“Your boy’s back and he wants his ma,” Jabber announced.

My extreme relief that he was back, and the resulting closure of that fucking hole in my belly, was instantly replaced with extreme fury.

“Abel’s back?” Chen asked before I could.

“In the war room. And warning, man, he’s pissed,” Jabber told Chen. “Like werewolf pissed, and this I’m seein’ is not a good thing.”

He was pissed?

I looked to Chen and saw he felt like me—that others should be pissed, not Abel. Then Chen moved to the stairs.

I moved to the war room with Jabber at my heels, prepared to go head-to-head with Abel for disappearing.

I stopped in the door when I saw him prowling the room like a caged animal.

One could say the sight of it was more than a little scary.

I ignored the scary and demanded, “Where were you?”

He stopped prowling and turned eyes to me that were even scarier than the prowling was.

They were both brown.

I was getting a lock on the “magic” of his eyes turning—they got brown when he felt something deeply, that being turned on or another good emotion.

Obviously, this also included bad emotions, like him being pissed off.

“Not now, Lilah,” he growled.

“Now, Abel. You’re not supposed to leave. It’s dangerous,” I shot back.

“Not now!” he roared. I jumped in surprise and Jabber got close to my back.

Moose and Snake, who were sitting in the war room sipping coffee while cautiously observing Abel, took their feet and inched my way.

“Calm down,” I whispered.

“Where’s Jian-Li?” he returned in a snarl, which I didn’t like much, but at least it wasn’t a roar.

“Chen’s getting her,” I told him. “But you need to calm down before she gets here.”

“I’m not calming down,” he replied.

“Take a breath, Abel,” I advised.

“Delilah—” he started, just as Jian-Li said from behind me, “What’s going on?”

Jabber and I turned to our sides and I saw Jian-Li with Dad trailing her, Chen trailing him.

My movement was the wrong one. This afforded her the opportunity to slide in front of me and into the room.

And when she did, Abel thundered, “Have you lost your fuckin’ mind?”

Jian-Li came to a quick stop just inside the room. I slid in beside her and felt the others do the same.

“Abel, honey, calm the fuck down,” I snapped.

“Went out, seein’ as the boys can’t smell what they’re lookin’ for and I can. Seein’ as I can’t be cooped up and everyone knows it. Smelled nothin’ ’til I went to The Biltmore to see if I could get a sense of what we were dealin’ with there. And when I did, I got hints of you,” Abel informed Jian-Li, totally ignoring me for he was not calming down in the least.