Page 88 of Inked in Devotion

I slipped out my phone to call Marena.

A message of a disconnected line sounded in my ear. I checked the number, dread skittering down my spine as realization dawned.

“What is it?” Theo asked.

“Marena.” Fury hazed the edges of my vision. “She did this.”

A few hours later, Dora called me to say that Marena had cleared out her office. At this point, she was suspect number one, and I had Ilya dig into her background. Dr. Wyeth collected the pills and the homeopathic remedy. The chamomile tea was also sent to the lab for testing.

Lucy said that Chloe had shared the tea with her recently, and she had a weird reaction afterwards.

“I saw multicolored prisms,” Lucy said. “I thought it was just the effects of the sun on the window. Maybe it was. I don’t know. It freaked me out enough that I remember how that happened, but the effects didn’t last.”

But I remembered Chloe’s tea. I’d seen it on the counter several times. She even mentioned she ran out of it, and I tried to recall how she acted. Come to think of it, her behavior was erratic.

Kirill and Lucy had left. My pakhan promised he’d assign Sorcha as Sebastian’s nanny while I dealt with Chloe. Lucy was going to handle Margo Winthrop, putting an urgency to our request about the blood covenant.

I got off the phone with Dimitri. I sent him an image of Marena in case she looked familiar. Something about her didn’t add up with me from the start. Call it instinct. I never warmed up to her, and neither did I feel like kissing her ass even when I knew she could make my life difficult for Sebastian’s custody.

But if the Vozhokari indeed sent her, then I owed Chloe an apology for complicating her life. But no way was I backing off and letting her decide whether she wanted my protection.

Agitation was an uncommon feeling I experienced. Irritability maybe, but this angst, this unsettling weight squatting on my chest, was a byproduct of my inability to claim my woman.

My woman.

She was not only my woman but the mother of my son.

Chloe stirred. I tensed.

She wanted nothing to do with me before I sedated her. Would she remember her psychotic break?

Chloe was hooked up to an IV to rebalance her electrolytes and hydration. Whatever was in her system should clear out soon. We wouldn’t know what we were facing until the blood test and chemistry on the substances came back.

Her eyelids slowly lifted.

“Chloshka,” I murmured and held her bandaged hand. She had scratches everywhere and bruises on her knees and ribs. The ones on her ribs might have come from the iron grip I had around her waist when we were hanging off the bluff.

“Kolya,” she whispered.

“How are you feeling, princess?”

Her eyes were still groggy, but a hitched sob caught in her throat. She turned her head away and pulled her hand out of mine.

“Where am I?” she asked the wall.

“The Astorian.”

A louder sob escaped her, and tears spilled down her cheeks.

“I’m going crazy,” she whispered.

“No, you’re not.” I clasped her hand again. “No, you’re not, baby.”

“How can you say that?” she cried. “After I nearly killed our baby, I almost killed you!”

“Marena is missing,” I cut in.

“What does she have to do with what I’ve done?”