Holidays are Hell

So she swallowed her retort and tried again. "Speaking of hiding, how'd you go from being a salesman to a vagrant? Was becoming a walking cesspool your only choice?"

Stubbornly, he kept limping along. "I chose it because it's the exact opposite of everything you'd want me to be."

"Warren, please," She stopped walking and sighed. "You don't mean that."

He whirled so fast all she saw was the blurred hem of his trench coat. "I do," he said, almost violently. His face was contorted, all the pain he'd been hiding and the anger he'd stored twisting it into a jumble of emotion. His brown eyes were murky and cold. "You're toxic, Zoe. You even believe your own lies. You say 'love' and you mean 'hate'. You don't even know what it means to work as a team or troop. All you know is deceit."

She wouldn't let him get to her or bait her, she swore. And she wasn't going to fucking apologize. Warren had known what he was getting into the first time he'd climbed into her bed. She'd kicked his ass in enough training sessions for him to have no illusions about that. And after? They spoken clearly of what they'd give and how far they'd go to conquer the Shadows. They'd give it all. It wasn't her fault he'd changed his mind about her, or the men she'd already targeted.

Because there had been other men. Two, to be exact. She'd stayed with the last, Xavier Archer, for sixteen years, a mortal who was the human lackey to the Shadows' leader, a man who traded information—and lives—for power and money. That was Olivia's father.

But the first man—if you could call him that—had been the Shadow leader himself. And Zoe knew it was this relationship that bothered Warren the most. Fooling a mortal was one thing—even humans could lie adeptly to one another—but deceiving the Shadow leader took uncommon nerve. Someone with Zoe's particular skills.

She never had found out what Warren found most irritating: that she'd faithfully return to his bed after months of lying in another man's embrace, or that he, just as faithfully, would let her.

All she knew was that every time she returned to the sanctuary they'd end up yelling at one another until their throats were raw. So she never told him when the Tulpa got her pregnant. Or, after she'd changed her identity to go back undercover, when Xavier did the same two years later Her daughters were hers alone. Not pawns to be bargained with, manipulated, or—God forbid—destroyed because of Warren's jealousy, spite, or sense of duty.

But all of that was in the past, back when she still thought she could make a difference. When she thought she was invincible. Back, she thought as Warren stalked on ahead of her, when she believed she and this smelly, stubborn, and impossibly good man still had a future together.

They trudged on in silence.

Chapter 4

Nurse Nancy's real name was Melania. She was the Shadow Zodiac's Libra, firstborn daughter of Treya, granddaughter of Patrice the Cruel, and by the time Zoe learned all this, she was also dead. Not only had she been working at the decoy clinic when Phaedre and Gregor got there, but she'd been alone.

The only problem with this? She was alone. No child, and no faux adoptive parents. But before Phaedre killed her with a fire-tipped wand that burrowed through flesh to incinerate her core, she «convinced» Melania to tell her where they'd taken the babe.

"The Tulpa's house," Gregor reported back, when they'd all gathered at the Smoking Gun Inn, a battered roadside motel dumped conveniently in the middle of town. "And most of the Shadow Zodiac is gathered there as well."

Zoe's head shot up. "That's odd. The Tulpa never allows the Shadows into his home. Or he didn't when I was with him."

And if he'd changed that practice in the years since, Zoe would've ferreted the information out of Xavier, either with alcohol or sex or both. So it was a recent development. But like the others, she could now only guess at the reasons why.

Yet even odder than that… "Why would the Shadow leader take a mortal child into his home?" Warren wondered.

Because she's the granddaughter of his most hated enemy.

"I don't know," Zoe lied, keeping her eyes downcast, weaving the wide straw she'd made Warren stop for at the crafts store on the long walk back to the Inn that afternoon. He'd raised a brow but hadn't asked her why, pretending not to care.

Who knew? Maybe he really didn't by now.

She shrugged off the weight of his gaze and let them debate the pros and cons of risking their lives for one mortal child, keeping her hands moving in an even to-and-fro, like she had nothing vested in the outcome. She'd already made up her mind, so the particulars of their actions interested, but wouldn't affect her.

"Whatever you're doing," Warren said suddenly, "it's not going to work."