Page 24 of Truthfinder’s Promise

“Kyrie,” the man called Random said, “you know I hate to disagree with you, love, but she does have a point. Siren’s handling her detractors well, but they’ll latch on to any excuse they have to find a problem with her. Our little redhead’s exhausted, which I know because Jace is driving me nuts worrying about how exhausted she is.”

“So you think we should do nothing?” Her tone was so caustic it should have melted flesh off the bone. Random looked at her like she’d said something particularly sweet, and stroked a soothing hand up her arm.

“No, love, I think you should leave Meredith a few more imbued weapons, set some extra wards around the doors and other entry points to the house, and agree that if something happens again she’s going to call us. Immediately.”

“I am?” Meredith asked.

“Yes,” Random answered, completely self-assured, “because if you don’t, we’re moving in.”

“You can’t just move into my house. It’s my house.”

“Have you met my wife, your best friend? You try stopping her from parking her ass here twenty-four hours a day to keep you safe.”

Meredith let out an adorable frustrated growl. “Fine. I promise I’ll call if something happens.”

Valkyrie narrowed her eyes. “Immediately?”

“As soon as reasonably possible.”

“Are your fingers crossed?”

“What are we, twelve?”

“Are they or not?”

Meredith grumbled and held her hands up. “I promise to call if something happens.”

Valkyrie nodded, satisfied. “I’ll go set up some backup wards. There’s so many damn windows on this house I might as well just do a full perimeter ward directly around it, inside your main setup. I’ll leave it un-keyed so you can take over adjustments. Random, if you want to take her out to the car, she can pick whatever she wants from the weapons in the trunk.”

As soon as Valkyrie swept outside, Meredith said, “You let her take over your trunk with weapons? I guess it’s true what they say about a man just wanting a woman to rearrange his furniture.”

“Very funny. If you were married to her you’d let her put her damn weapons in every moving vehicle you owned, too. She’s a trouble magnet. If that woman walked into a sunny spring meadow full of flowers and frolicking kittens a dragon would descend out of nowhere to challenge her, and don’t think you’re getting away with the distracting thing again.” He pointed directly at Jensen. “I wasn’t sure earlier, but I am now. That’s not a dog. Why does Kyrie think it is? More importantly, why haven’t you told her it’s not?”

Jensen refrained from growling at Random because acknowledging he understood what the guy said would make him seem less dog-like.

Meredith settled what felt very much like a possessive hand on his back. He didn’t hate it. “What makes you think I think he’s not a dog?”

“For one, because if you actually thought he was a dog, your response would have been, ‘What the hell, Random, why are you acting weird?’ For another, the part of my Aspect telling me it’s not a dog feels suspiciously like truth.”

“You are such a weird freak of nature.”

“I’m going to take that in the loving, friendly spirit I’m sure it was intended in. What is he?”

“I don’t know,” Meredith answered. “I’m just hoping his true form doesn’t have tentacles.”

What was with her obsession with tentacles? Did she have an extreme fear of sea creatures?

“But I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to Val. Or anyone else for that matter.”

“If anything happens to you and she finds out I failed to tell her your dungeon mutt was not in fact a dog, she’s going to kill me.”

Jensen almost rose to the bait of being called a dungeon mutt, but the challenge in Random’s eyes when he spoke the words told him the man was hoping to get a rise out of him. The worst thing he could do right now was look dangerous. He scooted closer to Meredith and pressed his head into her stomach.

“Yes, he’s quite vicious, as you can see,” Meredith said wryly.

“He’s certainly smart, as he’s cozying up to the woman intent on keeping his dirty little secrets. Why are you keeping them?”

Meredith sighed, and Jensen was suddenly very interested in what she would say next. “Look, he hasn’t tried to hurt me and I don’t think he will. You didn’t see him when we pulled him out of Elijah’s basement. He was basically dead. And whatever the man did to him down there couldn’t have been pleasant.