Adare turned then, trapping her gaze. “Are you nuts? How can you say you’re not enhanced?”
“Okay,” she acknowledged. “I know we mated when I was in a coma without sex, so that has to be different somehow. But still. I don’t have any special skills.”
He shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
Her face heated, and she shuffled her stockinged feet. “Fine. Let’s change the subject. What’s your plan?”
He pointed to the screen. “Go in there, get all the information we can on how close they are to pulling Ulric home, and then blow the place up.”
Sounded simple. Crazy but simple. Adare and Benny would be far outgunned. No wonder he considered it a suicide mission. “If you die, all of that information goes with you,” she said, her chest hurting for him.
“We’ll transmit any information we can before carrying out the assault.” He sounded so resigned to dying. “Plus, there’s a chance we’ll find a cache of kidnapped enhanced women, and we can save them before destroying the place. That kind of chance makes dying worthwhile.”
“Mercy said there might be a chance Ulric will never make it home.” Apparently, a zillion years ago, Ulric had made himself invincible, and the Seven had been created to stop him. They’d violated physics to build a prison world, far from Earth, and two of the Seven, Ronan and Quade, had sacrificed themselves to guard him. But when the worlds they inhabited were destroyed, they’d returned home, once again distorting the laws of physics, which was one of the reasons the existence of the Seven was a huge-assed secret. Supposedly, Ulric would soon find his own freedom and his way back home. At least, that was how she understood it all, although it was probably more complicated. “Maybe there’s nothing to worry about.”
Adare shook his head. “We screwed up physical laws by creating those bubble worlds, and we probably goofed them up even more by letting Quade and Ronan return home. Nobody can teleport any longer—at all.” He frowned on the last.
She tilted her head. “I’d forgotten many of you used to be able to teleport. What was it like?”
“Convenient,” he muttered, looking back at the heat signatures moving around the Cyst area. “For most of my life, it just was a way to travel. To close my eyes, imagine a place I’d been, and then fall into it.”
Grace had once asked Promise, a genius physicist now mated to Ivar, how in the world anybody could do that. Promise had said it was an application of string theory, whatever the heck that was, bending time and other dimensions to cross through and end up elsewhere. “Do you miss the ability?”
Adare nodded. “It’s like losing your sight or your hearing or any other sense.”
She rubbed her aching temple. “Kind of like my missing memories. I’d do anything to get those back and remember what put me into a coma.”
He lifted his chin. “We had the Realm guys look at all the evidence concerning what happened to you, you know. They concluded it was probably a burglar you caught in the act who attacked you in your apartment. A guy fitting that MO was caught several blocks away two months later. He turned on police and was shot.”
She nodded. “I read all the reports.” Even so, she didn’t remember what had happened to her that one fateful night. That sucked. It was much easier to focus on her mate than her blank memories. Perhaps Adare’s abilities would return the same way doctors assured her that memories could. “Maybe if Ulric makes it back, and if his prison bubble bursts, everything will align like it was before.”
“That’s doubtful.”
“Or everything could just blow up, including our world,” Grace whispered. Sometimes Promise didn’t sugarcoat the facts.
“Maybe.” He strode for the stairwell again. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Grace looked around the quiet room again. “Oh, this is definitely a lair. Benny has it right.” She told herself the trembling in her voice was because of the chilly space and not the fact they were about to share a bed again.Yeah, right.
Chapter 10
Apparently he had some work to do before he sent her off to the Realm in the morning. He didn’t think she’d tell them about the Seven, but she also didn’t seem to care much about her own well-being. Adare followed Grace into his bedroom and shut the door. “We don’t have a lot of time, but there are some promises I need from you before you go to sleep.”
She started, her head going back, before turning and once again sitting on his bed.
He kept his distance across the room, just to stop himself from reaching for her. Her scent was unique, and one he’d always wondered about. A mixture of sweet lilacs and spicy oranges with a hint of the sea thrown in. Calming and peaceful. How odd that the one woman he’d loved, years ago, had been anything but peaceful. This one, the one he’d mated, had a gentleness to her that he would’ve liked to have known. In a different life.
“Well?” She crossed her arms and his shirt swallowed her up. “I am not promising to run from a fight if I can help.”
“I’m going to try to survive our mission, but if I don’t, promise me you won’t take the virus from the queen for at least a hundred years,” he responded. So far, that seemed to be the earliest anybody had taken it safely. “I need to know that you’ll be safe if I’m gone.”
She frowned and cocked her head. “You’re totally confusing me. We’ve mainly lived apart these five years, and now you’re worried about my safety?”
His chest heated. “I’ve watched out for you for five years, and I thought you’d be able to manage on your own when I was gone.” The last thing he wanted was to sound as if he was lecturing a toddler. “At every second since our mating, I’ve known where you are and what you’re doing. Did you honestly think otherwise?” By the surprise on her pale face, she definitely had. “After being in a coma and then being thrown unwillingly into immortal life, you needed some freedom, Grace. I owed you that.”
“You took every mission you could to give me freedom?” Her incredulity was a little insulting.
“No. I took every mission I could because it’s my job, and I’m good at it.” He was the team expert in shock and awe, since he rarely lost his head in a fight. “I made a vow when I underwent the Seven ritual. I knew the sacrifices I’d have to make. I’ve made them.” He waited a beat. “Now promise me.”
