Page 59

“Ach, Christ. Plenty old enough, fully ascended, and trained. I’m not sendin’ a child to his doom.” His eyes narrowed. “You have a rather low opinion of me, haven’t you?”

Alec cleared his throat in agreement behind us.

I prayed for patience and shoved the hair out of my face again as my ribs burned.

“Fine,” I breathed, trying not to think too hard about it. Trying to remember why we’d decided we needed a lamb in the first place—and why I wasn’t going myself.

“Send him.”

“Good man.” Kade clapped my shoulder and turned on his heel. After a few steps, he paused. “Oh, and August?”

“Yeah?”

“She’s gonna kill you for what you did to her car, mate.”

I glanced toward the mangled McLaren, feeling like one lucky son of a bitch to have emerged from the wreck alive, let alone the chaos that followed. That relief was quickly eclipsed by pain sharp enough to threaten my knees.

Hers.

The great machine had been Ally’s baby.

The place where I’d seen her most at ease.

Gone, like the rest of the proof that she’d ever existed.

The sick bastard could’ve at least had the decency to let me go with it.

“A man can hope,” I muttered dryly.

Kade vanished, leaving a swirl of green smoke to dissipate behind him. I shook my head and returned to my very pissed-off companion.

“Reunion hour’s over,” Alec snapped. “We gotta go.”

“What happened?” I demanded.

“Mags.” His eyes flicked over my shoulder, unwilling to say more even with Kade gone from sight.

The shadow-walkers had everyone on edge.

“What?” I barked, impatience nipping at my heels as a deep, throbbing ache formed in my temples. I glanced toward the healers still tending to the injured.

Alec tugged at the back of his neck and shook his head. “I told her. Told her it was too damn soon. She wouldn’t even be out of the house if she were human. And this isn’t some cheap Renown rival—this is an evil Ally with three times the experience. That jackass just totaled Ally’s fucking car. Reckless. Stupid⁠—”

“Alec?”

With a pained sigh, he brought his amber eyes to mine, though the effort appeared considerable. He held out a hand, and I accepted it, sensing ahead and behind as he did the same.

With a twist and swell of energy, the Florida humidity vanished. An arid expanse of sand replaced it.

Alec released me and trudged up a sagebrush-covered hill.

“Alec,” I demanded, following in his wake.

“Mags.”

“I know,” I muttered, my ribs constricting.

“She invoked the Blood Bond.”