“Not a thing,” Flint says as he walks in right behind her, carrying a giant tray of tacos that he must have sweet-talked out of the kitchen witches. “The party just got here.”

“Is that what you call it?” Hudson says as he flips through his phone and Nothing More’s “Go to War” comes blasting through the speakers.

I glare at him. Be nice, I mouth.

He rolls his eyes but shrugs and turns the music down to a more reasonable decibel. He doesn’t, however, change the song. But this is Hudson. He’s only got so much compromise in him.

Flint plops the tacos down on the nearest surface—which happens to be Hudson’s desk—then leans over me and asks, “What are you doing on the floor there, Grace?” even as he reaches down and pulls me straight into the air.

Normally, Flint can throw me around with abandon, but either I’ve turned to stone (I haven’t) or something’s wrong with him, because he winces as he sets me on my feet.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

He shakes his head, gives me his cockiest grin—the one that tells me something actually is wrong—and says, “Nothing fire-roasting a couple of vamps won’t fix.”

“Will any old vampire do?” Hudson asks, sounding only vaguely curious. “Or do you have a specific few in mind?”

“A very specific few,” Luca says as he, Jaxon, and Mekhi walk in together. Luca heads straight to Flint, a look of concern on his face. “A bunch of the mades jumped him in the tunnels this morning.”

“You too?” Macy asks as she pulls out her phone. “Does my dad know about this?”

“Yeah, I told him. Added five more people to his grounded list,” Flint says glumly.

“Five? I thought there were only four of them?” Luca’s gaze narrows.

“There were, but Foster took my powers, too. Said if I didn’t get into any trouble between now and Friday, he’d give them back. He’s afraid I’ll go looking for retribution.”

“Maybe I should go looking for you,” Jaxon says, and his expression is seriously pissed.

“I held my own,” Flint tells him. “Three of them ended up in the infirmary.”

“And the fourth?” Luca asks, and for the first time since I’ve met him, I can sense the danger in him. Usually, he’s one of the more easygoing members of the Order, but right now he’s anything but. “What if he comes back?”

“The fourth has a sprained wrist and a black eye.” Flint pretends to flex his muscles. “Don’t worry about me. It’ll take more than a few baby vamps to take down a dragon.”

“Oh, right. I forgot.” Macy rolls her eyes. “You’re Iron Man and the Hulk all rolled into one.”

“If the shoe fits.” He tosses her a wink.

“If the shoe fits, you should shove it up their asses,” Eden growls as she walks in with her head tilted back, a bloody cloth pressed against her nose.

“Oh my God!” Macy all but sprints across the room. “What happened?”

“I’m fine.” Eden waves her off, but Macy refuses to stop fluttering around her. “More pissed at myself than anything else.”

“Who did this to you?” Hudson asks, even as he escorts her over to the couch.

As I pull my first aid kit out of my backpack—again—I can’t help thinking that when Heather’s mom put the thing in there to ward off my panic attacks all those months ago, neither one of us ever thought it’d get this much use.

“Let me see,” I order as I push my way through the wall of big male bodies currently gathered around Eden.

Macy does the same on the other side and settles herself on the couch beside the pissed-off dragon shifter. “Did the vamps come after you, too?”

Eden shakes her head. “The freaking wolves.”

“What the hell is going on?” Mekhi demands. “We’ve been at Katmere for four years. And sure, the factions fight, and there’s a power vacuum with the wolves since Cole got sent away, but we’ve never had this kind of violence before. Not even when…” He breaks off, looking anywhere and everywhere but at Hudson.

“Not even when I was killing off the born-vampire supremacists who planned on helping Cyrus burn down the world?” Hudson’s acerbic tone cuts through the sudden quiet.

Flint tenses up, which makes Luca tense up—things have obviously progressed there more than I thought, and I smile softly.

As I watch the two of them make eyes at each other, I can’t help being glad I didn’t tell him what the Bloodletter did to him—what she did to all of us. It would have just messed with his head, and that wouldn’t have been fair to him or to Luca. Not when they’ve got a good thing going now that he’s finally over Jaxon. And not when he might be hurt all over again knowing that Jaxon didn’t choose him this time, either, even after the fake mating bond magic wore off.

I turn back to Eden. “How’s it feel?”

“I think the bleeding’s stopped,” Eden says as she lowers the balled-up shirt she’s been holding over her nose. “What do you think?”

Macy gasps and jumps to her feet again. Eden’s delicate nose is a whole different shape than it was when we had breakfast this morning, and Macy answers, “What I think is that your nose is broken. You need to go to the infirmary!”

Eden rolls her eyes. “Broken shmoken.”

“I…have absolutely no idea what that means.” I look from her to Macy, who just grimaces.

“It means we’ve got this.” Flint steps forward.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Eden says, throwing both her hands up. “Slow your roll there, Fire Boy. You are not touching my nose.”

“Damn right he isn’t,” I tell her, horrified. “Macy’s right; I’m taking you to see Marise.”

“We don’t need to do anything that extreme,” Eden assures me. Right before she reaches up and pops her own nose back into place.

“Oh my God!” I screech, the sound of cartilage and bone moving back still ringing in my ears as I stare at her in horror. “What did you just do?”

“She fixed her nose,” Jaxon tells me calmly, but his eyes are laughing.

“I still think you need to at least see a nurse,” Macy hisses at her. “What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking I wanted a taco. I’m starving.” She gestures for me to clean off the cut on the bridge of her nose, but before I can, Macy holds out her hands for me to give her the kit.

She pops open the lid and grabs the small bottle of peroxide and a cotton ball. “This is going to hurt a little,” she says gently.

“You don’t have to worry about hurting me.” Eden grins. “It’s already starting to heal.”

“It can’t possibly—” I start, leaning over Macy’s hand to look for myself.

“Shifters heal fast,” Hudson reminds me quietly. He’s less than a foot behind me now, and I shiver as his breath brushes against the back of my neck.

The shiver makes me feel guilty, and I glance at Jaxon out of the corner of my eye. It’s one thing for Jaxon to say he’s okay with Hudson and me being together and a whole other thing to watch it happen.

His face is so hard, it could be carved from granite, but he isn’t looking at me anymore, so I don’t think it’s about us. To be honest, he isn’t looking at anyone with that face, for what it’s worth. Just kind of scowling into the distance. I don’t know what to think.

“I don’t heal fast,” I whisper over my shoulder to Hudson.

His hands settle on my hips as he leans in closer and murmurs, “Animal shifters heal fast. You have other gifts, Grace.”

His breath is warm against my ear, and he’s so close now that I’m sure he can feel me trembling. I don’t know what “gifts” he’s referring to, but my face is burning just thinking about it.

He obviously notices, because his smile grows wicked as he teases, “You look a little flushed. Do you want me to turn the fire down?”

The jerk. He knows exactly why my cheeks are red.

Determined that two can play his game, I turn around to face him. His hands never leave my hips as I do, though, and now we’re so close that we’re breathing the same air. “I’m fine,” I tell him with a deliberately provoking look, “but I know how sensitive you are to heat. Feel free to turn it down if you need to.”

I was totally referring to the day he burned his hand in my doorway, but as his eyes turn to molten lava, it’s clear he took my words to mean something else entirely.

“I’m all for seeing how much heat I can take, Grace. As long as you’re the one dishing it out.” A devilish grin lifts one side of his mouth and that damn elusive dimple of his appears. As it does, I’m a little shocked to realize just how much I want to lick it. To lick him. Even before his hands tighten on my hips and the last inch of space between his body and mine disappears.

My mouth turns desert dry at the first press of his body against mine. I swallow hard, lick my too-dry lips. And nearly forget how to breathe as Hudson watches the slow movement of my tongue with a predatory gaze. And just like every other time he looks at me like this—every other time he touches me like this—the rest of the room disappears. Everybody vanishes, and it feels like we’re the only two people left in the world.

And as he leans closer, all I want, all I really, really want, is to see exactly how much heat we can both take…