House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) by Sarah J. Maas

He hadn’t, either. But a voice floated back to him. You look how I feel every day, she’d whispered when she’d cleaned him up after Micah’s latest assignment. “Is it a bad thing?”

A half smile tugged at a corner of her mouth. “No. No, it isn’t.”

“No issue with the Umbra Mortis being your emotional twin?”

But her face grew serious again. “That’s what they call you, but that’s not who you are.”

“And who am I?”

“A pain in my ass.” Her smile was brighter than the setting sun on the river. He laughed, but she added, “You’re my friend. Who watches trashy TV with me and puts up with my shit. You’re the person I don’t need to explain myself to—not when it matters. You see everything I am, and you don’t run away from it.”

He smiled at her, let it convey everything that glowed inside him at her words. “I like that.”

Color stained her cheeks, but she blew out a breath as she turned toward the box. “Well, Danika,” she said. “Happy birthday.”

She peeled off the tape and flipped back the top.

Her smile vanished. She shut the lid before Hunt could see what was inside.

“What is it?”

She shook her head, making to grab the box—but Hunt grabbed it first, pulling it onto his lap and opening the lid.

Inside lay half a dozen croissants, carefully arranged in a pile. And on the top one, artfully written in a chocolate drizzle, was one word: Trash.

It wasn’t the hateful word that tore through him. No, it was the way Bryce’s hands shook, the way her face turned red, and her mouth became a thin line.

“Just throw it out,” she whispered.

No hint of the loyal defiance and anger. Just exhausted, humiliated pain.

His head went quiet. Terribly, terribly quiet.

“Just throw it out, Hunt,” she whispered again. Tears shone in her eyes.

So Hunt took the box. And he stood.

He had a good idea of who had done it. Who’d had the message altered. Who had shouted that same word—trash—at Bryce the other week, when they’d left the Den.

“Don’t,” Bryce pleaded. But Hunt was already airborne.

Amelie Ravenscroft was laughing with her friends, swigging from a beer, when Hunt exploded into the Moonwood bar. People screamed and fell back, magic flaring.

But Hunt only saw her. Saw her claws form as she smirked at him. He set the pastry box on the wooden bar with careful precision.

A phone call to the Aux had given him the info he needed about the shifter’s whereabouts. And Amelie seemed to have been waiting for him, or at least Bryce, when she leaned back against the bar and sneered, “Well, isn’t this—”

Hunt pinned her against the wall by the throat.

The growls and attempted attacks of her pack against the wall of rippling lightning he threw up were background noise. Fear gleamed in Amelie’s wide, shocked eyes as Hunt snarled in her face.

But he said softly, “You don’t speak to her, you don’t go near her, you don’t even fucking think about her again.” He sent enough of his lightning through his touch that he knew pain lashed through her body. Amelie choked. “Do you understand me?”

People were on their phones, dialing for the 33rd Legion or the Auxiliary.

Amelie scratched at his wrists, her boots kicking at his shins. He only tightened his grip. Lightning wrapped around her throat. “Do you understand?” His voice was frozen. Utterly calm. The voice of the Umbra Mortis.

A male approached his periphery. Ithan Holstrom.

But Ithan’s eyes were on Amelie as he breathed, “What did you do, Amelie?”

Hunt only said, snarling again in Amelie’s face, “Don’t play dumb, Holstrom.”

Ithan noticed the pastry box on the bar then. Amelie thrashed, but Hunt held her still as her Second opened the lid and looked inside. Ithan asked softly, “What is this?”

“Ask your Alpha,” Hunt ground out.

Ithan went utterly still. But whatever he was thinking wasn’t Hunt’s concern, not as he met Amelie’s burning stare again. Hunt said, “You leave her the fuck alone. Forever. Got it?”

Amelie looked like she’d spit on him, but he sent another casual zap of power into her, flaying her from the inside out. She winced, hissing and gagging. But nodded.

Hunt immediately released her, but his power kept her pinned against the wall. He surveyed her, then her pack. Then Ithan, whose face had gone from horror to something near grief as he must have realized what day it was and pieced enough of it together—thought about who had always wanted chocolate croissants on this day, at least.

Hunt said, “You’re all pathetic.”

And then he walked out. Took a damn while flying home.

Bryce was waiting for him on the roof. A phone in her hand. “No,” she was saying to someone on the line. “No, he’s back.”

“Good,” he heard Isaiah say, and it sounded like the male was about to add something else when she hung up.

Bryce wrapped her arms around herself. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

Hunt didn’t deny it.

“Is Amelie dead?” There was fear—actual fear—in her face.

“No.” The word rumbled from him, lightning hissing in its wake.

“You …” She rubbed at her face. “I didn’t—”