The Dream Walker Read Online Free Page B

protect those he loved, especially Abby. Noah had once told Blake that the less Abby knew about what was going on, the better off she was. It was a type of “ignorance is bliss” logic that Blake wasn’t sure he believed in. He preferred to be prepared and know exactly what was happening around him so he was ready for whatever would present itself. That was how he had lived his life, and it had served him well.
    Except in the case of Annis.
    Man, her wanting Cohen had blindsided Blake with a two-by-four of “duh,” especially considering what an asshole Cohen had been to her, and to everyone. Blake wasn’t sure what transpired, but something had brought Cohen out of his rage and he fell in love with Annis.
    Blake should have seen that one coming a mile away, but he hadn’t. He’d been too wrapped up in his own feelings for Annis and wanting her to return them. She used to sit next to him during their War Room meetings, but now she sat with Cohen, their fingers interlace d, her eyes glowing a beautiful golden color. It wasn’t just her eyes that glowed, but her whole being did. She was just all shiny with love. It still stung that she had wanted Cohen over him.
    Blake and Annis rarely spoke anymore, except for polite chitchat. It hurt him to be in close contact with her, and she seemed to understand that.
    In three nights he would watch their mating ceremony, and the thought made his stomach clench. Maybe he would get lucky and come down with meningitis or break one—or better yet, both of his legs—so he didn’t have to go. He really didn’t want to watch her profess her undying love to Cohen for the rest of their years, which would be in the hundred s. Annis was just over three hundred years old, and Cohen only had a couple of centuries on her. They would live to be about two thousand, so that was a long time to spend loving each other.
    As much as he tried to ignore it and fight it, he had to admit that within the deepest recesses of his soul, he was still madly in love with Annis.
    Not only was she the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on, he felt as though she was as close to his other half as he was ever going find.
    He ’d been the first among the Warriors to engage her in the gym, not holding back after the first time she laid him flat on the mats with an uppercut and a roundhouse kick to the sternum. He admired her grace and her golden heart, yet she was just as tough as any of the Warriors. Even though he was half-Colonist, she made him feel as though he was normal, as if he wasn’t really all that bad. She made him laugh and she brought out something within him that hadn’t been present before—a goodness he didn’t know existed.
    And he thought she had felt the same about him, or could at least grow into those feelings, and he ’d never been so wrong about anything in his miserable fucking life.
    So yeah, this mating thing made him sick.
    Blake sighed and tuned back in to what Noah was saying. “So, according to the crime charts from the Phoenix PD, it looks as if there’s a significant uptick in crime over the past couple of months. It’s like some sort of cluster or something.”
    “How does it break down by crime, Noah?” Hudson asked. Today Hudson wore a deep rust-colored silk shirt and a pair of Hermès jeans. Some of Hudson ’s good taste was starting to rub off on Blake, and he could now tell his Hermès from his Levi’s 501s.
    Moving up in the world, and all that.
    Hudson’s black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and he spun a baby pacifier absent-mindedly between his fingers. His son, Killian, was two years old, and Beverly was trying to break the pacifier habit, or the binky addiction, as Hudson liked to call it. To her face, Hudson agreed with Beverly that it had to stop at some point, but when Hudson was alone with the kid, he had no qualms of handing out the rubber tips. Hudson said as long as his boy was happy, that was all that mattered, and he could suck on