Page 68 of White Hot Kiss

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Page 68 of White Hot Kiss

I murmured my thanks. “What time is it?”

“A little after five in the morning,” he said. “I’m thinking about skipping school today. You should.”

I smiled wearily. “Yeah. I don’t think school is going to happen.”

“Rebel.”

Saying nothing to that, I took a sip of the coffee. French vanilla? My favorite. Just how closely had Roth been watching?

He sat beside me, stretching out long legs. “Seriously, though, how are you feeling?”

“Better. My face doesn’t hurt as much.” I peeked up, wondering if he’d felt anything before he rolled off me and disappeared into thin air or if he’d just been messing with me. “How does it look?”

Roth’s gaze drifted over me, and I had a feeling he wasn’t really paying attention to the bruises. “It looks better.”

There was another stretch of silence, and I reached for my necklace out of habit.

It wasn’t there.

“My necklace?” Dismay hit me. “Petr ripped it off. I have to—”

“I forgot.” Roth leaned back and reached into his pocket. “I saw it on the ground and grabbed it. The chain is broken.”

I took it from his palm. Squeezing my hand around the ring, I wanted to cry like a fat, angry baby. “Thank you,” I whispered. “This ring...”

“It means a lot.”

I looked up. “It does.”

Roth shook his head. “You don’t know how important it really is.”

The ring seemed to burn against my palm and I looked down, slowly opening my hand. In the blossoming sunlight, the stone looked like it was full of black liquid. I thought back to what Roth had told me about my ring and then I thought about what Petr had said.

I looked up and found Roth watching me. A full minute passed before he spoke. “You must be so lonely.”

“We’re back to that again?”

He frowned. “You live with the very creatures obligated to kill you on sight. One of them tried, and who knows how many more want that same fate for you? You’ve probably spent your entire life wanting to be like them, knowing that you can never be. And the only thing you have to remind you of your real family is a ring that belongs to the only part of you that you refuse to claim. Nothing else, right? No memories. Not even what it felt like for your father to hold you, or a memory of what his voice sounded like.”

I sat back, a dry lump in my throat. The low hum of traffic on the street below muffled the gasp that escaped my tightly pressed lips.

Roth nodded without looking at me. “I’ve tried to imagine what it’s like for you, wanting to belong so desperately and yet knowing you never can.”

“Wow,” I whispered, looking away. “Thanks for the reality check. Are you the demon of downers?”

He looked at me then. “Why were you out in the woods last night?”

The change in subject caught me off guard. “The Alphas were at the house. It’s not good for me to be around when they visit.”

“Ah, the Seraphim—warriors of justice and blah, blah, bullshit.” Roth shook his head, smiling ruefully. “What a nasty lot of bastards, if you ask me.”

“I’m sure they’d say the same thing about you.”

“Of course they would.” He dropped my hand and took a sip of his coffee. A moment passed as he watched a leafy plant sway in the breeze. It looked like a Venus flytrap. “The Seeker, the zombie and the possessed...that sounds like the start of a really bad joke, doesn’t it?”

It did.

“But they all had something in common. You.”




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