Read Strife: Hidden Book Four for Free Online

the realization now. We need to be more unified in this, especially if Strife is involved.”
    “So what’s our next move?” Jones asked.
    “Time for me to go meet with our new vampire queen.”
    Nain and Jones both stared at me. “We’ve tried that,” Nain said.
    “She’s really private,” Jones said, agreeing.
    “Well, so am I. But we’re all making sacrifices now, aren’t we? She’ll see me.”
    Jones just watched me. “How?”
    Nain snorted. “It’s better not to ask.”
    We parted ways shortly after, Nain insisting on walking me to my car.
    “You know nobody’s gonna mug me or anything, right?” I asked him as we walked.
    “They’d be fucking stupid to try,” he answered.
    “Trying to watch and make sure I don’t black out?”
    He didn’t answer for a minute. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Really I just want to say hi to Bash and Dahael. They’re with you, right?”
    “Of course.”
    We reached my car. Bash and Dahael were sitting in the back seat. Who needed a car alarm when you had demonic imps? Dahael opened the driver’s side door from the inside, and Nain held it open for me.
    “Imps,” he said in greeting.
    “Demon,” they both said, Dahael settling back into the seat.
    I looked up at my ex-husband, feeling, as always, completely dwarfed standing near him. I let myself feel the hunger and demonic anger coming from him, and as screwy as it was, it kind of soothed me. “I’ll call you after I talk to Rayna,” I said, thinking about my upcoming meeting with Detroit’s vampire queen.
    He nodded. “Let me know if you need anything. I’ll get Brennan and the leaders of the shifter coalition together to go over how things are going to be now.”
    “Think there’ll be any problems? Should I be there?”
    He looked down at me. “No. All I have to do is tell them the Angel said to do it, and they’ll jump.”
    “You are so full of shit,” I said, ducking into my car.
    “You know I’m right,” he said. Then he closed the door behind me, stood there watching as I pulled away and out of the parking lot.
    “Demon missed you,” Bash said.
    “Still an asshole, though,” Dahael said, and I laughed. Soon, I was laughing so hard tears were coming from my eyes, and I sensed satisfaction from my imps. Making me laugh was not the easiest thing in the world to do, especially since I’d been back from the Nether.
     
    The imps and I spent the day checking into a few places for Strife. I didn’t really have much hope we’d find her, but that didn’t mean I was going to give up on looking. Besides, sitting around didn’t work out all that well for me lately. Either the thing inside me got restless, which made me feel like I could barely stand being in my own skin anymore. Or I ended up thinking about Brennan or Nain. When I thought about Brennan, I felt angry and sad and lonely and guilty and like I’d thrown away something most women would have held on to a hell of a lot tighter.
    Well. I mean, maybe they would have held on if not for the whole “hey honey, here’s my son!” thing.
    And Nain… it was really best for everyone if I didn’t think about my ex at all. Nain was something I couldn’t deal with right now. Not on a personal level, at least. His emotions toward me were still for the most part a jumbled, chaotic mix of love, desire, anger, and guilt. He’d never been an easy man to read. I had a general sense of him, and in different situations, I could feel when he had a spike of a certain emotion over the others. It’s kind of a demon thing, I think. Most demons’ emotional lives are chaos. Maybe that’s where all the rage comes from.
    Anyway, with Nain, I get this sense that he’s trying really hard sometimes not to feel anything. And then he loses his grip, and his emotions come through loud and clear. The most common emotion from my ex lately was a searing hunger, the kind I’d felt from him in those weeks when we were just starting up together, lifetimes ago.