Chapter 71

Troy

We finished our lunch and wandered out to the patio where we took a seat on one of the loungers. The pool house was still quiet, but the voices of the girls carried out of the mansion and through the open bedroom window. They were fighting over who had to clean the toilet.

Quinn pretended she couldn’t hear them.

The heat was stifling, wafting up from the baking pavement like a fist trying to strangle me. The umbrella I opened provided shade, but only trapped the heat and made it more difficult to breathe. “Fuck, no,” I said after a while, “let’s go to one of the gardens, it will be cooler there.”

Quinn was pale, sweaty, and trembled a little as she got up. Part of it was the extended mind link I maintained while telling her about the long journey that eventually ended with me coming to Haverton, the other part was the heat and the stress. Being my mate had to be exhausting.

“I don’t want to see the Lycans,” she said.

“They are confined to the Omegas’ garden. The only Lycans