The air left my lungs. My heart gave a single, painful stutter before hammering against my ribs. My world seemed to shrink around me, the sterile walls closing in. We’d had less than forty-eight hours with that truth, a secret held within the tightest circle of my trust. And now it was in the hands of the very people who would see him as a weapon first and a person never. How did they know? There had to be a leak.
The Major General glowered at me. “Your mate is tearing holes in the Veil as we speak.”
I blinked; the words refused to make sense. “What?”
“His mate was attacked by the cultists we’ve been hunting,” Sergeant Hanna stated. “Vanished, and the bond between them shattered. It’s unlikely that Jude Holt still lives.” Her words landed like a knife in my gut, and I ground my jaw to keep from falling apart. The cold calm that had been holding my sanity together began to shatter.
“Then his corpse is ripping holes in the Veil right now.”
Was the shadow god using him as some sort of puppet? Was he gone? Absently, I tried again to sense any trace of him. Only Nox’s gentle warmth remained, and the ties to my team. “He’s not dead…” I whispered, desperate for it to be true.We’d find him. Fix this.
It wasn’t possible for Jude to be out there, because I was holding the shattered pieces of him right here, inside me. The ghost of his power was a leaden weight in my chest. The devastating truth crystallized. He was gone.
“Angel,” Sergeant Hanna said, her voice carefully tight.
“If it is his corpse,” the Major General continued, “used as they did shifters in the past—then we’ll take care of him like we used to—decimating the remains until it no longer moves.”
I tried to stand, but the room swayed, and my legs gave out underneath me. “Jude…” I whispered as the floor rushed up to meet me. I landed hard, unable to breathe, tears stinging my eyes. The cold of linoleum pressed against my cheek. Distantly, as if from the end of a long tunnel, I heard voices raised in argument.
“—this is the worst time for theatrics, Phelps! A broken mate bond will kill them both.”
A buzzing overrode some of the words as my vision blurred.
“—asset is compromised, Sergeant, and a nightmare is tearing a hole in the Veil the size of New York City.”
From one blink to the next, the burning of my lungs pulled me into the dark.
The world resolvedin a series of jarring sensations, the blare of sirens, the stale, metallic air of a vehicle, and the dull throb of a new headache. I blinked my eyes open, the lids gritty and heavy, to find Wade’s face filling my vision, his expression a careful mask of tired calm.
We were moving. The lurch and hum confirmed we were in a tactical van, the kind reserved for high-risk transfers. The sirens meant they were in a hurry. A cold dread pooled in my gut.Where?
My gaze swept the dim interior. Ezra, Wade, Bobby, and Victor were perched on the benches around me, all shackled with the dull gray cuffs designed to suppress supernatural strength. They were a portrait of grim solidarity.
Victor didn’t look at me, but I felt the tentative brush of his consciousness against mine, a ghost of the blood bond we’d forged as teammates, long before we led our own squads—mine the dayside, his mostly at night.Say nothing,his mental voice cautioned.
Jude?I sent back, the thought raw.
Unknown.The word was heavy with exhaustion.But we will find out soon.
Guilt, thick and acidic, rose in my throat.I’m sorry. For dragging you into this.
A flicker of something that wasn’t quite annoyance came down the bond.
Your team? The rest of mine?
Safe. Hanna has them. Kerry is scrubbing our records to purge any links of the others knowing.
Remi?
Unconscious, last I heard.
Ivan?
Protected by the Wolf.
That was a problem for a future I couldn’t envision. A future that required surviving the next hour.
And you?Victor asked.
