Page 80 of Hunted

“Also, nobody said I could sing and cook. Beck prepared it before he left, figuring you’d be hungry when you woke. Our little Sleeping Deadly was apparently anaemic, borderline malnourished, and possessed a uterus three times the size of what one is supposed to be.”

“Huh,” I murmured. “Well, you can blame Blackwing’s dietary offerings for that middle part, but the other two are entirely genetic.”

He blinked, leaning back. “Huh.”

“Now before you get all soppy and sombre about it, just know that I was looking into this exact surgery before the Academy nabbed me off the streets of London.”

“Huh… Press A,” he murmured, smoothly dropping the subject.

“Just so you’re aware, videogames tend to make me angry.”

He barked a startled laugh. “Whatever for?”

“I’ve never been able to get my brain and my fingers to team up long enough to get good at it. I usually—” I was cut off by a series of snickers.

“Your mind seemed to like my fingers,” Deklan chuckled darkly.

“An experience that will never happen again,” I said sweetly, pressing a button on the controller that plunged us headlong into some first-person shooter game.

“Cheater,” he teased. “Though by the looks of that”—he nodded at the right half of the screen, where my character was spinning in circles because I couldn’t work out the damn joysticks—“you’ll need all the help you can get.”

“Rude,” I muttered, earning another round of sniggers.

The apartment door banged open a few minutes later, and the other two amigos wandered in—Beckett, with arms laden with paper grocery bags, and Evander, with an office box presumably filled with capture sheets and an empty whisky bottle.

“Jesus fuck, who’s on the right-hand side?” Evander griped. “It’s making me feel sick just looking at it.”

“Then don’t look at it,” I grumbled. “Or better yet, teach me how to kick his ass properly.”

“With pleasure,” he drawled, throwing himself down onto the couch to my right.

I hissed as a sharp burst of pain tore through my abdomen, and the men on either side of me flinched, inciting a second wave. The sound of something crinkly and heavy thudded to the floor somewhere in the background, then Beckett was in my face demanding answers.

“Which one of these two morons hurt you?”

“Neither—”

“Don’t lie to me, Adelaide. You were fine a second ago.”

“Define fine.”

“Not hissing in pain.”

I rolled my eyes. “Then yes, by that definition, I was fine.”

“So who was it?”

“I plead the fifth.”

He rolled his eyes. “We don’t have that here. And you’re British, anyway.” He leaned in closer, bracketing me in with his arms. “Who?”

“What?”

“Who?”

I snickered, immediately regretting it and clutched at my belly again. “What are you, an owl?”

“Not my bird classification, no,” he grumbled, unamused. “I suggest you stop avoiding the question.”