Renegades (Hotbloods #3)

With an awkward nod of goodbye, we ascended the interior staircase, coming out through the abandoned storage closet. I kept expecting Pandora to follow us, but no echo of footsteps sounded on the stairwell. In the courtyard, she had seemed off somehow, in a way I couldn’t pinpoint. Maybe our lovey-doveyness had made her uncomfortable. Interspecies romance wasn’t a crime in Northern Vysanthe, but that didn’t mean everyone approved.

Pushing the negative thoughts away, knowing they were coming from a tired mind, I slipped my arm through Navan’s and leaned against him as we returned to our chambers. With the coast clear, I removed the fruit from my armpit and held it tight, keeping it tucked under the edge of my shirt. Only when we got back to the room did I set it down, hiding it in the drawer of the side table next to our bed for safekeeping.

Never in my life had a bed looked more appealing. After the long journey, exhaustion finally hit me, my shoulders burning, my back twinging, my neck stiff and aching. And yet, as Navan snuck up behind me and slipped his arms around my waist, his lips nuzzling at the curve of my neck, I wondered if I might find a second wind somewhere inside me… Where the trip had sapped me, it seemed to have reenergized Navan.

I turned around in his arms and stared up into his heated gaze. He leaned down to trail kisses along the sensitive skin of my neck, sending shivers all the way to my toes. His hands rested on my hips, his fingers wandering along my waistband. A flood of warmth filled me, and I pressed closer to him, until our bodies were flush against each other. I could feel how much he wanted me, could imagine us undressing and moving onto the bed. This was it. We were really going to do it.

My stomach fluttered with nervousness at the thought. A million questions raced through my mind, and, for an instant, my body tensed.

Navan pulled away, the heat in his eyes replaced with a questioning look. Without saying a word, he wandered over to the fireplace, adding more silvery logs to the blaze. He crouched there, staring into the flames, lifting one palm to check the heat. Somehow, I felt both disappointed and relieved.

“Is this how it’s always going to be?” I whispered. “We get so far, and then… we stop?”

Navan didn’t turn as he replied. “I don’t want to rush into anything because you think it’s what I want.”

He sounded almost guilty, as if he’d been pressuring me into it—even though that couldn’t be further from the truth. “But I… I want it, too,” I said, a blush heating my face.

Navan looked over his shoulder at me, his eyes darkening as they flicked down my body, making me blush even harder. The feeling of his attentive gaze made me crave more.

He stood and shook his head, as if to clear it. “You’re not quite ready yet. I can see it in your eyes. There’s something holding you back.”

I swallowed hard, amazed that he could read me so well. “It’s just that… I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Riley.” Navan stepped toward me, and my heart pounded. He rested his hand gently on my cheek. “I want it to happen when the time is right. I want it to happen when you are ready for it to happen. When there are no reservations left in your mind. And if there’s ever anything you want to know, just ask.” His voice was low and full of understanding.

“I have a million questions,” I whispered, beyond grateful for his patience. It was true: a hint of resistance sparked in me whenever things got too heated between us. Throughout my teenage years, I’d tended to ignore those thoughts, knowing a day would come when I’d want to sleep with someone… but then that day just hadn’t arrived. Not until the moment Navan entered my life. Angie had always called me a prude, but I didn’t care. I knew I would never do something with someone until I was truly ready, and it made me happy to know that Navan felt the same.

“I’m all ears,” Navan murmured, kissing my shoulder. I gave a playful yelp as he scooped me up in his arms and carried me over to the bed. He lay me down on the covers and snuggled in beside me.

I smiled sleepily. “I think the questions might have to wait for now.” I yawned, my eyelids growing heavier. “If I say another word, I’m pretty sure I’ll fall asleep on you.”

He chuckled, pulling me up onto his chest as he wrapped his arms around me. “I don’t mind you falling asleep on me,” he said, kissing the top of my head. As my eyes closed, he mumbled something else, but sleep claimed me before I could hear the words.



After grabbing a few hours of rest, Navan and I dragged ourselves out of the apartment and went to visit Bashrik and Angie. We had until the evening before training began again, and we figured we should spend our time wisely.

We found them standing to the side of a small hut that had been set out on a patch of sparse grass beside the building site for the new alchemy lab, which seemed to be coming along nicely. Naturally, they were in the middle of a spat, Angie jabbing her finger at a blueprint that Bashrik was holding out in front of him.

“If you put the load-bearing pillar there, then the whole thing will be unstable,” she said. “I thought you were supposed to be the architect?”

“Yes, but if we don’t put one here, then the building won’t be balanced. One side will slope down like a bloody avalanche!” he snapped back. “What I’m suggesting is, we put one here and one there, to stabilize the whole building.”

Angie rolled her eyes. “That’s what I’ve been saying all morning. Do you just not listen to a single word I say?”

They stopped bickering as we approached, though I couldn’t wipe the smirk off my face. I flashed Angie a knowing look, as it was beginning to dawn on me what was really going on here. She blushed, turning sharply away, pretending to look at something off in the distance. She couldn’t fool me, though. I knew this side of Angie. I had seen it enough times before to recognize when she was harboring a secret crush on someone. Most of the boys I’d seen her fall madly in love with had barely survived her preamble to dating.

“What’s it going to look like?” Navan asked, stepping up beside Bashrik to examine the blueprint.

“Here, I’ll show you,” he replied, gesturing for us all to come into the hut.

Dutifully, we all stepped inside. My jaw dropped as I saw the miniature model of the new alchemy lab. It rested on a table and had clearly been mocked up in a short amount of time, but the effect was no less impressive than if he had spent weeks on it. A towering, silvery behemoth of glittering spires shot up like shards of splintered glass, fracturing at the top and curving back under themselves like frozen ocean waves. In fact, the whole thing reminded me of a frozen ocean scene, with the translucent walls that glinted both blue and silver, depending on which way the light hit. At the top was a platform of hexagonal greenhouses, presumably where rare fruits and plants could be grown onsite, as well as several massive structures that looked like generators. To maintain a lab that size, I supposed they had to handle a lot of power.

“It’s beautiful,” I murmured, ducking down so I could better see some of the details.

“Well, it is my magnum opus,” Bashrik replied proudly. “It better be the most beautiful thing anyone has seen.”