Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 204(@200wpm)___ 163(@250wpm)___ 136(@300wpm)
My phone pinged with a message, and when I checked, it was from my friend and fellow warder, Ryan Dean. All it said was: Meeting now with Jael.
Reaching out to mute the speaker, I looked at Cielo. “I have to see my sentinel,” I said, instead of the man’s name so my friend would know it was vital.
He nodded. “I’ll take care of it. Just, if you have to go somewhere, leave from here.” He gestured around, letting me know he meant not the room or our offices, but San Francisco. “And I need you to let me know. You can’t disappear. You promised.”
“Of course,” I replied softly, soothing him. “But it’s not like that. I’m sure it’s not like that.”
“We’ll see,” was all he said.
An hour later, I was watching Leith Haas pace. Since out of all of us, he was the logical one, the unflappable one, the one who never, ever showed his emotions to anyone but his hearth, it scared me. I kept one eye on him and one on my sentinel, Jael Ezran.
“Tell me again,” Marcus said slowly, looking at Malic Sunden, another of the four warders in my clutch of five.
We were in Jael’s house on this chilly February afternoon, all of us trying to make sense of the strangeness. And normally it would not have been a problem, which in and of itself was impressive, considering what we did. We were all used to frightening life-and-death supernatural occurrences that would send most people to a room lined in rubber. But we were warders who protected our city, five of us and our leader, our sentinel, who watched over us like a father and big brother and teacher all rolled into one. We were built to handle external nightmares we needed to protect innocent people from. This, however, was not that. This was insidious, a cancer that had been growing inside, right under our noses, that we’d all missed until now.
“Malic?”
Malic looked pained, and I saw it clearly in his eyes, in the set of his shoulders and the furrow of his brows.
“It’s not your fault,” Dylan told him again, having said it, I was certain, a million times in the last few days. His head was leaning against one of Malic’s massive shoulders, and he was holding his hand tightly. I saw the engagement ring on Dylan’s finger, the chunk of diamond Malic had given him almost two months ago, and I thought, as I had the first time I saw it, that no one could ever miss that Dylan Shaw was taken. It was gaudy and expensive and a gesture I would have never thought my fellow warder capable of. But it turned out that Malic Sunden was a big marshmallow for his hearth, the man he loved. As always, looking at them, I was struck by the contrast of the two. Malic was a mountain of hard, chiseled muscle, while Dylan was as delicate and fragile as a bird. They could not be more different, yet no one could miss the love, right there, living, breathing, between them. They were supposed to be married in April, but given what was happening now, I was guessing the big day was going to have to wait.
“It never occurred to me that you would, or could, be attacked, and that barring that…” Malic broke off, clearly distraught.
“That anyone, or anything, would go after my friends,” Dylan finished for him.
“Yes,” Malic croaked out.
They were quiet a moment, doing that communing thing couples did.
“Love,” Dylan said, “how could you have foreseen any of this?”
“If I’d never pulled you into—”
“Don’t say that to me again,” Dylan snapped, adamant. He was heartbroken, yet still trying to soothe the hurt he saw in his warder and future husband. I was touched just bearing witness. I could only imagine how Malic must feel. “You’re my love and my blessing, so please, let’s not second-guess. Let’s just deal with what happened.”
“How can you be so calm?” Malic asked, his voice breaking. He ran his hands through Dylan’s thick chestnut curls, pushing the hair back from his face so he could gaze into the big, warm brown eyes.
“Because now we have to focus our efforts on finding out what happened, and why and how we can prevent any further attacks. That’s the important thing; that’s the only thing we should be focusing on.”
Malic nodded quickly.
“Whoever did this, they meant to hurt me, which in turn hurts you. And it’s about all the warders and their hearths, not just us.”
We all understood what he meant.
It had all started when Dylan was out with his friends. They had crossed a street from where they’d been out dancing in SOMA and taken a shortcut down an alley. It was a blur of claws and teeth after that. The only thing Dylan could recall was that he’d been screaming with his back against the side of a building and his hands out in front of him. Anything that bumped against him shrieked in agony even as they left bruises and scratches on Dylan’s face, chest, and arms. The branding touch of a warder’s hearth had saved him, but his friends were not so fortunate. All three had been eviscerated, and throughout the attack, the demons, which looked to Dylan like a cross between snakes and men, had shrieked his name. He’d tried to move, to reach any of his friends, but the demons’ power, even when unable to touch him, had held him in place. By the time the assault was over and he’d managed to call Malic, Dylan was nearly catatonic.