penal colony that is hell itself, where even I probably can’t reach them.”
My chest squeezed, even before the memories I’d seen in Silas’s mind rose again: Isabelle trying not to laugh as she scolded him, because she always saw through his mischief; Sebastian’s goofy pranks and steadfast friendship; Frederick’s endless kindness that had made hell itself bearable. I saw again the four of them, exchanging little Christmas gifts wrapped in newspaper in a long, cold room.
“How long?” I asked.
“Two days.”
It would be a very tight squeeze to get the shield, bring it back to our world, and come back with enough time to rescue his friends.
“They’ll expect me to attack during the convoy to the colony,” he said. “So normally, I would go in now. Before that. Of course, it might all be a trap.”
He hesitated, then admitted, “If I were Rafe, I wouldn’t risk a rescue.”
No wonder he felt so torn, and I felt my own heart ache for him. They weren’t my friends exactly, but I knew them from his memories. I couldn’t imagine just abandoning them.
“I’d do whatever it took to get to mission complete. I don’t fail, because I don’t hesitate. But now…” He shrugged.
“I’m surprised you told me.”
His lips quirked to one side. “I’m trying to be a new man. No, that’s not even true. I’m considering being a new man, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.”
“This new man might be even more incredible than the old Silas Zip,” I suggested.
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Rabbit, I couldn’t be any more incredible.”
I grinned. “You couldn’t be any more cocky.”
He reached out and caught one of my belt loops, pulling me toward him. “Maybe that too.”