I shook my head, trying to ignore the lump forming in my throat as I took her hand, feeling the weight of her missing ring as I entwined our fingers. “Right now, that is why I must take care of you.” Knowing what I had done in her absence was the last thing she needed, but for her to understand how desperately broken I was, she had to hear it. “Losing you was like losing my soul. Any piece of humanity I had left disappearedwhen Dante took you from that cottage. And I am only just now starting to feel like I am whole again with you back.”
Ivy cupped my cheek with warm, trembling fingers, eyes softening with all the love I knew she would be sharing through the bond if she could. My own power rose to try and meet hers, tried to interact with the piece of her still hidden behind the collar. But what it found was an emptiness that just feltwrong.
But as she rose onto her toes to kiss me, the touch light as a feather, I felt a tickle of something within me. A response to my mate, coming fromher.
It was a flicker of power, weak and shadowed. But it was there. And it gave me hope she would survive this.
That she could survive anything.
83
Ivy
My stomach gave a warning churn as I pulled on a pair of tights. I tried to ignore the way they felt tighter suddenly. In the mirror as I turned, I spied the one thing I’d been avoiding since my escape.
The scars on my back.
The sight had me almost heaving; they still looked new enough to hurt, but I’d stopped feeling them weeks ago. Reaching behind me, I brushed my finger over the lowest rune. It obscured Rowan’s mate mark completely, cutting off Maeve’s. It would be hiding the newest marks from Damon and Hawk if they ever appeared.
A tingling sensation rushed down my spine, pain following it. I dropped my hand with a hiss, grabbed the last clean oversized t-shirt I had, making a mental note that we needed a washer and dryer here as soon as possible, because magic didn’t quite make these things feel clean enough.
“So, you did it?” Adrian asked, stepping into the closet, wearing his gear.
I frowned as I took in the clothing; the dark material pulled tight over his chest, the cargo-styled pants on his legs. And the heavy combat boots dragging mud into my perfectly clean bedroom.
“Why are you in gear?” I asked carefully, shoving my shoes into a pair of slippers. “Did something happen?”
Adrian shook his head, eyeing me carefully as he moved towards me. “I went out on patrol with Xerxes and Rhadamanthus,” he replied. “Trying to get along better. Work on the wards. Xerxes had some ideas for them so we went out to see if we could do it and Rhadamanthus joined.”
“‘Get along better’?” I clarified. “Interesting.”
“We haven’t had a chance to do one of those wholefamily date nightsin a while,” he murmured, stopping in front of me, hands moving to my hips. Adrian rubbed circles against my stomach with his thumbs, the touch making me shiver. “And your mate circle will be complete soon.”
My stomach sank at the thought. The vision from after the palace attack flashed across my mind. Nine mates surrounding my cage, dead, reaching for me because they thought they could save me. But Dante had gotten to them first, and I…I hadn’t saved them.
A lump formed in my throat, making it almost hard to breathe as I nodded once. “Yeah,” I finally managed, trying to swallow. “It will be.”
A shadow passed over Adrian’s face as he watched me. “We’re going to have a meeting. About what comes next,” he said, voice low. “The blood moon is close.”
My stomach gave another warning churn, but I swallowed down the pressure building in my throat. “Okay,” I replied. “Yeah, we need to talk about it.”
My mate pressed his lips together, watching me warily for another moment before taking my hand and interlocking our fingers. “We’ll figure it out,” he said, though it didn’t sound like he believed those words any more than I did.
I allowed Adrian to guide me out of the closet. The bedroom was empty, the rest of the house quiet. The silence made the hairs on my arms prickle. Even the weather stopped its assault on the island. For a moment, I caught sight of the ocean, taking in the grey skies and still water.
It felt like an omen. The calm before the storm.
In a few days, we would either see the destruction of our world, or we would have ensured there was more time before he attacked again.
A deadline didn’t matter, not really. Especially not to Dante. If he had to force a full lunar eclipse, he would figure out a way to do it.
As we made our way down into the foyer, I heard my other mates; the gentle gruffness of Elias’s voice as he talked about something to do with an attack, Maeve’s careful calm as she read something aloud. The uncertainty in Rowan’s as he asked about the timeline, Hawk’s stiff answers as Orion and Rhadamanthus spoke quietly about the island—how protected it was.
My heart pounded as Adrian and I stepped into the living room. All conversation ceased, eyes turning towards us.
And based on the looks they gave me, something was wrong. The lack of bonds made it difficult to read their expressions, but they were hiding something.
Thor, silent as always, rose from his perch by the back door, somehow maintaining a perfectly neutral expression. The bear shifter, large and nimble, started towards me. I’d come to pick up on the fact that he didn’t quite enjoy communicating with the others the same way he did me. Touch seemed to be a struggle for him, almost like it was for Orion, though not the same—which I understood.
