“You’re complaining because?”
“You have no damn clue what your ‘little talk’ did to her, do you?” Reynner shoved his hands in his pants pockets so he wouldn’t punch Lucan in the face and vent the frustration prowling through him.
Lucan strolled over to the window and glanced outside. “You are with her, are you not?”
“Should I thank you for crushing her? For making her think I didn’t care?”
Lucan turned, asked coolly, “Did you?”
“Piss off, Luc,” he growled because the mage was right. He was the one who’d hurt Eve, pushed her away, not Lucan.
“Shouldn’t you be with your mate?”
Lucan, it seemed, wanted that punch. Even if Reynner didn’t agree with the smug bastard’s method of bringing them together, his words held a damn lot of merit. But he didn’t want Eve to ever feel trapped. He knew how that could destroy a person. Yet, it didn’t stop him from wanting to go over to her friend’s and haul her back to him where she’d be safe. Being parted from her was steadily eroding his sanity.
He stiffened. Pain speared through him, filling his mind, his chest. Reynner gritted back a curse. What the hell? This was nothing like the shit Inanna tortured him with. His soul hurt as if—Eve!
“Something’s wrong!” He opened his mind-link to her.Eve, what's wrong?
As he asked the question, he dematerialized to her friend’s apartment, taking form in a quiet backstreet. With inhuman speed, he tore to the front, only to be faced with the commotion across the street near the flower stall. He raced over, dodging cars and a crowd of shocked onlookers. Scanned the ruckus of people and found Eve’s redheaded friend. “Where’s Eve?”
The shocked expression on Kataya’s pale face had dread fisting his heart.
“Eve—” she babbled. “There was an accident.”
“Where is she?” Lucan demanded, having followed him.
“I don’t know—I don’t know.” Kataya pushed back her tangled hair with shaky hands. “She and Brenna crossed to the flower seller, then everything happened so fast. There was a flare—a wave of light. It slammed into us. And Eve, she—she just disappeared.” She glanced wildly about her. “Oh, God—oh, God—Brenna!” She darted forward, shoving the crowd apart with her hands.
Then Reynner saw the other female lying on the sidewalk, bleeding from a head wound. Flowers and metal containers were spilled all over the place. The noise escalated as more people gathered.
“I’ll take care of this,” Lucan said.
Reynner scanned the streets.Eve?he called through their telepathic link… Nothing.
Dammit, he’d never explained to her how to keep connected to him because he’d been keeping her safe from his pain. He tried again, but only silence answered him.
“She’s not responding.” Reynner tried to keep calm. “I can't sense her. Luc, that power spike you felt—Darkreans?”
“No. It’s different.” Lucan’s irises swirled with flames of blue and green. He was keeping his powers contained in front of the humans who persisted in lingering at the site of the fracas. “What I feel here…the essence of the power has the same signature strains as the one that comes off you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Fuck.Reynner cursed viciously, his anger exploding.
Inanna.
***
Reynner stormed into Inanna’s temple, his temper on a thin leash.
She lay on a chaise lounger. Two handmaidens attended her, putting her hair up in an intricate style.
“Reynner!” A wide smile curved her mouth when she saw him. An impatient wave of her hand and she dismissed the females. They scurried past him, but not before sending him a seductive look from beneath their lashes.
“What the hell did you do?” he snapped. “You dare harm a mortal?” He knew better than to tell her what Eve was to him because then she’d tell him squat.
He shoved his fists in his pants pockets and encountered Eve’s earring. His chest tightened, unable to breathe past the pain, knowing his mate was in danger and he had to beg this accursed female to tell him where she was.
