The Bloodline War Read Online Free PDF

him back, flipping to the next channel with a hard jerk of her hand.
    He paused a moment. “Is something wrong?”
    “Really?” She slammed the remote onto the coffee table. “You’re going to ask me that after you’ve just come home from kidnapping another woman?”
    “Jesus, please don’t start, Kimberly, okay?” He moved through the foyer into the kitchen. “Today’s mission sucked and I feel like crap.” Opening the refrigerator, he pulled out a Heineken. “Vinz got stabbed, you know.”
    She surged to her feet and marched into the kitchen after her husband. “Yes, I do know.” It’d been one of those moments of sheer, unadulterated terror when she’d opened her front door and found Roth Mihnea, the leader of the community, standing on her doorstep with a grim look on his face. She’d thought Roth had come to tell her that it was Sedge who’d been killed. Which would’ve fit in perfectly with her life to date. Because things were going about as right for her as if she’d spent all of her days spilling salt, breaking mirrors, and walking under ladders.
    She plunked her hands on her hips. “If you’re waiting for me to feel sorry for Vinz, then you’re going to stand there till you petrify, Sedge. Because here’s the thing. Vinz wouldn’t have been injured in the first place if you warriors hadn’t been out kidnapping another woman!”
    Sedge didn’t respond. He twisted the Heineken cap and she heard it siss open.
    “Damn it, Sedge, I can’t believe you took another one! Have you heard nothing I’ve had to say about this?” How ridiculously naïve she’d been to think that Gwyn Billaud, the woman who’d been taken after her, would be the community’s last kidnap victim. How completely idiotic to assume that anyone in this barbaric town had actually listened to Kimberly or learned one single thing from forcing Gwyn down here into danger and then losing her.
    “Oh, I’ve heard,” Sedge returned, tipping the beer to his mouth and drinking it down.
    She seamed her lips together. Well, that’s just great . She loved it when men chugged beer around her. It was, like…memories galore. “You men of the Warrior Class think you’re such heroes, saving your people from possible extinction with what you’re doing. But do you know what you really are? Criminals! No better than a bunch of thugs.”
    Sedge lowered his beer and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes, thank you. You’ve made that abundantly clear in the past.” He set his beer on the kitchen island. “This is the same argument we’ve been having for two years, Kimberly, and it gets us nowhere. There’s nowhere to go with it. I wish there were, but I’m in an impossible situation here. I have a job that requires me to follow orders, so I follow them, but that means I end up doing something you hate.” His gaze darkened. “That I hate.”
    She curled her hands into fists. “If you hate it, then stand up to Roth.”
    Sedge shook his head. “You know I don’t have the power to change anything around here. But even if I could get Roth to stop sending warriors topside on kidnap missions, how in the world is that going to help you, Berly? It won’t. Nothing will change for you. You’re stuck down here with me, no matter what.” The muscles around his throat tightened and a raw thread of pain entered his voice. “I know you’re miserable. That’s more than clear. I wish I could send you topside daily to your lawyer job—you have no idea how much I want that—but security issues make that impossible. Too many comings and goings risk exposure, and Roth is really paranoid about it. You know that, Berly, okay, so…. I’m truly sorry for how unhappy you are. I mean that from the depths of my heart. But I don’t know what I can do about it.”
    She just stared at him, her chest hitching as she fought back tears. It was more or less the same speech she’d heard for the two years of their marriage, and, as always, Sedge was