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Tall and athletic, Jenna wore her brown hair cropped close to her scalp She was pretty, yet formidable in some indefinable way, and when she leaned across the sideboard to pour a cup of tea, Melena noticed an intricate pattern of skin s that looked remarkably, impossibly, similar to

"Are those tribal tattoos, or--"

"Not tattoos" Jenna’s hazel eyes were s, but there was a note of seriousness in her voice She turned to provide a better look The array fanned out to cover the back of Jenna’s neck, disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt The arcs and swirls tracked upward too, well into her hairline and up the back of her skull From the looks of it, they continued down Jenna’s spine and onto her shoulders as well

"They’re derlyphs" Melena frowned, astonished and confused Feht never have coenetic experios’s labs in the decades before he was killed by the Order Even then, there were only a handful of wolyphs and blood appetites of the Breed

Melena found herself staring harder noatching Jenna pile her plate with a healthy assortment of sweets and sandwiches "You can eat all of that?"

Jenna grinned "I’ll probably come back for seconds"

"I’ stupid and rude for letting her curiosity overrule her ht I was Breed?" Jenna popped a tiny pastry in her ave a shake of her head "Not quite But I haven’t been fully hu as Brock loves ether we can handle anything--and we have"

Her two friends nodded in agreeh the sentiment was bittersweet for her She’d believed she and Lazaro were heading toward so special like that too Her father’s death was still a raw ache in her heart, and would be for a very long time The attack she’d narrowly survived still held her in a cold grasp But Lazaro had helped her through

He’d been her rock, her comfort, whether he wanted to accept that role or not And ever since they’d left Ro away No, she felt pretty da away Cutting her off with his forbidding silence andstoicis with Lucan and the others, Melena’s heart started pounding in a heavy, expectant tempo She didn’t knohether to be relieved or terrified when he strode to the threshold of the drawing roo on with the intensity that would probably always kindle an instant heat in her blood

"Melena May I have a ith you" Not a question, not an invitation A sober deroup fell into easy conversation behind them Lazaro led her down the hall to another for his back to her for longer than she would have liked

Melena didn’t have to see his impassive face to knoas about to crush her heart when he finally turned around to look at her His aura was a dark cloud, the shuttered gunray from before