Page 5 of Wounded Mate
While Jeno might not be as well informed as his more jaded counterpart, he’s pleasant company and unlikely to complain about listening to my woes. I like him.
He motions to the stool. “Sit down. You look like you’re going to be sick.”
I don’t argue. “Where’s Leonas?”
“Out scouting the territory for trouble.” Jeno rolls his eyes as if exasperated with his mate when we both know he isn’t. “Sometimes I think hewantsto find it.”
“He likes having a job to do. Which works great for the rest of us. I’ve always felt safe, knowing Leonas is on duty.”
“What did you need him for?” Jeno grabs a second stool and sits across from me, rather close. But it’s not a big room. One side is made up entirely by the enchanted door, which appears as a floor-to-ceiling wine rack filled with every vintage imaginable. The far side is a staircase leading up to the alley outside at ground level. And the remaining walls are similarly covered in shelves to store wine. It’s charming, in its way, being surrounded by glass bottles. “Anything I can do to help?”
I explain my situation to him in detail. Everything from the moment the pain struck to Annais helping me to my room, then tossing and turning, and ultimately ending up here. Jeno stares at me with ever-widening hazel eyes.
When I’m done talking, he nods to my side. “Let me see.”
I lift my tunic for his inspection, and like Annais already discovered, nothing looks wrong. He prods at my ribs, which, oddly, has no effect on the ache. I flinch anyway, anticipating a spike in the pain that doesn’t come.
“Bizarre, right?” I let my tunic fall and cover the spot with my hand. “I have this feeling like I should be doing something about it, but what? There’s nothing to treat.”
“Could it be an internal injury? Something with an organ maybe?”
“Incubi don’t get sick in the way humans do. No plague, no infections, no tumors. Plus, it felt like my skin ripped open, like something clawed through it.”
“Hmm.” Jeno narrows his gaze, and a single crease appears on his forehead. That’ll be the only one he ever gets. As a vampire, he’s stopped aging. He’ll stay a handsome, youthful-looking man forever. “What if it wasn’tyourpain you experienced?”
“Oh, it was definitely my pain.” The memory of it is enough to bristle the hairs at my nape and send a shiver coursing down my spine. “The worst pain I’ve ever felt.”
“But you have no injury.”
I don’t see where he’s going with this. “And?”
“What if the injury struck another? One you’re connected with somehow?”
I stare at him like he’s grown a second head. “That makes no sense, Jeno.”
“Why not?” Jeno crosses his legs and leans in. “Listen. In the past year and a half, I went from being an ordinary human to being bitten by a vampire, to turning into one myself, to discovering my mate is a man who can shift at will into a black panther, to fighting a goblin for control of a jinn. Anything is possible.”
Perhaps he has a point after all.
He’s talking with confidence, which reminds me of Leonas. It’s refreshing to see Jeno picking up this particular trait. “I’m currently working in a brothel full of sex demons. So the thought that you could be feeling someone else’s pain as your own? That your minds could somehow be connected? That’s not such a big leap. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this new life, it’s to expect the unexpected.”
Well, when he puts it that way, things almost make sense. “But if you’re right, and it’s not me who’s injured?—”
“Then someone needs our help.”
“And I think…” My breath catches in my throat. “I think he might be dying.”
Chapter Four
Bela
“You’ve gotto be kidding me. Another one?”
The words filter through my mind in a murky haze. I hear them, but I don’t quite understand them. And I certainly can’t respond.
Every breath I take brings a dull wave of new pain.
“Hey. You awake?” Another person’s naked toe nudging me. Can’t they leave me to die in peace? “What’s your name? Can you walk?”
