"Are you all right? What was that about?" I demand.
More tears fill her beautiful eyes, leaking over her cheeks as she whispers, "I…I think Veld was here."
My normally sunshiney, flirty, brightly smiling empath is terrified.
I don't know who thisVeldis, but he's not going to be breathing much longer for putting her into this state.
Ian sits up too, staring at nothing in particular in the room. "I'm going to fucking kill that incubus."
"You know him?"
"No. I just heard him speaking gibberish in my head."
Kaenon's snarls finally die off on the ripped-up bed. For a second, there's just a massive sleeping wolf there—and then he shifts back into human form, sitting up with wide eyes, chest rising and falling with labored breathing.
Heidi is watching him, confused and still too pale. "So youwerethe wolf I heard."
The ancient warrior sees us all on the floor, his brow furrowed deeply. "Yes. And that…that was a warning. He taunts us with his cruelties."
Not for the first time, I thank Koa that Jada is a brilliant inventor in her own right. She must have enchanted the translation devices she made for our team years ago so they wouldn't break on shifter bounty hunters when they shifted on the mission, since the metal shell around Kaenon's ear is still intact.
"Explain what you mean," I press.
"First, you must understand the atrocity that is Veld and Nivarrah."
I listen as Kaenon explains that long ago, Veld started tormenting Nivarrah, his "fated one," by rubbing his unwanted relations with other women in her face. Nivarrah lost her mind and murdered the fae king's niece before she was sentenced to the same merciful punishment as Veld, being used for scientific experiments.
And how, when Heidi woke them up, Veld pinpointed her as someone he could use to torment Nivarrah.
"He was here, in my head again this night," Kaenon grits, rubbing his temples. "Tormenting me with a dream that he had spirited my mate away. I chased him into the woods, trying to reach her, but when I arrived, all that remained was her beautiful coat hanging upon a branch."
I don't understand why he looks so sick until I realize he means herdeer'scoat.
Veld is fucking sick.
I look at Ian, expecting him to share his dream. The look he gives me says he's not about to share whatever Veld was torturing him with before he moves closer to touch Heidi's face, flinching slightly at whatever she's feeling.
"Sunshine? What was your nightmare about? Whatever it was, I swear we'll make him pay for it," the thrall adds.
Heidi curls up tighter to my chest like she craves my protection. As shitty as this early morning is becoming, that little show of her trust in me goes right to my head and makes me feel like a fucking god.
"It was the same bad dream I told you about before," Heidi tells Ian. "Except at the end, I remember now that…he was touching me. All over. Just…laughing while I panicked. That's all."
Furious bile rises in my throat at the thought of this woman stuck inside her own head, left to that sick fuck's amusement. I don't know what dream she's talking about, but from Ian's furious expression, it must be bad.
Godsdamn it.
After getting my pals at the RLHNA involved in all of Everett's demands for Marwood's sources to print a retraction for all the libel and the ways they've slandered Heidi's name—followed by them hopefully taking that chancellor down a few pegs—I hoped the threats against Heidi would start to diminish.
Finding out that there's a powerful incubus sex offender on the loose who has her in his sights just to make his very deadly woman jealous?
Ian is right. Somehow, we're going to find this piece of shit and make him pay.
Not wanting to push Heidi for more information, I simply hold her. At some point, we return to the bed, the others gathered close as they recover from their nightmares.
Zak flops onto the bed with his eyes shut. He's still nauseous-looking and beaded in sweat, which is probably my holy magic's fault.
Just as I'm deciding I need to relinquish Heidi's soft, warm body to one of the others so I can check on Jada and herquintet and possibly hunt the incubus with Dev, my phone starts buzzing on the nightstand where I left it earlier.
