A smile curved her lips at the thought . . . until a shocking jolt of pain racked her body.
Gabrielle cried out, staggering forward to catch the edge of the dresser for support.
Her lungs felt on fire. She inhaled a sharp breath, but instead of oxygen it seemed as though she were breathing in ashes. Searing, suffocating agony sliced through her.
It choked her. She coughed and wheezed, struggling for air.
What was happening?
Confusion flooded her consciousness as her knees quaked beneath her. Even the smallest breath was torture. Her head spun as her vision began to cloud over in a blinding, red haze. Every cell in her body screamed at the sudden, relentless assault on her senses.
She sank to the floor on a jagged sob.
The excruciating pain was more than she could bear.
And it wasn’t entirely hers.
“Lucan,” she gasped.
Oh, God.
Her agony was his. Her inability to breathe. The choking gas that seemed to fill her lungs and make her feel as if she were drowning in poisonous fumes.
It was Lucan’s suffering, sent through their bond to her.
It was his regret she felt, too, as pain and a hideous kind of madness swamped him.
“No,” she groaned. “Oh, no. Lucan!”
An urgent knock sounded on the closed door to her suite but it sounded muffled and distant. Gabrielle hardly heard the panicked voices calling her name from the corridor outside. She couldn’t respond, anyway. Her skull was splitting in anguish and she could barely draw a breath as she writhed on the floor.
A rush of cool air poured into the room as the door flew open. Savannah and Gideon hurried to Gabrielle’s side.
“Oh, my God,” Savannah gasped. Her fingers lit on Gabrielle’s cheek, gentle and warm. “Gabby, can you hear me?”
Gabrielle gave a weak nod and a pitiful-sounding groan. “I-I can’t . . . it’s Lucan.”
“Ah, fuck.” Gideon’s deep voice held a sobering tone. “I just got a ping from his comm unit, but I’m unable to reach him. He’s not responding.”
“No,” Gabrielle moaned, terrified to hear her fears confirmed.
The fact that Gideon wasn’t already reassuring her that everything was going to be okay only made the agony cut even deeper. If the violent pain she felt was only her own, she would bear it. This was Lucan’s suffering, though. Her indomitable mate, laid low by something she hardly dared to imagine.
Fighting off the waves of red-hot agony, she levered herself up off the floor with Savannah’s tender assistance. “Have to . . . help him.”
Gideon gave a grim nod. His eyes were too serious behind his pale blue shades. “I’ve sent word to all the teams. We’ve tracked his comm unit to the vicinity of one of the GNC members’ estates. It hasn’t moved since the signal came through.”
“He’s hurt, Gideon.” Gabrielle inhaled gingerly, forcing herself to speak through the pain. “Something’s very wrong. Oh, God . . . I think he might be . . . ”
Dying.
That’s what it felt like to her, but she refused to let the word fall from her lips.
She refused to think it, no matter what the blood bond was telling her.
“We have to find him,” she whispered, desperation in every syllable. “Gideon, we have to find him now.”
CHAPTER 7
