Wounded, Volume 1 by Amy Lane

Author:Amy Lane [Lane, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2015-04-20T04:00:00+00:00

GREEN

Embittered

GREEN COULD smell the copper brine of vampire tears as soon as he, Nicky, Renny, and Max walked into the kitchen. He stopped and looked from Grace to Cory, but Grace was tossing salad and staring stoically at the wall behind the sink. There was a silly print of cows tap-dancing there, but it could hardly have been as absorbing as Grace’s fixed attention would have suggested. Cory was setting the table and looking determinedly as though she couldn’t see Grace weeping. As soon as the group walked into the kitchen, Grace turned, her face averted, and put the salad on the table, then slid by Green. Green moved toward her, but she waved him off, leaving Cory to finish putting the platter of steaks on the table. The others stopped talking abruptly and looked at Cory, who shrugged.

“It’s funny,” she said, her voice rough, “that no one thinks they’re strong enough to live with pain. But we all have to, don’t we?” She didn’t expect an answer, and so she shook off their stunned silence. “Never mind, everybody,” she told them, and looked around. “Where’s Bracken?”

Green shrugged in his turn and took his cue to ignore what had been going on in the kitchen before he came in. “He said something about cleaning up before dinner. We can sit down, but I’d like to wait for him before we break bread, yes?”

Cory smiled. “Absolutely—Max, Renny, were you actually being civil to each other when you came in?”

Max shrugged uncomfortably, following Green’s example and sitting down. “I apologized,” he said gruffly.

“What’d you do now?” Cory asked, getting milk, soda, and juice out of the refrigerator and setting them on the table. Green noticed the giant cream pie in there, and Cory’s semisweet smile when she saw it. He knew something of Grace’s grief, and he thought maybe he could guess what they had been talking about.

“It’s not what he did now.” Renny spoke up, rolling her eyes as she pulled out her chair. “He just didn’t remember what he did two years ago.”

“What’d he do two years ago?” Nicky asked, taking his own seat while Cory reached around him and put the salad on the table. He’d been being healed when Renny and Max had started this conversation, and he still looked completely infatuated with Green. As Green had been delicately lapping at his wounds in a way that still made them both tingle all over, he’d said that no one had ever used power to heal him—he hadn’t realized that the Goddess’s children could do that. Green had just smiled at him, and when the healing had rippled through them both, Nicky had been embarrassed, aroused, and starstruck.

Renny grunted in disgust. “You tell them,” she growled, and to everybody’s surprise, Max looked ashamed.

“I didn’t know,” he said again and then shook his head. “I rousted Renny and Mitch one night,” he said. “I didn’t remember until she came out of the bathroom just now—I mean….” His voice rose in pitch.

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