And then he knew.
With a shredding certainty, he realized the pain he was feeling was hers.
Naomi.
“No.” A jagged cry rose up to strangle him. “No!”
The shock and grief she was experiencing tore through him like serrated steel, so agonizing it nearly took him down to his knees. But she was alive. Thank God for that, she was still living and breathing.
He could feel her energy in his veins, telling him their connection hadn’t been severed by anything as unthinkable as her death. But she was hurting deeply. Not because of physical wounds but with a loss she could hardly bear.
She should have called by now. She should have been at Michael’s house several minutes ago by Asher’s estimate.
His body still gripped in her anguish, he fumbled for his phone and called her.
“Asher.” Her voice was wooden, barely a whisper. A sob choked out of her. “Oh, my God . . . Asher, he’s dead. Michael’s dead.”
“Ah, Christ.” He swallowed hard, hating that he wasn’t there with her. “Are you all right? Tell me what happened.”
She explained how she found him a few moments ago, dead of an apparent suicide. She told him that she was outside the house waiting for the police, whom she’d just hung up with in the second before he called.
“He didn’t kill himself, Asher. Slater’s behind this.”
“Yes.” He glanced at the time on his phone and wanted to roar his fury.
It would be several hours before sundown. The woman he adored was eighty miles away and he could do nothing to help her. Nothing to save her, if the danger that found Michael were to lock its sights on her next.
At least he could be assured it wasn’t Cain who harmed her friend. That lethal bastard would be as hampered by the UV light as Asher was.
But without Asher to level the odds, even a human coming after Naomi was a risk he couldn’t take.
“You have to get out of there, sweetheart. Right now. Come home, Naomi.”
“I-I will as soon as I can,” she said, her voice nearly drowned out by the rising wail of sirens. “I told Tyler what happened and he’s afraid the police are going to take him and the other kids away to an orphanage.”
“Jesus,” Asher hissed. “Let him know we’ll never let that happen.”
He heard the small catch in her voice. “I will. I’ll tell him that, Asher. Okay, that’s the police coming now. They’re pulling up to the driveway, and Tyler’s waiting in the—” Her voice cut short on a gasp. “Oh, no. Tyler just saw the cops and ran off. Tyler!”
“Naomi, tell me what’s going on there.”
He heard her breath change as she began walking briskly to meet law enforcement. “I have to go. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
He heard the thump of car doors closing and officers speaking to her in the second before she ended the call.
He drew the phone away from his ear and stared at it with blazing eyes. Fear clawed at him, but this time it wasn’t Naomi’s emotion—it was his own.
He’d never felt so powerless, he the unstoppable killer who had feared nothing, lost nothing—loved nothing—for the entire beginning of his brutal existence.
Now he could do nothing but wait.
And worry.
And pray that the woman he loved wasn’t ripped away from him before he had the chance to tell her how much she meant to him.
He gripped his phone in a crushing grasp, but knew he couldn’t sever the only line of communication he had with Naomi.
So, on a bellow that shook the four walls of his daytime prison, Asher brought his fist back and drove it into the center of the headboard he’d made, splintering the wood into a thousand jagged shards.
