Lucas stared after him. “Any where I’m about to walk?”
A flash of gray beneath dark lashes as Nikolai glanced back. “No.”
“You could have said that.”
The broad shoulders shrugged. “Yes.”
Lucas’s glare as he continued could have scorched the paint off a house. Nikolai ignored it, but he couldn’t have missed the anger in the Morph’s energy.
The entire thing reminded Aria that Nikolai didn’t have to use his eyes to know what went on around him. He was aware in ways that she envied.
Saving Lucas from being bit hadn’t done anything to ease the situation between the two men. Lucas prickled with hostility, and although Aria couldn’t get a read on Nikolai at the moment, the stiff set to his shoulders indicated he didn’t trust the Morph any more than Lucas trusted him.
Lucas’s anger was likely rooted in fear. He knew Nikolai had used his ability to kill the Dires and chase off Demeti, but if the Morph had known of the collateral damage Nikolai had caused, he might not have agreed to come with them.
Was that why she hadn’t let Nikolai elaborate on what he’d done? He would have, she was pretty sure of it. The big man hadn’t tried to hide it.
Her mind twisted and turned on her as the sun slowly sank in the sky. And then it started to rain, trickling down through the moss and leaves and soaking them all to the skin.
A quiet, miserable, intense little group picked their way through the darkening forest, lost in their own individual troubled thoughts.
* * *
Lucas was starving.
His body craved food. His Morph metabolism demanded he eat several times a day.
He’d been without food now for nearly twenty-four hours, and during that time he’d adopted two different full morphs and many partials, he’d been zapped by Demeti, whipped, and then had his life energy sucked from him by whatever the effing hell Nikolai was. He wouldn’t even be walking if it weren’t for the big dude’s boost of power when he’d save Lucas’s life, but his body was screaming at him.
Short of grazing on the insects so determined to mine him for blood, he didn’t see any way to solve the issue. It didn’t help that as he scrambled over trunks and debris, the deep cuts burned and bled. He wasn’t healing fast, because his reserves were too screwed up.
Ahead of him, Nikolai slid off a branch and walked across a flattened area of moss. It appeared well trampled, and when Lucas followed him down, he saw what looked like shells littering the surface. Cracked and broken, they were scattered everywhere.
Nikolai stopped and looked up, then bent to retrieve a broken branch. He used it to poke into the foliage draping over the moss. With a series of plops, a pile of seed pods dropped down.
He picked one up and handed it to Lucas.
Lucas glared at him. “What am I supposed to do with that?”
“You are hungry. It is edible.”
How the hell had he known Lucas was hungry? Lucas stared at him with narrowed eyes and instead asked, “How do you know they’re edible?”
Nikolai gestured to the scattered shells. “Things are eating them.”
“Are those things anything like me?”
The big man shrugged. “Don’t eat it then. But if you faint, I’m not carrying you.”
Lucas met the clear-gray gaze and carefully extracted the seed pod from the big man’s hand, taking care not to touch him. Nikolai turned away and bent to pick up another. He handed it to Aria, and she crumbled the shell to reveal a nut within.
Lucas was riveted when she nibbled at it with her strong white teeth. When the tip of her pink tongue emerged to lick crumbs off her lips, his breath caught.
Her gaze rose to meet his. For just a millisecond, they were alone in the world. He stopped breathing altogether.
“What do you think?”
The deep voice shattered the moment. Lucas shot Nikolai a glare as Aria cleared her throat and answered.
