Read Refuge for Free Online Page B

kid.” I gave him a hard look, and he quickly added, “Oh
I don’t mean it that way. I have nothing against orphans. He’s just
never gotten over losing his family.”
    I was afraid to ask, but I did anyway. “What
happened to them?”
    “What else? Suckers got them. He and his
brother were living with their mother in Atlanta when our people
found them. But the same night they went to get them, the suckers
went after them. Only Michael got out. His mother didn’t make it,
and the warriors couldn’t find Matthew. The suckers took him.”
    “How old was his brother?”
    “Matthew was his twin, and they were seven
when it happened.” Terrence sank back heavily in his chair. “They
never found Matthew, and Michael still believes his brother got
away. No one can convince him otherwise. He spends most of his time
searching the Internet, looking at missing persons websites, public
records – stuff like that.”
    “That’s awful.” I’d lost my dad to a vampire,
but at least I knew he was dead and I didn’t have to go through
life wondering what had happened to him. I’d spent ten years just
trying to understand why he was killed, and I could not imagine how
hard it would be if he had gone missing like Michael’s brother.
    The three of us sat in silence for a minute
before Terrence asked, “So, Sara, what did Tristan say to you
today?”
    “Tristan?” The only Tristan I knew of was
Lord Tristan, who sat on the Council of Seven and ran Westhorne.
He’d been away on Council business since I got here, and I had yet
to meet him.
    Terrence shook his head like I had asked who
Michael Jackson was. “You know, Tristan, the head honcho? He showed
up in training today.”
    “Oh . . . which one was he?” I resisted the
urge to bury my head in my hands. Callum had wiped the floor with
my butt in front of Lord Tristan? After that exhibit, the man must
be wondering why Nikolas had wasted so much time trying to bring me
in.
    Both boys snickered. “He would be that one,”
Josh informed me. I looked through the doorway, which gave us a
clear view of the main hall, and saw the blond man from this
morning talking to a red-haired woman I recognized as Claire, who
had shown me around on my first day here. I felt heat rise in my
neck. “Oh, him. He didn’t say anything to me. He was talking to
Callum.”
    The boys looked disappointed that there was
nothing more to it, but Josh quickly switched gears. “We heard some
things about you, and we were wondering if they were true.”
    “And what would that be?” I asked warily.
    “Is it true that you actually hung with a
pack of werewolves?”
    At the downward turn of his mouth, irritation
shot through me. I knew the history between werewolves and the
Mohiri, and I was well aware of how the two races felt about each
other. But Roland and Peter were like family to me, and I would not
listen to anyone put them down. “Yes, I hung with them all the
time. I even slept at their houses and ate with them. In fact, my
best friend is a werewolf.”
    Josh put up his hands. “Touchy. Okay, we get
it; the wolves are off limits.”
    Terrence leaned in. “We heard a lot of other
stuff, too.”
    “Such as?”
    “Did you really kill some suckers?”
    “And fight off a pack of crocotta?” Josh
asked.
    “And rescue a baby troll?”
    I looked at their eager faces and shrugged.
“Yes.”
    “Yes to what?” Josh asked impatiently.
    “Yes to all of it. Only there were three
young trolls and I didn’t rescue them alone. I did fight one
crocotta, but it probably would have killed me if one of my friends
hadn’t killed it first. And I did kill a vampire.” I had killed two
vampires if I included the one Remy held for me, but Eli was the
only one that mattered to me.
    “No way!” exclaimed a new male voice, and I
looked up to see that Olivia and Mark, two other trainees, had
joined us. I hadn’t spoken to Mark much, but Olivia and I had
talked a few times and she seemed nice. Olivia was