Dathal moaned in his sleep, and guilt slammed into me. What the fuck was I doing? Dathal needed to heal, and as much as I hated to admit it, the best place for him to do that was in the Fae Realm.
“Take him,” I murmured, then leant down and gave him the barest of kisses. “And tell him… tell him I’ll be waiting for him.”
Axel squeezed my shoulder. “We’ll think of something, Nick.”
I didn’t know if he was saying that just to placate me or not, but I clung to those words as I watched Axel organise people to transport Dathal to another SUV and then slide into the back with him. I watched them drive away, rooted to the spot, and I was still standing there as Talis walked over to stand alongside me.
“I hope it works out for you,” he said quietly. I glanced over to find him staring into the distance, in the same direction that Axel had gone.
“What about you?” I asked carefully. “And Axel?”
He shook his head and smiled sadly. “There’s nothing for us to work out.”
I was half tempted to disagree, to tell him that all the tension between them would suggest otherwise, but I just didn’t have it in me.
I was tired.
Drained.
To the point where I wanted to go home and bury my head under the covers and shut the rest of the world out for a while.
So that’s what I did.
I ignored the chaos around me as Max and his team rounded up the hunters and the witches and loaded them into police vans.
I ignored the fact that soon I’d have to go before the witches’ council and tell them my magic was fully restored.
I ignored Mase and Rys waiting outside the compound gate, instead marching over to Axel’s death trap of a motorbike. Just because I didn’t like to ride them didn’t mean I didn’t know how.
No one stopped me as I revved the engine and took off.
I barely registered the ride home, most of it spent in a daze of disbelief. My magic was alive and glorious, but reaching out for something,someonewho was no longer there.
Once home, I fed my poor neglected cats, showered, then set my phone to silent and crawled beneath the covers of my bed.
The world could fuck off.
Closing my eyes, I fell asleep to thoughts of silver hair, laughing violet eyes, and filthy smiles.
I already missed him.
NICK
Three weeks.
Three fucking weeks since they’d taken Dathal through the gateway, and nothing.
Well, that wasn’t strictly true.
Lady Sarhin gave Axel daily updates on Dathal’s progress, which, of course, he relayed to me. But for all the requests I’d sent through asking about him, the letters I’d asked them to pass along to him, I got absolutely zero response to.
I imagined them sitting in a bin somewhere, never actually making it to Dathal. Maybe he thought I’d forgotten all about him. Maybe he’d forgotten all about me?
I shook my head because that was bollocks.
Sometimes it felt like I could still feel him. Feel his magic dancing with mine.
That had to mean something, right?
