Page 164 of Primal Bonds

She shook her head. “He’s stronger than me. He wouldn’t be alpha if he wasn’t.”

“Then why?”

“I’m expendable,” she said in a flat voice. “He’s not. You don’t know what it was like before he took over as alpha. We can’t lose him.”

That’s when he realized that Marjani had known what she was getting into. This was a suicide mission.

Bloody hell. He tightened his grip on her. “I’ll help any way I can.” It was a fucking evasive promise, but it was the best he could do.

She should’ve called him on it. Instead she murmured a thank you.

“You should never have come here.” He sounded like a broken record, but he had the bad feeling it was already too late to sneak her back out of the castle—and the thought of this proud, beautiful woman at the mercy of Lady Blaer made him a little sick.

“I had to.”

He mentally shook his head. But he supposed to Marjani, there’d been no other choice. That was the kind of woman she was.

She patted his chest. “Don’t worry. I’ll be okay.”

His mouth twisted. Because all of a sudden, he wasn’t sure who was comforting whom.

Chapter 10

Adric Savonett pinged Marjani’s smartphone for what had to be the hundredth time.

No answer. Still.

She’d been gone for over a week now. Radio silence on her end, but he’d tracked her through her quartz. From this distance he couldn’t pinpoint her exact location, but she was somewhere to the north and east, and Luc had confirmed she was in Iceland.

Safe enough, since her quartz was still alive and humming—until twelve hours ago, when it had gone completely silent.

She’s okay. There’s more than one reason for her quartz to go silent.

It didn’t mean she was dead. The quartz could’ve been depleted. But most likely she’d reached her goal and passed through a fae portal into the ice fae court.

Then Luc’s quartz went silent, too.

Adric’s worry ratcheted up. But he was stuck in goddamn Baltimore, holding things together.

He paced barefoot across the living room’s stone floor, threading his way through the secondhand couch and battered coffee table that he and Marjani had rescued from a dumpster when they were dirt-poor and never gotten around to replacing. The plush orange shag rug was his only luxury. His cougar liked to stretch out on it and stare into the fireplace.

He stalked down the hall to her room to stare at the neatly made bed. The bedspread, a colorful geometric print, was a painful reminder of the sister he used to have. The one who’d loved bright tunics and leggings.

Until those feral river fada had gotten a hold of her, thanks to Corban and his little band of followers. Now she shaved her head and dressed like a soldier in camo.

He muttered a curse and strode back to the living room where he stared into the glowing amber quartz in his fireplace. Outside, it was a humid night in early August, but his den was carved out of the bedrock two stories below the surface, so he kept the quartz-powered fire burning all year round.

Marjani had loved to sit by the fire.

She’s in danger.

All evening, he’d been agitated. At midnight, he’d fallen asleep for a few hours and then got up to pace, his cat clawing at his insides, itching to go to her.

Growing up, he and Marjani had always had each other’s backs. Otherwise they’d never have survived the clan war known as the Darktime. But Marjani had been scarred by those terrible years.

She appeared tough, assertive. Only he knew that she still had nightmares about losing their parents and the years they’d spent on the run, hiding from their uncle. She might be a pit bull, but it was protective coating for her soft heart. She wanted to believe that the clan would never again turn on one another like cold-eyed, vicious reptiles.

And because Adric loved her, he did his best not to dispel that belief. His sister might be his most trusted advisor, but she didn’t know everything.

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