There’s no need to get angry about it anyway. Jacob is asking rather than ordering, at least.
He’s telling me how this will go and waiting for my response. If I accept, if I show I’m willing to trust that they won’t take it too far, that’ll be one step toward convincing them that they can trust me too, won’t it?
I’m not really sure what else Icando at this point.
I scoot across the floor of the cargo hold toward him. “Fine. Just remember that if I stumble when we need to move quickly or defend ourselves, it’s not because I want to.”
Jacob lets out a derisive sound. He grasps my hand, and in spite of everything, a tingle shoots straight through my nerves at the contact. My breath catches.
How can he not feel that we’re all meant to be together, me included? That we really are blood in all the ways that matter?
We’re connected in ways no other people on this planet are.
He’ll have to realize it. I just need to keep trying.
Andreas steps closer, wobbling with the movement of the truck. “Are you sure you can control the dosing well enough right now? With our talents dulled…”
Jacob cuts a sharp glance toward the other guy. “You don’t need to bring that up in front of her.”
Andreas simply shrugs. “It’s not going to matter by the end of the day anyway.” He catches my eyes. “After you left, the guardians started drugging us somehow or other so we couldn’t use our powers at full strength. Protective measures.” His mouth twists into something halfway between a grimace and a smirk.
“It’s already wearing off,” Jacob says. “I know what I’m doing.”
He tugs my arm straight in front of him and twists his arm so he can bring the purple spines protruding from it to my flesh. He lets just two of them rest against the skin and then presses them harder.
A stinging sensation like the needles the guardians sometimes injected us with shoots through my forearm and radiates into my hand and shoulder. Unlike with the needles, the sensation lingers, prickling in my veins even after Jacob has pulled his spines away.
That’s the only effect of the toxin that I can feel so far. If that’s all it is, I won’t do too badly.
But that’s probably too much to hope for.
Jacob is still holding out my arm as if he’s forgotten that he no longer needs it. Because his attention has homed in on the front of my shirt.
I glance down at myself, wondering if I’ve gotten something on the tank top, just as his hand shoots out. He yanks on the chain around my neck to pull the cat-and-yarn charm out from its safe spot beneath the fabric.
A jolt of panic shoots through me with the thought that he’s going to rip it right off my neck. My body reacts on instinct, my hand smacking away his before he can get a real hold on the necklace, my feet shoving me out of reach.
My back jars against the side of the cargo hold. Jacob takes a step toward me, chilling fury blazing in his eyes.
“They let you keep it. That was my brother’s, and they let you— And you want us to believe you didn’t win yourself special treatment?”
“I—” My fingers close around the charm protectively. My gaze darts from him to each of the other guys, and for the first time it sinks in that none of them are wearing their old necklaces. “What happened to yours?”
Zian’s lips have pulled back with a growl. “The guardians took them from us as part of our punishment for trying to run.”
They took even that from the guys—from Jacob? The one thing of his twin’s he should have been able to hold on to?
My heart aches, but I don’t know what to say. “I have no idea why they let me keep it. It wasn’t part of any deal.”
Jacob looms over me, his eyes narrowing. I brace myself for some kind of attack, but he just shakes his head with a derisive curl of his lips.
“Whatever. If you get totally out of it with the poison, say something, and Dom will balance you out. Until then, keep your mouth shut unless you’re finally going to cough up some inside info about the guardians.”
I frown at him. “I’ve told you already, I don’t know any more about them than you do.”
“Then you’re basically useless, aren’t you?” he retorts, and shifts his attention to the other guys as if I don’t even exist.
* * *