They were still laughing when Dorian arrived, followedby Clay. The four of them managed to demolish the salsa by the time Lucas returned, with Nate and Vaughn on his heels. None of the sentinels’ mates had come today, which was surprising. Mercy said as much.
“Kids are at Tammy’s—Tally’s gone to dinner with Ria,” Clay told her. “They’re calling it a strategy meeting—how human females deal with changeling males.”
Everyone but Dorian laughed. His next words told them why. “Shaya’s with Amara.”
“She’ll be fine,” Lucas said. “Your mate’s tough.”
“Yeah.” A proud smile. “I can’t help but worry, though. Keenan’s at Tammy’s.”
“Faith, too,” Vaughn added. “And Brenna was there when I left.”
No one found that strange. Brenna and Faith had quietly become very good friends over the past months. “Did Judd come down?” Mercy asked.
“Probably.” Dorian passed her a box of take-out fried rice. “He has trouble letting Brenna out of his sight.”
“Oh, please,” Mercy muttered, “you’re all so overprotective you’d be delighted if you could pack your mates in cotton wool and put them inside glass bubbles.”
Sascha started laughing so hard, she almost dropped her egg roll. “I think that’s Lucas’s secret fantasy.”
Her mate growled at her. “All I said was that you looked a little tired. You didn’t have to blow a gasket.”
“You told me to go lie down.” Sascha poked her chopsticks in his direction. “Do I look like an invalid to you?”
Of course, that was just an invitation for the men to throw in their support behind Lucas, while Mercy had to back Sascha on principle. Come to think of it, the cardinal did look different. Not tired exactly. A little more fragile. Softer. More breakable.
“Enough.” Sascha cut off the discussion with a hand. “We have actual work to do.”
“Right,” Lucas said. “Clay, you had some intel.”
“Rats.” Clay named his source. “They’re catching hints that a group of people are gathering chemicals that could be usedto make bombs. Low-tech bombs, but they’ll do the job same as high-tech.”
Everyone went quiet.
“Alliance?” Dorian finally asked.
“Unconfirmed but from the surveillance footage we were able to get, one of the buyers looks very similar to a face we flagged as a possible Alliance mercenary from the flights that came in around the time of Nash’s abduction,” Clay said. “Teijan has his people on it twenty-four/seven, but whoever they are, they’re being very careful. No clue as to where they’ve set up base yet.”
“We’ll find them,” Lucas said, eyes grim. “No one makes trouble in our city.”
The night after his frustrating call with Mercy, Riley was antsy. It was tempting to blame it on his day—DarkRiver and SnowDancer had both upped their already visible presence in the city in silent warning to the Alliance, but they weren’t any closer to running down the operatives. Since he’d just come off a full day shift in the city, it would’ve been easy to lie to himself.
But that wasn’t who he was. “What would you say if I asked you a hypothetical question?” he asked after giving Hawke his report.
Hawke’s eyes gleamed. “That there are no such things as hypothetical questions.”
“That’s what I thought.” He lapsed back into thought.
Hawke stared at him. “I can answer your hypothetical question, though.”
“You don’t know what it is.”
“I know you’re jumpy as hell for Mercy. Go find her. Get naked. The end.”
Riley looked at his alpha. “That’s your pitch to women? Let’s get naked?” He snorted. “No wonder your balls are blue.”
Hawke gave him a one-finger salute. “Go take care of your own balls.”
“Maybe I will.” He got up. “I have an answer for you, too.”