"Go inside. Ully's waiting for you in the lab."
"I'm nothing but a means to an end to you," she muttered. "So tired of all this." At least I have Rhyn. She didn't wait for Kris's response but trotted inside.
Rhyn lopped the head off the last demon and wiped his knife again. He'd fed on the first one and was full but not satisfied. No blood could sate him as his mate's could, and he hadn't tasted her in weeks. Gabriel said she needed space. Kris said she needed anyone but him in her life. She had no idea what he wanted. For once, Rhyn was the only one who made any sense. His blood still raged from their kiss. If not for the demons' interruption, he and Katie would be doing a different kind of mud wrestling.
He growled, irritated as much by demons as he was with the cold weather. Snow fell in lazy, fat flakes, sticking to his clothes and hair. He swiped at the flakes then braced himself to change into his jaguar shape. Hot pain slid through him as his body contorted into the new form. He released a sigh when he'd transformed and shook snowflakes from his thick coat. He loped along the trail through the forest and trotted into the park around the castle, where the person he least wanted to see awaited him with a glower and crossed arms.
"You had somewhere to be half an hour ago," Kris said.
His tone reminded Rhyn that coming here had been Katie's idea and no one else's. He'd come to keep an eye on her and, allegedly, to help his brothers on the Council, though not even he believed he had a decent bone in his body.
"I thought it important for you to see our father's crypt," Kris continued. "He's been interred here since he became dead-dead at the hands of your demon-mother."
Kris waited for him to change forms. Rhyn breezed by him, much warmer in his jaguar shape than he'd been in his human shape.
Hell was a bitch, but at least it was warm, he thought darkly.
Kris strode past him and led him through the castle's ground floor, whose wide, carpeted halls felt nice on his paws. The massive halls were chilly, with ugly stone walls and wooden beams far above. Kris's décor was similar to his ever-changing eyes: jewel-toned drapes, pillows, and tapestries, edged with gold.
Several people stopped to stare or skirt them as Rhyn padded through, and one startled gasp drew his attention briefly to a stairwell. A child-angel-- the first he'd seen in hundreds of years-- gazed at him with large brown eyes before darting up the stairs. He wondered what poor fool was stuck babysitting the high-maintenance angel as he followed Kris.