Unborn Read Online Free PDF Page A

sister. Especially not a hot one. I’ll get my head around it soon enough, asshole.”
    “I’m more worried that you’re going to get your head in it . . .”
    “Enough!” Drew yelled, descending the stairs from the second floor to join us. “You will not disrespect your own flesh and blood in my presence or hers. Is that understood?” His cheeks were flushed as he spoke, and his eyes were sharp and hardened. There was a prickle of energy in the room, making the tiny hairs on my neck rise only slightly. Drew was clearly angry with them, though over what affront I could not tell. “Is that understood?” he repeated, stopping to hover over Casey.
    Casey shrugged in the most ambivalent way. I wondered if he had spent time in the Underworld. His actions and mannerisms would have been beautifully suited for a life there.
    “And you?” Drew asked, staring Kierson down. “Do I need to be worried about your antics?”
    “No,” Kierson replied quietly. “I was trying to help. It’s not my fault she’s really pretty. But I get it, I get it,” he said, his hands flying up in a gesture of surrender. “I get that she’s family. I don’t really want to sleep with her; it’s just . . . well, you know. Old habits die hard.”
    “Well, see that they do die, and quickly, Kierson. I have no patience in this matter.”
    Kierson nodded once, his head hanging lower than normal. He, unlike Casey, would not have survived long in my father’s home. His emotions would be perceived as a sign of weakness and would have been exploited at every turn. To survive in the Underworld, one could show no vulnerability.
    I had mastered the art of indifference centuries ago.
    “Khara,” Drew called, softening his tone slightly. “Are you hungry?”
    “I am.”
    “Kierson, why don’t you go make her something to eat while Casey and I fill her in on a few things. She’s going to have questions, I’m sure, so we might as well start with the basics and go from there.”
    “How come Casey gets to do that and I have to play housewife?”
    “Because you make a way better bitch than I do,” Casey purred.
    “I’m going to beat your ass,” Kierson spat, lunging toward an utterly unfazed Casey. Drew jumped in to stop the fight before it startectire it sd. I looked on, thinking that it was a familiar scenario, yet another reminder of the Underworld. Fighting and violence had been the way of life for those I grew up around. And though I may have been somewhat protected from the bulk of their barbarity, I was not immune to it.
    Both found me often enough.
    “If this is how it’s going to be now with her here, some of you are moving out. I will not have a complete breakdown of order,” Drew warned, still holding Kierson back from Casey.
    “Fine,” Kierson snarled, yanking himself out of Drew’s grip to stomp past me toward the kitchen.
    “That goes for you too, Casey.”
    “Whatever you say . . .”
    “And Pierson, you’re not exempt from this either,” Drew continued. Pierson merely looked up from whatever he was reading in acknowledgment, then dropped his eyes back to his thick and weathered book.
    Drew once again turned a softer expression to me and gestured for me to come and sit beside him on the sofa. As I did, he launched into an explanation of anything and everything I could have possibly wanted to know about who I was, who they were, and what exactly it was they did—who they hunted.
    “I didn’t wish to overwhelm you last night with details, but you need to know more about who we are,” Drew informed me, turning slightly to better face me. “You called me a warrior last night. That’s exactly what I am. What we all are, you included. We were born of Ares, all of different mothers, to form what we now refer to as the PC, which stands for Petronus Ceteri, or the protectors of others. Our sole purpose is to maintain the balance between the natural and supernatural worlds. And that’s exactly what we