Page 40 of Queen of Diamonds

“There are meds, right? Please tell me we aren’t too late—at least to make it shorter, or… or pain control.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” he asked. “That’s not a solution?—”

My hand snapped out, fist closing in Zed’s shirt. “We’re not fucking her if she doesn’t want us.” Even if it wouldn’t scramble our brains for good, I’d seen the terror on her face. He had been right. There was something else going on.

Zed peeled my hand from his shirt, stepping past me. “I wasn’t saying we should,” he snapped.

I followed him as he made for the spare room Glade was in. I shouldn’t have left the door open. Her heat hormones would be in the whole space before we knew it.

I didn’t dare follow him in, though, not sure I could take seeing her like that again. I was just wringing the water from my locs when Zed appeared in the doorway, expression deadly.

“Knight,” he snarled. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

“What?”

But Zed was tugging his gun from his belt, eyes scanning the room.

No…

Oh, no—there was no way she was faking it.

It took me half a second to cross the little room with the old mattress and into the bathroom. The shower was running, but sure enough, Glade was gone.

I backed out, mind racing. “That was… real. She was crying?—”

Zed spat a curse back at me as he crossed toward the cracked door that led to the rest of the warehouse.

I was after him in an instant, wildly trying to catch up.

I reached the large open warehouse space just behind Zed and scanned it.

“Kyan!” Zed spotted him just before I did. He was standing at the graffiti wall, mask in place, can of spray paint halfway to the spot with the skull he’d designed last week. He lowered it, turning to us.

“Glade,” Zed snarled. “She’s gone.”

Kyan said something as we approached, but it was incomprehensible through the mask.

“What?”

He tugged it off, a smile on his face. He looked high as fuck. “She was just here—you know, I forgot how sexy those thighs are. I want her like...” He narrowed his eyes, lifting his hands around his face, one still holding his spray paint, “... right here. She can crack my skull any day of the week.”

Zed seized him by the shirt. “Why didn’t you stop her?”

Kyan shrugged, voice dropping low as he mocked me. “‘Not allowed to touch her.’”

“You little shit!” Zed hissed.

Kyan just grinned.

“Which way did she go?”

“Uh...” Kyan looked around, then nodded in toward one of the doors. “That door.”

Zed released him, already making for it.

“Wait—!” Kyan called out. “—Might have been that one.” He waved his can at the other side of the warehouse. “Can’t remember. She’s too pretty.”

“I thought you wanted her here?” I demanded.

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